Marriage and the Gospel

Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Joining us here on Summit Life, the Bible teaching ministry of pastor, author and theologian J.D.

Greer. I'm your host, Molly Bitovitch. We've had another great week in our teaching series from the book of 1 Peter called I Am An Alien. And as always, if you've missed any of the previous messages, you can catch up for free at jdgreer.com. These resources are all thanks to the generosity of listeners just like you. But right now we're going to jump into what some might say is a controversial subject, the biblical roles of husbands and wives.

Wait, you mean we're supposed to be aliens in our homes too? Whether you're single, married, divorced or widowed, you'll want to keep listening. So grab your Bible and turn to 1 Peter. Pastor J.D. called this teaching Marriage and the Gospel. 1 Peter chapter 3, I want to read to you the first seven verses of this chapter as our text for this morning.

And so you listen here as I read to you, reading from the English Standard Version, the ESV. 1 Peter chapter 3 verse 1. Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won 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 that 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. Verse 5, 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 terrifying or frightening.

Verse 7, likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel since they are heirs with you of the grace of life so that your prayers may not be hindered. Oh my goodness. I told you a couple of weeks ago that I could not imagine a more unpopular topic than the one I was preaching on, submission to authority.

I lied. This would be a more unpopular topic. This passage really ought to have a wick coming out of it. It's like a powder keg the way this blows up. I will acknowledge you that it does not matter what I say about this passage this morning. I am going to get beaten like a pinata. I realize that. But don't hate me. Don't hate me. I'm just the mail carrier.

I'm not the mail writer. And I'm working my way through this book and I can't just skip this passage. In fact, that's one of the reasons why we work our way through books of the Bible because then it becomes less about what I think you need to hear and less about what you think you need to hear and more about what God thinks we need to hear. If we're committed to the teachings of the Bible, that means we go through them and we give weight to what God gives weight to. I'm going to do my best to explain to you what this means but really realize that if we're going to be a church that's built around the word and not around the personality of the pastor and not around the whims of the people, then this is the kind of stuff that we go through. All right?

So we're going to do it. People look at this passage and they think this is crazy. It is outdated. It is backwards.

We have moved way beyond this as a culture. Well, I would encourage you first just to start by thinking about what it means for Jesus to be Lord to you. For Jesus to be Lord means that we don't follow Him because on each issue He makes the most sense to us or because we immediately agree with what He says.

In fact, a lot of what He says rubs us the wrong way. We follow Jesus because He is Lord and because His Word is sovereign in our lives. I would very humbly suggest to you that if you are the kind of person that has to be convinced on each and every issue before you will follow what Jesus says, you don't understand what it means for Jesus to be Lord. Jesus didn't come to give like suggestions for living that you consider and you evaluate and then if you agree with Him and ratify it, then you'll put it into practice.

He didn't come to have a democracy where you vote and give referendums on what you like and what you don't like. For Jesus to be Lord means that you trust Him. You trust that because He's God and because He's Lord that He makes the rules and He's the Creator and we follow what He says regardless of how it strikes us at first. I've noticed that a lot of people feign love and respect for this book, the Bible. But you can see they don't really love and respect this book because of their attitude toward passages like this one. A lot of people will hear this and they will run out immediately and find somebody in some commentary who will explain away what Peter says here while Peter doesn't really mean what he says. Romans 1 calls that the suppression of truth.

Peter will call that twisting the Scriptures to your own destruction. And by the way, as far as our culture having moved beyond this, I would just encourage you just very soberly to think about the condition of marriages in our culture right now and then ask yourself, are we really in a place to say that we've moved beyond all this stuff? I mean, divorce rates are at an all-time high. More and more people just aren't getting married because they don't even feel like dealing with the whole process.

So a study this week that said that in our area here, 41 percent of the children that are born in this area are now born out of wedlock, mostly into single-parent homes. So I would just say that maybe we haven't moved beyond this as far as we think we have. And by the way, I'll just say this, for a lot of us that are married, it seems that when I get familiar with marriages, even ones in our church, we've got a lot of situations where people are living together as roommates and they've learned how to like forge the peace in the house, but they're living two separate lives, going two separate directions.

It's not that beauty and that oneness that you anticipated when you were dating and getting engaged and thought about being married. So again, I would just suggest to you that maybe we not brush this off so quickly as if we had matured past it and we're all so blissfully happy in our marriages and so was our culture. You say, well, yeah, but this passage is going backwards. It's going back into old chauvinistic patriarchy.

