God has a perfect plan for marriage.
So why is our culture and even the church so confused about this God-ordained relationship? Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg considers the root cause behind the confusion and he explores the Apostle Peter's instructions concerning the privileges and obligations facing Christian husbands. I invite you to take your Bibles and we'll turn together to 1 Peter chapter 3. And as we continue our studies in this most practical of letters, giving instruction for scattered believers in Peter's day and for the generations that would follow, including our own, we've come to the seventh verse of the third chapter, which reads as follows, Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.
That's the focus of our study now, and before we come to it, let us bow before God and seek his help in prayer. Our God and Father, we magnify you for the word that you have given us. We thank you this morning for the Scriptures, which are able to make us wise unto salvation, which contain all that we need for correction and for reproof, for training in righteousness. We thank you that you are teaching us what it means as a church family to become a people of the Book, that we might be those who bow underneath its instruction and delight to fulfill the obligations with which it confronts us. And so we pray for your help, both to speak and to listen, that we might be different as a result of these moments spent now gathered under the tutelage of the Holy Spirit by the Word of Christ. For it's in the lovely name of Jesus we ask it.
Amen. Well, last Sunday morning we dealt with God's instruction as it comes to us by the Spirit through Peter for being a wife as per God's pattern. And this morning, in the seventh verse, now we come to the instruction concerning what it means to be a Christian husband. And as you've been reading this, as I'm sure you have, you will doubtless have been struck by the intense practicality of this, reminding us that if our Christianity doesn't work at home, our Christianity doesn't work at all. It's very obvious that Peter is not providing us here with a manual on arm's-length religion. There's no sense in which he is simply pontificating about certain subjects, but rather he is giving to us a very clear handbook on practical Christianity. And as we've been going through these chapters, we've been discovering that the doctrinal indicatives that he lays down, he lays down as foundations for the moral imperatives which follow. Or, if you like, what we know has got to show. That's what he's saying.
If you know it, show it. And you'll know that you know it if you display it in your life and in your experience. And that, not least of all, in this whole arena of submission first to civil jurisdiction, then within the structure of our daily routine of employment, and then within the fabric of our homes, and then, as he's going to go on to show, within the interpersonal relationships of the church family as well. We have been realizing that we come to these verses not in a vacuum but in an environment of corruption in our society. By that I simply mean that we live in a society that has corrupted the clear instruction of God's Word and has turned its back on the Maker's instructions. By and large, men and women in our Western cultures especially have very little time for God's instruction concerning the affairs of family life. Although they may go through the routine of marriage, although they may want very badly to be consecrated in a church, it is apparent that the vows that are taken and the words that are spoken and the Scriptures that are read are somehow a kind of anachronism, because it makes them feel a little better about things.
Or, perhaps, deep in their hearts they long that these things might be so, and somewhere between desire and actuality there is a great chasm fixed. Consequently, having closed, as it were, God's instructions, mankind scrambles desperately to fill the void. Well, we're right where Paul said we would be if you turn to 2 Timothy chapter 3. As Paul writes, concerning the days that will be as it approaches the return of Jesus Christ, he says in 2 Timothy 3, 1, But get a hold of this.
There will be terrible times in the last days. And what will they be marked by? Well, he says, people will be lovers of themselves, philautos. They will be those who are focused on who they are and what they want to be, and they'll love themselves, and they'll love people who help them to love themselves, and they'll love books on self-esteem, and they'll love all of this stuff. They'll just be in love with loving themselves.
He says that'll be part of it. They'll love money. They'll be boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love—the word there, astorgos.
It means simply without natural affection. And as you go on and read through that section, you realize that whatever else is true, this whole difficulty in the realm of humanity, in grappling with what it means either to be a husband or a wife, a mom or a dad, a child, a brother or a sister, is going to be severely interfered with. So says Paul. And this will be a cyclical thing as the time of the approach of Jesus Christ draws nearer. And the intense, vehement action against the truth of God's Word, we can only assume will in fact get greater. Now, that would be bad enough if we were living in a corrupted society that had turned its back on the Maker's instructions, but we as a church—and I mean the church universal—were gathered together under the headship of our commanding officer, Jesus Christ, and we were saying, Lord Jesus, we own your right to every control over us.
We own your Word as an authoritative statement to guidance. If that were the condition in the church, then we would have cause for great encouragement. But I want to suggest to you this morning that our corrupted society is more than matched by a confused church.
The society's corrupted, and the church is confused. The root of this may be found by turning back to Genesis chapter 3. Genesis 3, just for a moment. And here, in the event of the fall of man, you will notice that the approach of the devil to Eve is the same approach as being taken today to the church concerning the authoritative instruction of God in every area of life, and supremely this morning, under our consideration, in the whole matter of family life.
Genesis 3 verse 1. Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. Never forget that the devil is created. He's not eternal with God. He is a created being. And he, the devil, the serpent, said to the woman— now, notice what he said—"Did God really say, You must not eat from any tree in the garden?"
