The Gospel-Shaped Wife: 1 Peter 3:1-6

The gospel effects every part of life. There is nothing else that so thoroughly effects everything about us. Peter spends the first chapter laying out our hope in Christ that is sealed and guarded for us, and in the next few chapters he begins revealing how this hope works its’ way out to every part of our lives. This includes our submission to civil authorities, our life in the workplace, and, now, he turns his attention to marriage, the deepest of all human commitments; this, too, is impacted by faith in the gospel.

The responsibility of wives in the gospel

Peter does not sugar coat or qualify his instruction to wives here. He comes out with it plainly in 3:1, ‘you wives, be submissive to your own husbands.’ Certainly Peter could have qualified this instruction with ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ surrounding safety and the Lord’s authority over her life as first priority, but he does not go there. It is so easy for us to see commands like this and look for the loopholes and escape hatches, but we must recognize our hearts in that. We are seeking to see how close we can come to sin without creeping over the line and that is due to hearts that are in the wrong place; looking for fleshly preservation over God-honoring and radical gospel living. The fact is, if Peter is so plain with the instruction, we should read it exactly that way. The explicit command for and result of a woman living in the hope of the gospel is submission to her husband. ‘Wives, be submissive to your own husbands.’

For what it’s worth, this has always been a countercultural and potentially inflammatory command. We might be tempted to think that life was just different back when Peter wrote these words. That submissive wives were the cultural norm and so this type of command was more acceptable to his audience. We like to think that our age is ‘unique’ and ‘progressive.’ And, while there are certainly things that are unique about our culture, and we have seen progress in other ways, the call for submission among wives is not to be touched by those things. This has never been natural, whether in our day or in Peter’s.

In fact, we could go back even further and find out just how long this command has been necessary. Genesis 3 offers us a window into the very beginning of time. As we look through it, we see that the difficulty of a wife’s submission to her husband is not only as old as Peter’s day, it is as old as sin itself. Genesis 3:16 is a part of God’s pronouncement of the effects that came after sin entered the world. Among the things mentioned, the result of the curse on the woman is this, ‘Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.’ To be clear, the husband’s role to rule over his wife is not the consequence of the fall, that was God’s design. But her response to that rule is what sin affected. Her sinful proclivity from that day forward would be to desire to rule instead of her husband, to usurp his authority. And this is all the way back in the beginning.

By the time we get to the first century AD, nothing has changed. This sin tendency is still at work and we need to look no further than Peter’s writing here. The simple reality of this writing is clear evidence that Genesis 3 has stood as the sin tendency from the beginning of time. So we should not be deceived into thinking that Peter’s command is a new problem any more than we should think that it is an antiquated one.

The reason for submission

Certainly, that history does not make the command any easier to swallow, at least at times. This is a hard command to obey. A sin tendency is something we tend to fall into because it scratches an itch that we have; it produces a result that we like. No one sins out of obligation. We all sin because we are hoping to get something desirable out of it. So, the words pronounced about Eve and every wife who would come after her in Genesis 3 do not put a spell over her, compelling her to do something she does not want to do. A wife is compelled to sin in this area because it produces a more desirable fleshly result than submission.

The simple reality is that a wife is called by the gospel to live by faith in a remarkable way; to be marked by faith so deeply that she displays that faith in the way she submits to her husband. The gospel affects her life in this profound way. And when she does not submit to her husband, it is evidence of fleshly comfort seeking that does not operate by faith in the Lord or in her husband. Just as we are called to walk by faith and not by sight, so a wife submits to her husband by faith. Peter even alludes to the idea that submission in this way is fearful and frightening in verse six. That’s because it can be like walking with someone guiding you while you are wearing a blindfold. That’s not easy.

It is so much easier to walk by sight, to be weighed and measured by outward things. To control the external. This has been the theme of 1 Peter up to this point; we are to place our hope in the Lord to such an extent that it translates to submission to human institutions and not to live for what is external. That’s why Peter commands wives, in verses 3-4, to, ‘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.’ The very natural tendency for a wife would be to focus on the external, just as it would for someone to fight for their worldly rights before governments (2:13) and in the workplace (2:18).

To be sure, there is nothing inherently wrong with any of the external adornments listed in 3:3 by themselves. Some have totally inverted the meaning of this text by reducing to a command to reject the consideration of outward appearance, interpreting it as a command to avoid makeup and jewelry. The irony, however, is that by doing this, they become guilty of the very same underlying sin Peter is warning against; total focus on outward appearance. But for people affected in every area of life in the gospel, the change begins in the heart and moves on to affect us in the way we live on the outside.

The rewards of submission

Just as we saw that submission to other human institutions is not without effect, Peter says that a wives submission is doing something as well. First, he says in 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.’ A wives submission to her husband, out of hope in the Lord, is exemplified in the life of Sarah with her husband Abraham. Though it was not always easy, externally, to submit to Abraham, Sarah’s obedience to the Lord in this area causes Peter to call her holy. The fruit of a wives submission to her husband is holiness.

And that’s not all, Peter says something very important in the beginning of these verses too. He calls on wives to, ‘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.’ The submissiveness of a wife to her husband, as she is hoping in Christ, actually has the ability to cause a husband to be ‘won without a word’ to follow Christ. How many men, I wonder will be in glory because of the godly example of their wife? How much credit do men who follow the Lord owe to their wife’s submission as the means that drives their sanctification? We may never know, but God’s word says it is at work.

Questions for Personal Application and Reflection

1.      Read Proverbs 31:10-13. How do these verses describe the excellent wife? What does 31:25 say adorns her? Compare and contrast this to the adornment in 1 Peter 3:3-5. How does this encourage a young lady to be pursuing womanhood? How does this encourage young men in what they look for in a wife? Read 1 Peter 3:7. How should husbands think about passages like these?

2.      From your memory of Abraham’s life, why do you think Peter chose Sarah as an example of godly submission. How does Sarah’s submission to Abraham encourage the type of submission a wife ought to have to her husband in the Lord?

3.      How can we build up and encourage the women of our church to be adorned in holiness through the submission Peter describes in this passage? How can we prepare our children according to this?