No. Most of you have never really seen this lived out in the way I'm going to explain it to you, which is how I think Peter meant it. In fact, it reminds me of what G.K. Chesterton, the famous British philosopher theologian said at the end of the 19th century. He said, the Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting.

It has been found difficult and left untried. That's what he says. I think that probably would apply to what we're talking about right here. So I would just say to you, at least hear me out.

Hear me out with an open heart and think about the fact that this sounds sacrilegious for me to say it, but think about the fact that maybe, if you're a big skeptic, maybe just maybe God's ways are better than your ways after all. Okay? First Peter chapter three, verse one. First Peter chapter three, verse one. Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands.

All right? So let's start with that word likewise. What does the word likewise mean?

Well, likewise means in the same way. If you remember, Peter's been talking about various relationships and earthly institutions that God has set up on earth. Things like, remember, government.

Things like authority structures. And what Peter explained to us in chapter two was that God has a couple of purposes for those. One of his purposes is to reveal himself. He reveals himself in the created order, shows us dimensions of him. Our earthly relationships become tangible demonstrations of parts of his character. His other purpose was to keep order on the earth. Likewise, in the same way, marriage is an earthly institution that God has set up to reveal himself and to provide stability.

For both of those reasons, Peter says, God gave the man a leadership role to play in the home. This has, listen, nothing to do with women being inferior. There is no hint of that in this passage.

In fact, it's downright denied. Peter says to the husbands, verse seven, your wives are heirs with you of the grace of life. The promises and the privileges of salvation are equal, which means that men and women are essentially equal. When God talks about the creation of the male and female in Genesis 127, it says he created them both in the image of God, male and female. There were parts of the image of God that were displayed in the man. There were some parts that were displayed in the woman, but they were both made in the image of God, which makes them equal in essence.

Right? So there is equality in essence. There is not the slightest hint of inferiority because we have a common creation, the image of God, and a common redemption, salvation through Jesus Christ.

You say, well, what about that line about them being the weaker vessel? Doesn't that imply inferiority? No, that's not what that means. I'm going to show you that here in a minute. Okay, you say, well, yeah, but if the husband is given the leadership role, that implies that he is superior.

No. As I pointed out to you before, even in the Trinity there is submission. The Trinity is the idea, the doctrine that the Bible teaches, that there's one God, only one God, but he exists eternally in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And Jesus' son made very clear that he was submitted to God the Father. So what you've got is you've got Jesus who is fully God, right? He's equal with God, but he has submitted himself to the Father in the role that he plays in the Trinity. So you can't say that submission implies inequality because Jesus is fully God and submitted to the Father.

Equal in essence, different in role. Same thing in marriage. God ordained marriage to reveal himself.

Men and women do that through different ways. And when you mess with that, you're messing with how God intended for us to learn some things about himself. So don't say submission makes you inferior because that would be what we would call a Christological heresy. You'd be saying that Jesus is inferior to the Father by virtue of the fact that he's submissive to the Father, which would mean you were saying that Jesus is less than God and Jesus can't be less than God because Jesus is fully God because the Trinity is one God, three persons.

So it's more than just like, you know, a difference of opinion. We're talking about the very nature of God here. God is fully God in all the persons, not three different gods. It's one God.

Equal in essence, different in roles. You're listening to Summit Life with J.D. Greer. As we take a brief pause from today's teaching, I want to share with you about a fantastic resource that's available to you free of charge each day. It's our daily email devotional, and it's a great way to develop a daily habit of keeping yourself grounded in the Word of God. These devotionals even follow along with the current teaching series here on Summit Life, and they include a scripture reading, a devotional thought, and a prayer prompt to help you start your day on the right foot.

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Greer here on Summit Life. There's also a practical dimension to this. I mentioned it's how God keeps order. It's like when two cars are merging into one lane.

You got to know who has the right of way, or you're going to have an accident. There is a pattern that God set so that men and women could live together in peace and harmony. That doesn't mean, by the way, that women are not to lead in the workplace or the government or society. That's not what this passage is talking about. It doesn't say women be subject to men.

His only arena that he's talking about here is the home. So I talk with girls and they're like, well, I don't really trust men. I don't either. You only need to trust one, your husband. That's it. You're like, you don't trust men? Good. You understand the doctrine of total depravity.

I get that. I don't trust men either. It's only one that he's talking about, and that is your husband. You say, well, the guy that I'm married to doesn't deserve my submission.