Now, hold it there for just a minute. The devil's approach is to come to Eve in the garden and call in question whether God really said what he said. And that is exactly his approach today to the minds of men and women who are seeking to walk, as it were, in communion with God in the cool of the day. Those who are redeemed and are in the church, the devil comes to us to say, Did God really say 1 Peter 3 verses 1–7? Did God really say Ephesians 5, 20 and following? And he wants to get us uncertain about the authority and the authenticity of God's proclamation to us. And then he goes on to do just as he did in the garden of Eden. The woman said to the serpent, We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, we know he said it, You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, you must not touch it, or you will die. Now, what does he say?
You will not surely die. That's his second approach. Did he say it?
Yes, he said it. Then let me tell you, he didn't mean what he said. And the approach of the evil one to the church in our generation is just that. That's why the church is confused. The evil one comes to ask the believer, Do you think God really said that about marriage? Do you think that with society going whole-scale in this direction, that God really meant for you to be this kind of couple? Do you think that when all of humanity says this, that God really wants you to be that kind of wife? Did he really say that?
And if we're able to say, Yes, he said it, then he comes a second time to say, But that's not what he meant! Now, if you doubt me, loved ones, then you just pick up Christian periodicals in our day. And from the pens of those whom we might have expected to know better, we read all this unbelievable confusion concerning man and woman, concerning husband and wife, concerning God and authority and his church. And the real issue, dear ones, is not simply about role relationships. The real fundamental issue is about the authority of this book. This is what is being eroded. This is the devil's strategy.
If he can get the church soft in this area, then presumably he will be able to get it soft in this area. And within a generation, those who once professed to believe the Bible have become those who by gradual degrees have drifted like pilgrim into By-Path Meadow, hoping to get back on the road at some other point, and yet a forlorn idea it really is. Now, if that is true—and you must examine the Scriptures yourself, as did the Bereans in Acts 17—you must examine the Scriptures every day to see if the things are true. Because the real issue this morning is not, Did you hear what Alistair said? The real issue this morning is, Did you hear what God's Word said? And we need to know our Bible so we can check whether what I say is actually what this says. That's your part.
You get to do that. You're not supposed to come here and take dollops full on a big spoon and walk out the door. You're coming here, you say, I'm gonna get into this book myself, I'm gonna read 1 Peter 3.7, I'm gonna examine these things every day. The pronouncements that the church is making are confused, and the practice of the church is equally confused. The abandonment of family responsibilities, the abandonment of marriage vows is at a rate not substantially different from the secular culture around us. I mean, we might assume that if we were all committed unreservedly to Jesus Christ and to obeying his Word, that there would be a huge difference in the abandonment of family responsibilities within the church and out with the church. But is there?
No! It's minimal. Why is it minimal?
It's minimal because of the impact of a corrupted society and because of the gradual acceptance of confusion within the ranks of the church. Now, all of that by way of introduction, as we come this morning to God's instruction for the husband. And the first thing to notice here, back in 1 Peter 3.7, is that the relationships to which Peter refers are reciprocal relationships. In other words, there is a reciprocal obligation.
All the way through you find this. If slaves are to be this way towards their masters, masters have a responsibility to be a certain way towards their slaves. If children are to be this way towards their parents, parents are to make sure that they do not provoke their children to wrath. There is a reciprocal obligation. And there is reciprocal obligation within the husband-wife relationship. And that is to what Peter is referring now.
There is no suggestion of all the privileges accruing to the husband and all the obligations falling to the wife. The fact that that was the case in Roman society as it was made Peter's words revolutionary in their impact. And you can travel places in the world today where it's not unusual to see the man riding on a donkey and his wife slaving her way through the desert beside him. Like the guy who was stopped in the desert, and the chap asked him, he said, Manuel, how come your wife is walking?
And he said, "'Cause she ain't got no donkey." And that whole approach to things is baptized into orthodoxy in many areas of life. And in Western culture, there are many of us who feel very much the same way. Somehow we have a mistaken notion that all the obligations are the wives, and all the privileges are the husbands.
Peter explodes that mythology, and he tackles it head on. I think that kind of approach, the sort of male chauvinist pig approach to life, has so permeated the thinking of many that it's not unsurprising to be on the receiving end of a backlash. As I was driving yesterday and thinking about this message, I came up behind a car, I saw a bumper sticker, and it said on the bumper sticker a husband is living proof that a woman can take a joke. And I said, There we go.
That's the backlash. Notice verse 7, husbands in the same way. Same phrase that comes—it's one word in Greek, homoios—you find in the first verse, wives, homoios, be submissive to your husbands. And what Peter was saying to the wives was, in the same way as Jesus Christ has set a submissive example for us, so it is the example of Jesus that wives ought to look to to be this kind of wife. And then he uses the exact same phrase, and he says, Okay, husbands, in the same way, homoios, the same pattern is to be your pattern as you fulfill the obligations that God has given you.
Now, what are they? Well, he says, Be considerate as you live with your wives. What does this mean? Be considerate as you live with your wives. Is he issuing a reminder to husbands simply to be courteous, to stand up when his wife enters the room, to hold the door of the chariot or whatever it was, to carry the grocery bags from the markets there? No. Such actions are vital and necessary, but it would seem a triviality if that was what Peter was referring to, having given such far-reaching instruction to the wives. Do you think he's said all of these things to the wives, and then he turns to the husbands and he says, Oh, by the way, open the car door for your wife, would you?
