Submission: Training for Exiles, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer, we're jumping into a sensitive and controversial subject. Likewise, husbands, show honor to the woman so that your prayers may not be hindered. Men, when you use your power to coerce, you might be able to manipulate or control your wife to get what you want from her, but your prayers are going to be hindered and you're going to lose God's blessing and that's far more devastating. Happy Thanksgiving from Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer. We trust you're spending time with those you love and remembering all the Lord's blessings today.

He has been so good despite the craziness of this year and for that we give him thanks. Okay, we're going a bit deeper today on the program and tackling an often misunderstood passage of scripture. We're looking at the biblical roles of husbands and wives. I think we'd all agree that God has a reason for the way he set things up, so we must allow the gospel to transform the way we think about marriage. We're diving into 1 Peter to discover this wisdom with a message titled, submission training for exiles. First one, chapter three, likewise, wives be subject to your own husbands. No, no, okay, do not reach for that remote to turn me off.

Hear me out, okay? The most overlooked word in this whole passage is the first word, likewise. Likewise means in the same way. Remember, this is the third of three relationships that Peter is using to illustrate a principle. How should a stranger and exile respond to difficult relationships or unjust treatment? Remember, our identity in 1 Peter is strangers and exiles. How does a stranger and exile respond to difficulty in relationships and even unjust treatment in those relationships? The previous two relationships that he used that we've already looked at were submitting to an imperfect and sometimes unjust government, that was chapter two, verses 13 through 17, and then secondly, being under the control of an unjust master.

That's the last part of chapter two. These are all just applications of the principle. The principle is what is important because it's going to apply to any relationship. Our example in all of these relationships, Peter says, is Christ. In any relationship where you are experiencing hardship or suffering or injustice, Peter says, for you were called to this because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his steps. He did not commit sin and no deceit was found in his mouth.

When he was insulted, he did not insult in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten but entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree so that having died the sins, we might live for righteousness. By his wounds, you have been healed. This passage, what it says is that Christ did three things in the face of injustice.

Number one, he was patient. He understood suffering was an integral part of God's plan of salvation. To follow in Jesus's steps means that you should expect unjust suffering. Number two, this passage at the end of chapter two shows us that he committed himself to him who judges justly. That's verse 23. He knew that earthly justice may never come, but he knew that God would give full justice to him in his heavenly country and he was willing to be patient and wait for that. Number three, this passage tells us that Jesus kept doing good. That's verse 23.

Even when he was being slandered, even when others wronged him, he kept doing the right thing, knowing that in all situations, he would respond first and foremost to God and that God would vindicate him one day. That's your example. We've applied it to government. We've applied it to unjust masters. Now, let's apply that mentality to marriage. I'm back to chapter three, verse one. Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be one without a word by the conduct of their wives. When they see your respectful and pure conduct, do not let your adorning be external, the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry or the clothing you wear, but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious. For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves by submitting to their own husbands as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord. Now, hold on, you're like, that's a jarring statement to modern ears, right? I mean, you're like, is that where we're going today? More on that in a couple of minutes.

Okay, but let's keep reading. And you were her children if you do good and you do not fear anything that is frightening. Ladies, the question for you is going to be, how do you submit to your husband in a Christ-like way? By the way, foremost in Peter's mind is a wife with an unsaved husband because that was really common in the early church. A lot of ladies would get saved and their husbands did not.

Many of the earliest church converts were women. And so they had this question of how do you live with a spouse that doesn't share some of your deepest convictions? That's why he says that those who do not obey your husbands or your wife, if it's an unbelieving wife, they'll be one without a word through your conduct, right? But even if you're both Christians, surely all of us, you still got moments of frustration where your spouse lets you down, even just flat out wrongs you. So the question for you in that moment is how do you respond in a marriage relationship like that? How do you respond like Christ in that moment? All right, verse seven, and likewise, husbands in the same way, husbands.

Man, there's going to be an application for you here also, right? You should live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel. Now, that's another phrase that sounds pretty strange to modern ears, right? We'll get to that in a minute. Since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, you should do this, he says, so that your prayers may not be hindered. Men, the question for you is going to be what does it mean to show honor to your wife in a Christlike way? Okay, so let's talk about three ways. Peter tells you in these seven verses, three ways you are to honor your spouse after the example of Christ.

Number one, you're going to use your power to bless and serve, not manipulate or control. Peter points in this passage to different powers that both men and women have in the relationship, and he shows you what to do with it if you're following the example of Christ. All right, so we'll start with men. Men, of course, usually have physical power in the relationship.