That's not the point. Jesus does. It's not about what your husband deserves. It's about what Jesus commands. Your husband might not deserve your submission, but Jesus does. A few weeks ago, if you remember, I explained to you how Peter talked about our lives being like spiritual sacrifices that we offer to Jesus. Your submission to your husband is like a sacrifice that you offer to Jesus. Your husband may not be worthy of it, but Jesus most certainly is, and you were saying, Jesus, this is in response to you, to your command and what you're worthy of.

Now, before we go any further in this, let's take a look at the instruction that Peter gives to the husbands, because you've got to put these together to make the whole thing make sense. 1 Peter 3.7, give honor to the wife as to the weaker vessel. All right, first, there's that difficult phrase, weaker. This is not weaker in terms of intelligence or even capacities for leadership or wisdom.

Commentators say that it means three different things, okay? Number one, first of all, wives are usually, literally, physically weaker. The word vessel that he attaches weaker to is a word that's used all throughout the Bible and it's almost always a reference to the human body. Generally speaking, most husbands can overpower their wives, generally speaking. I've seen a few of you girls that could give your husbands a run for your money, but generally speaking, men are physically more powerful than their wives, so that would be the first thing that he means there. Number two, they are weaker in position of authority, right?

I mean, he's just spent six verses explaining that wives should be subject to their husband, so positionally they are weaker, so that's another reference that he has. Thirdly, it could mean, could, weaker in terms of the way that women are wired emotionally. Women are, generally speaking, more sensitive and more intuitive than men are.

I don't really feel like there's a whole lot of disagreement about this. I've heard it described in a number of different ways. One is that men are like waffles. You ever heard of this analogy? Waffles, because waffles, you've got various compartments and you can pour syrup in one compartment and it won't get over in another compartment and that's how guys are, because they've got something going on in one part of their life and it doesn't affect the other parts of their lives. They just kind of section it off, whereas women, in contrast, are more like spaghetti, so that on this part of the plate actually connects the way we hear this part of the plate and nothing is ever going on in isolation.

Here's an example. My wife and I, if I'm having a bad day, if Veronica and I aren't getting along, I think, well, let's just have sex and forget about it. Let's just start over. Sex is like the reset button. It's like taking a hot shower after a long day.

You just kind of, you know, wash all the stress off of you and the difficulty. That's just how most guys work. Unfortunately, that's not how she works. For her, sex is like the topping on a Sunday. There has to be a lot of sweetness under it building up to it. Guys, that is a great analogy, okay? You've got to write that down and think about it.

It's got to be a lot of sweetness building up to it all day for it to be the right topping on that Sunday. I've shown you this before, but this is how, you ever see, remember this? This is the control panel for men and women. Guys have one switch.

Right? We all know what that is. And then women, it's got, I don't even know what these dials do. I just know that sometimes when I turn them, things turn on. It's like the remote control to my TV.

I just press buttons until something comes on. I don't know. Right? So the flip side, the flip side of that, though, is that women are usually able to intuit and to feel things that guys are often blind to. Any guy that I've ever talked to who is honest about his marriage says that, yes, my wife is able to pick up on things, nuances, pick up on relational clues that I'm usually completely oblivious to. So if that is the case, think of this word weaker almost in terms of how you'd say the difference between a crowbar and a thermometer.

Right? I mean, a crowbar is the kind of thing you pry a door open with. You don't want to take a thermometer and try to pry a door open because it'll break.

It's weaker in that sense. But the thermometer's also able to pick up some nuances that the crowbar is not really attuned to. You can't stick a crowbar in your mouth or your rear end and figure out what your temperature is. But a thermometer, on the other hand, that's the kind of thing that picks up those kinds of temperature differences or the difference between a thermos and a wine glass. A thermos, you know, you throw it in the back of your pickup truck.

It's got old stale coffee in it and it's fine. But a wine glass is the kind of thing you keep the finest of beverages in. Hebrew scholars say that you can even see this in how God describes the original creation of men and women. There are two different words that are used in Hebrew to describe how men and women are created. When God created the man, the Hebrew word that he used was bara, bara. I know that all the Hebrew words I say all sound like, you know, like I put this strange intonation with them.

That's because Hebrew is a very guttural language. Bara. And that just sounds like what God did with the man. It's bara. It's just like spit and dirt and God makes the man. That's what the implication is. But when he gets around to talking about the creation of a woman, he uses a Hebrew word that means crafted or designed.

He fashioned her. I like to think of it like the difference between a Jeep and a Ferrari. Right? A Jeep, you know, you take it off-road, you beat it up, you get it dirty.