No. It's gotta mean something more than that. And this is where the NIV—I don't think—helps us a great deal in its translation. Because in the phrase, Be considerate with your wives, it seeks to explain the Greek, which actually reads, literally, husbands likewise dwelling together according to knowledge.
That's what it says. Husbands likewise dwelling together according to knowledge. So the NIV said, Be considerate as you live with your wives.
You say, Well, how do you get to that? Well, I can explain, but that's a whole Sunday school class on its own. Just notice this, that consequently the King James Version translates it, Likewise ye husbands dwell with them according to knowledge. Phillips, seeking to paraphrase it, says, Similarly, you husbands should try to understand the wives you live with. But even there, I don't think he's got it.
Well, what do you think it is? Well, look at 1 Peter, the first chapter, and verse 14 for just a moment. 1 Peter 1 14.
Peter has been explaining this whole wonder of salvation, and he comes to application in the thirteenth verse, and he says, Now therefore, in light of these doctrinal indicative, here are some of the moral-ethical imperatives. Now you should live in a certain way. Prepare your minds for action.
Be self-controlled. Set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. Now notice verse 14. As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance.
Okay? So as non-Christians, we lived in ignorance. We were not simply ignorant of the way of salvation, but we were ignorant of the purposes of God for the way that life should be lived.
Now all that has changed. So the Christian husband discovers that salvation for him must impact his marital relationship with his wife. He no longer lives in ignorance. He is now to live according to knowledge—the knowledge which has become his as a result of the work of redemption within his life. Before, as a pagan, he lived in the realm of pagan lust.
But now he lives in the realm of Christian love. Before, he viewed marriage from a secular perspective, but now he views marriage according to the knowledge which God has given in and through his Word in the person of his Son. Therefore, as a new believer in Christ, his relationship with his wife is to be put on a completely different plane from whatever it was before. He is to live, dwell with that lady, according to knowledge.
Well, what kind of knowledge? Well, certainly these things, that husbands are to live with their wives in the knowledge, first of all, of the wonderful provision that God has made for us in marriage. He also comes in the knowledge of the clear parameters that God has set for marriage to be lived the way God intended it to be. So the Christian husband is different from his non-Christian golfing buddies. He doesn't laugh at the same jokes. He doesn't read the same literature.
Why? Because he is committed to dwelling with that woman, katanosin, according to the knowledge that he cannot step out with the parameters that God has created for that marriage bond and still enjoy the privileges God intended. Thirdly, in the knowledge of the unique purpose for which God has ordained husband and wife. Fourthly, in the knowledge of what it will mean for his wife to live out the principles of 1 Peter 3 verses 1–6. Dwell with your wives in light of what I've just said, says Peter. You're living with a lady who is seeking to fulfill verses 1–6.
You need to understand the implications of that. And fifthly, in the knowledge of what his wife is by nature and what she is by grace. That comes in the phrase, by nature she is the weaker partner, by grace she is a joint heir. And to that will come in a moment.
But notice the next phrase with me, will you? Husbands in the same way, dwell with your wives according to knowledge—notice this—and treat them with respect. Again, I think the authorized version is better here in that it uses the word honor. The word honor has more majesty to it, is a richer word. For example, we may respect the thirty-five mile an hour signs along the road, but we don't get down and plant flowers around them or salute every time we pass. We may respect the decision of the referee on the basketball court, but we don't bow down and worship him at the end of the game.
So there is a distinction in some measure, even in our English usage, between respect and honor. Listening to Alistair Begg on Truth for Life with the message he's titled, Being a Husband God's Way, we'll hear more on Monday. This is an exciting time of year for so many of us as we start to see Christmas lights and decorations appearing in yards and store displays as we get ready for the Advent season. Maybe you're already thinking about Christmas gift-giving. Let me encourage you to browse the selections available from us at Truth for Life. Go to truthforlife.org slash gifts. You'll find meaningful gifts for all ages, including several options for children. For example, you can purchase a bundle of three books that will teach preschoolers how to be like Jesus. Or there's a family devotional geared towards school-aged children that looks at the parables Jesus told. There's also a pocket-sized booklet that teaches young children the story of God's plan of salvation. Again, you'll find these items and more at truthforlife.org slash gifts, and they're all available at our cost.
And in the US, shipping is free. If you'd like to add a donation to your purchase, we will say thank you by offering you a copy of Alistair's new Advent devotional titled Let Earth Receive Her King. At such a busy time of year, this is a book that will help you keep your focus where it ought to be on Christ. Ask for Let Earth Receive Her King today when you donate to Truth for Life. You can give online at truthforlife.org slash donate or call us at 888-588-7884. And if you'd like extra copies of the book Let Earth Receive Her King for your church or to give as gifts, the books are available for purchase at our cost of only $6. You'll find them while supplies last in our online store at truthforlife.org slash store. Thanks for studying with us this week. Hope you have a great weekend and are able to worship with your local church family. On Monday, we'll find out how a husband ought to lovingly lead his wife and family. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.