They're typically bigger and stronger. I think that's primarily what Peter means in verse seven when he calls the wife the weaker vessel. Also, I would add, in Rome, weaker probably meant weaker in her power in the marriage. Marriage law in Rome was way better for men than it was for women. Men, for example, could have affairs, were almost expected to. The wife, she could be killed if she had an affair. Men could divorce their wives for pretty much any reason, but wives, for the most part, could not divorce their husbands for any reason, and divorces always favored the man. The money was his.

The kids remained his. Many divorced women in those days had to resort to prostitution. It was a horribly unjust system, but the point is that she was a weaker vessel legally. She's also weaker in the sense that the New Testament gives to the husband in a Christian marriage. It gives the husband the position of leadership in the home. She is told to submit. A wife is told to submit to the husband in a way that he is not told to submit to her.

That's not a bad thing, of course. It's a beautiful Christ-like thing, but it makes her positionally weaker. So, physical weakness, legal weakness, positional. Some commentators also say that his reference to her being weaker might be a general reference to the fact that God has endowed many women with an emotional sensitivity that makes them more nurturing and compassionate, the mothering instinct. But Peter's point is that none of these aspects of weakness, if they're true, is going to make her inferior in the relationship. That's what Peter means when he says to the husband, she is an heir with you in the grace of life, an heir alongside of you in Christ. She is your full equal, not behind you. She's right there with you.

And Peter's point to the man is whatever power you have in the relationship ought to be used, leveraged to honor her and serve her, not exploit her. You need to live with her in an understanding way. If she is emotionally wired differently than you, well, don't despise that. Seek to understand her. Learn her love language. Love her on her terms. It reminded me of a marriage counselor that my wife and I, Veronica and I, saw early on in our marriage, who told me, he said, you need to become a student of your wife, to live with her in an understanding way and love her on her terms, and not just in ways that are convenient for you. You should use any position of strength or power to serve her, to honor her, to pursue meeting her needs because, right, I mean, that's what Christ did with his strength.

Let me tell you something that is absolutely wicked. When a man uses his physical power to dominate his wife, even worse is when he uses the Christian idea of submission in marriage to dominate her. That's not what Christ did with his power, is it? Christ used his power to serve. Christ laid down his life.

It's like C.S. Lewis used to say, the crown that a man wears in a marriage is first one of thorns. That means I use the leadership that I have, I use whatever position of strength that I have to serve her. Practically, that means, as the leader of the family, I should voluntarily lose 90% of the disagreements that we have, right? I mean, I don't pull out the submission card to get her to do what I want to do. A man's leadership in the marriage, we say, is never a license to do what he wants to do. A man's leadership is empowerment to do what he ought to do. I know this is a difficult subject.

Some of you wonder exactly what that looks like. I heard a great story. Tim Keller, his pastor in New York City, his wife, Kathy Keller, before he was in New York City, they were in Hopewell, Virginia. And this opportunity came up to go to New York City and they were praying about what they should do. And after praying about it for a while, Tim and Kathy, she said, we came down on different sides. Tim felt like they should go and Kathy felt like they should stay. And they talked for hours and just could not come to resolution. So finally, Tim said, okay, all right, we'll do what you want.

We'll stay here. And Kathy said, I looked back at Tim and I said, oh, no, you don't. You are not putting this one on me, right? God gave you a vote in this marriage. He gave me a vote.

And then he gave you the deciding vote. And you've got to decide what you think God is saying to our family. That's the kind of leadership, that's the kind of positional leadership that the man, the husband, has given in the relationship that Peter is talking about. He's saying whatever you're using, whatever power, right, physical, positional, financial, even the dominance of your personality, you use that to bless and to serve and to honor her, right?

It's never licensed to do what you want to do. It's empowerment to do what you ought to do. Okay, for women, right, what kind of power do they have and how do they use that in a Christ-like way? Well, first, Peter says, he says you've got your beauty and your sexuality. Peter indicates many women can build their identity on their beauty and their sexuality and even use that as a means of power.

When he says in verse three, to do not let your adorning be external, the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry or the clothing that you wear, he's not saying that you can't braid your hair and you can only wear it in a messy bun. He's saying that the substance of your life should not be beauty. Listen, early on, women in our culture and back then too get taught that their value and their worth and even their power come from their beauty.

They're taught by our culture that a woman with great physical beauty will have power to get what she wants and they will be greatly valued. What Peter says is no, no, what is valuable to God is Christ-like character, a calm, steadfast faith in Him. Verse four, he says, but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious. A gentle and quiet spirit. That doesn't mean being introverted and shy, like extroverted, loud women are offensive to God. No, gentle and quiet spirit means somebody who is at peace, not trying to use her position to manipulate and control, but someone who is full of trust in God. That's what's precious to God, very precious to God, because that's the spirit that Jesus had.