Who cares? You kind of like it that way. You don't want to get into your Jeep and have it smell like the perfume counter at Nordstrom's. You like it to have a certain rugged quality. Right?

Ferraris though, you don't take that off-roading. It's well-crafted. It's got nice lines. You just want to look at it. That's what you do.

That's reality, right? Girls are designed differently than guys. If a girl wears skin-tight pants, that's a problem for most guys. If I wore skinny jeans up here, most of you girls would either burst out laughing or throw up.

And probably a combination of the two. Wearing skinny jeans is wrong for both guys and girls but for entirely different reasons. For girls it's wrong because it's tempting.

For guys it's wrong because it's nauseating. Right? Right? So he says weaker vessel. Think of it in those terms. Weaker in terms of physical, actual physical characteristics. Weaker in terms of position, the first six verses.

And perhaps he means weaker in terms of the emotional sensitivity that she's designed with. So he says to the husband, as the weaker vessel, you must honor her. Honor here, by the way, means prefer her.

It's a different word for honor than that which he used in chapter two when he was talking about the government authorities. In Greek, this word honor means prioritizing her, to prefer her, to use husbands. Listen, to use your position of strength, any position of authority that you do have to serve her, not yourself, like Christ did for you. Both of you are to preach the gospel to the world in how you relate to each other. The wife by how she submits, the husband by how he serves. Now, let's put all that together and let me show you what this means and then I'm going to give you a few examples. And then I'm going to show you a couple other verses that he gives and then I'm going to bring up the varsity squad here on the stage. My wife is going to come up and she's going to do a little question and answer because I feel like it would probably be better coming from her perspective on some of this stuff than not.

So that's what's coming here toward the end. So let me put this together for you a little bit though. Men, you should never lead independent of your wife. Your leadership is not something that is independent of your wife. You weren't given this role because you make better decisions. For many of you men, you don't make better decisions. Some of your wives are better with money.

You get an unexpected bonus and you start thinking immediately of buying a couple of new pieces to add to your deer head collection. And she's like, you know, we probably ought to be saving for this or for that and she is a gift of God to you because she sees certain things better than you do. She's a gift of God to save you from your own stupidity and if you don't listen to her and consult with her, you're a fool.

I talk to my wife about everything that we are doing in our family. It is rare that we are not able to talk and to pray and able to come to consensus. And by the way, if not, if we can't come to consensus on things, almost every time I will postpone the decision while we pray about it and we keep talking it out until we come to consensus. I can count to you the number of times, and I'll get to this in a minute, when I've actually had to say, no, this is what we've got to do. By the way, the husband is never told to demand submission from his wife.

Never. The wife may be told to submit, but the husband is never told to demand it. You look at every passage in the New Testament that talks about this, it's always something to the wife, not to the man. So in other words, it's never his to demand from her, it is hers that she gives to him. Men, you are to use your position of authority to serve her, not yourself. When we can't come to an agreement, she and I, I have to decide, is this a situation where I really have to think of the best interest of the family and make a decision that she disagrees with?

If it's not in the best interest of the family, I am to honor her and serve her and prefer her and to prioritize her every single time. Let me give you a few examples, okay? Because I don't want you to think of this all up here, let's get it down into the nitty gritty. It's date night, and we can't decide where to go to eat. She wants to go Italian, because she always wants to go Italian.

And I want red meat, I want steak, okay? Who wins? Easy. She wins. She wins. Honor her, prefer her means that she wins.

Picking colors and furniture out in our house. Who wins? She wins. Because I honor her and I prefer her.

I just say, please don't let every room in the house be pink because that would be harmful to me and my son. But other than that, she gets to make the call, okay? You got an extra $300 in your budget one month and she wants a new dress and you want golf clubs and you can't get both.

What do you do, men? Easy. Easy. That's an easy one. You honor her, you prefer her, you serve her.

That's right. What a privilege to outdo one another in showing honor. You just heard the first half of Pastor J.D. 's teaching titled Marriage and the Gospel.

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That's 866-335-5220. Or visit us online at jdgrier.com. While you're on the website, be sure to sign up for our email list to get ministry updates and blog posts from Pastor J.D. delivered straight to your inbox. It's a great way to stay connected with Summit Life throughout your week. Sign up when you go to jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch, inviting you to join us next week when we'll continue learning how the gospel transforms our view of marriage. Grab your spouse and listen together next time, here on Summit Life with J.D. Greer.