Submission with a quiet spirit was a core dimension of Jesus's character. That's more valuable to God than your beauty and in tough situations. You should, like Christ, be more concerned about what God thinks than what you can use your power to manipulate and get for yourself. To say it very simply, the Christ-likeness of your person is more valuable to God than the stylishness of your purse. Your faith is more precious to God than your face or your figure. Submission to God is ultimately more powerful than anything beauty can procure for you. Single ladies, he is saying your future is going to be determined not by how beautiful you can make yourself or how you can perfectly present yourself.

What you're looking for is found in the presence and the promise of your Heavenly Father, right? Don't adorn yourself, he would say, with filtered Instagram photos. Don't make that the focus of your identity.

Here's another application for Peter's words. Married ladies, it's wrong to use your sexual appeal to manipulate your husband to do what you want, to withhold that relationship from him until he conforms to the way that you want him to be. And he would say, that's using your beauty, your sexuality, his power, and giving him the cold shoulder, making life miserable for him until he does what you want. What Peter says, to be like Christ in your marriage, Christ-likeness means that you use your power, whatever it is, wherever you find it, to bless and to serve, never manipulate and control, right? So that raises the question, what if you're doing your part, but your spouse doesn't seem to be keeping up their end of the bargain and they're not doing what they're supposed to do, right? What if they're not even a Christian?

So that leads us to number two. In all things, he says, do good, obey God, and trust him. That was the example of Christ, right? In the face of incompetence and injustice, what did Christ do?

Well, we saw that at the beginning, right? He committed himself to him who judges justly, and then he kept doing good and trust in God with the results. Look at Peter's example of Sarah in verse five, for this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves by submitting to their own husbands as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord.

And you are her children if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening. The use of Sarah as an example here is really helpful. Abraham was not a perfect man by a long shot. I know we've got our songs about Father Abraham having many sons and being one of them, and so were you.

But if you read Genesis, and you'll see that Abraham really blew it a number of times. He led their family to places he shouldn't have led them, and he made some truly boneheaded decisions. But Sarah, Peter says, stayed by him and was submitted to his leadership. Sarah was not like, look, this guy does not know what he is doing. Clearly, it'd be better with me in charge.

It might have been, right? But what does she do? Verse six, she did the right thing that she knew to do, which was honoring her husband's leadership and committing herself to God. And as a result, it says she didn't fear what was frightening, right? This doesn't mean, by the way, ladies, that you don't offer your opinion even strongly at times. Any man, I will tell you, who makes decisions for his family without counsel of his wife is a fool. It means that your attitude in marriage is dominated by a calm trust in God, not a frantic manipulation to get what you want and take care of yourself, because you've committed yourself to him.

And let me use this moment to say, to be really clear on something so nobody's confused. Peter is not saying that spousal abuse is okay, or that God wants you to stay in a home where you're being abused and just take it like some sort of expression of Christ-likeness. Y'all, there is no passage of scripture that would encourage you to do that. If for no other reason than staying in an abusive home is enabling somebody to sin. Psalm 11 says that the Lord hates those who do violence, and you should not subject yourself or your children to that. You need to protect yourself and your kids and help your spouse get help also. Now, I realize, of course, that's a very difficult situation.

It's impossible for me to address the particulars of different situations in general ways, regardless. To get us back to the point, Peter's point, is that in any situation you find yourself in, right, regardless of what your spouse is doing, you got to continue doing good and trusting God with the results. Nobody else's sin justifies your sin.

Your husband or your wife, if they're being dumb and they're acting like an idiot, you keep obeying God and you keep trusting him. When you do that, God promises to help you just like he did Christ. Psalm 125, the Lord is good to those who walk up rightly.

He is their shield and their support. Psalm 34, the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their cry. The Lord will rescue his servants.

No one who takes refuge in him will ever be forsaken. So when in all things you do good and you obey God and you trust him, God promises to be your refuge and he'll take care of you. On the flip side, Peter says, when you take matters into your own hands, you're going to mess everything up, and then God becomes your enemy. See verse 7, likewise, husbands show honor to the woman so that your prayers may not be hindered. Men, when you use your power to coerce, you might be able to manipulate or control your wife to get what you want from her, but your prayers are going to be hindered and you're going to lose God's blessing, and that's far more devastating. When you're a jerk to your wife and you're unkind and you're not thinking about how to love and bless and take care of her and putting her needs first, God says, I literally cut off the answers to your prayer, and that's not a place you want to be on. Honor her because that's the path that provides God's protection.

Listen, I've told you this before, but when you take vengeance matters into your own hands in marriage, you mess everything up. Point is you trust God, you keep doing good, and you let God deal with it because God deals with it much better than you. So finally, number three, Peter teaches us that in marriage, grace is a more powerful change agent than is retribution.

Now, when I say that, everybody nods their heads at this, but nobody actually believes it. But what Scripture teaches is that in a relationship like marriage, grace changes people far more quickly than retribution can because grace changes their heart. Victor Hugo had that great scene at the beginning of Les Mis where the hardened criminal Jean Valjean has his heart transformed, not by an act of retribution, but by an act of grace. I remember my dad telling a story about a lady that he worked with who was kind of his sworn enemy. She just did not like him at all, and she said all these unkind things and even spread false rumors about him. And then something went wrong in her life, and my dad, her boss, was able to minister her, to help her, and just to be there for her. And she looked at me at one point, and she said, why are you here?

I don't understand why with the way that I've treated you, you would be there. But it's that path of grace that opened up a relationship that ultimately led not just to a healed relationship, but to opportunities for the gospel. I heard an African American lady share the story of her grandfather, the Reverend Willie Jenkins, who grew up in Mississippi under the hardship of Jim Crow.

In his later years, he worked for the integration of public schools. Well, because of this, some white teenagers cruised their neighborhood firebombing homes, vandalizing homes. They came to the Jenkins house, she said, and then the unexpected happened. They ran out of gas right in front of his house. Reverend Jenkins' sons, they were ready to fight. They were ready to defend, and they said that he reached out and picked up a glass bottle and busted it.

They were assuming he was going to fight, but then he walked over to the car that was out of gas, and he used that busted glass to create a funnel and then siphoned some gas from his own car and filled the empty tank of those boys who had come to vandalize their property. That act of grace, she said, changed them. It changed their relationship. It ultimately opened up a path of healing.

They left the experience in shame, but changed by the experience. You see, that's what Peter is referring to, that kind of grace when he says, ladies, even when you're in the home of an unkind, even unsaved man, keep doing good. Keep responding like Christ so that the unsaved husband might be one without a word by the conduct of your wife because of the grace that gives them a taste of Jesus. You're not going to change his heart by manipulating him or berating him or wearing him down. His best shot at being changed is seeing the humble, trusting Christ-like spirit at work in you.

Through that, you win them. See how Peter uses that word? This is the way of Christ, and it's how he changed us, Peter says. He left us an example that we would follow in his steps.

By the way, has he changed you this way? See, the scripture tells us that Jesus came to earth not to condemn you, but to save you. John 3 17, God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. Right now, what he offers you is mercy if you'll receive it. He died on a cross to suffer the penalty of your sin in your place. If you ignore that, then one day he will come again in judgment. But you right now could, if you choose, turn from your sin and receive his offer to be saved, to be united to him in mercy. John 3 16, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him receives him will not perish but have eternal life.

Do you want to do that? Do you want to receive him? If so, I would just invite you to pray with me right now if you never have before.

All right, let's bow our heads. Father, you say, I know that I deserve punishment, but Jesus took it in my place. I surrender my life to you and receive your offer of forgiveness. Thank you, Jesus, for saving me. Amen. Just like JD said, grace changes people. Grace changes the heart.

This Thanksgiving, our team here at Summit Life is especially thankful for you. JD, why don't you tell us a little bit about why that is? Well, this year, I think, has been a year unlike any other. A lot of people are not able to go about life the way they typically go about it.

People are stuck in their homes. A lot of people, for safety reasons, are just not able to get out. I think people have been especially open for a message of hope because in a time of great darkness and uncertainty, that's when the gospel shines the brightest. And you listeners, you, you've made that ministry possible in every way. So I just want to say to any of you that have seen the possibility of this, gotten that burden, and given anything at all this year, I just want to say from the bottom of my heart, thank you. That your gift and the faith that accompanied that gift made this possible and it multiplied the power of the gospel, the spread of the gospel in the hearts of people.

It made it accessible for people. And let me just say a special thank you to those of you who've joined our gospel partner team by Committee to Monthly Giving. Your generosity especially helps us to be able to plan to reach people with the gospel. And so I hope in the stories that we are able to share from time to time about people whose lives are transformed, you get a great deal of gratification knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. So we're very grateful for you and I want you to hear that. Happy Thanksgiving and know that one of the things we're thankful for here at the Summit Life Team is you. We really are thankful and as a token of thanks to those who give today, we have Pastor J.D. 's new book titled Searching for Christmas. Remember to ask for your two copies when you become a gospel partner or when you make a one-time donation of $25. And if you're searching for the perfect way to share Jesus with a neighbor or family member this season, consider our special offer of five copies for $50 or 10 copies for a gift of $100. Call us today at 866-335-5220.

That's 866-335-5220 or give online to jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Bidevich, so glad you joined us today. Join us Friday as Pastor J.D. Greer explains how to experience good days in the midst of bad days right here on Summit Life. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.