Home first January 30, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : Theology , trackbackHusband and wife form the most fundamental and foundational community in any culture, a community that is meant by God to reflect and display his own loving and self-giving life within the unity of the Trinity. If the picture of a healthy marriage is about as close as humans can get to a picture of the life of God then we should not be surprised that one of the supreme marks of our rebellion against God, and of our resulting alienation from him, is the difficulty that we all experience in being the kinds of husbands and wives who make marriage a blessing and joy for our partners.
Unlike Paul’s marriage advice, the advice of a bachelor who considered the single life preferable for serious Christians, Peter writes as one who knew both the joys and difficulties of marriage. In the gospels, the first time we read of Jesus visiting Peter’s home, we learn that Peter’s mother-in-law lived with them (Mark 1:30). Paul would speak of Peter taking his wife with him on his travels (1 Corinthians 9:5). So Peter understood from the inside out the challenges of being on mission with a wife and family.
At first, his words sound strange and even disquieting to modern ears: the language of submission, particularly of wives submitting to their husbands, and the description of a woman as “the weaker vessel,” sound terribly outdated, prejudicial and even unjust. However, if we understand Peter’s cultural setting, we will realize he is actually speaking words that are moderate and gracious, intended to liberate, not enslave. The women and men of his day would have been astonished at his words, because he affirms the rights and worth of women in a way that no one outside the church would have thought to do in the first century.
Women in the Roman Empire were owned by their husbands, just as children were owned by their fathers and slaves by their masters. The Roman husband had the right to do with his wife as he wished. He was empowered by Roman law to be, literally, the potentate of his home. So for a woman who had become a Christian to oppose her pagan husband in the name of her newfound freedom in Christ was to sign her own death warrant, to bring Christianity into even greater disrepute, and to subject other Christians to even greater persecution than they were already facing under Nero. And, more importantly, it was to fail to understand how spiritual power really works within God’s kingdom.
As for the woman being “the weaker vessel,” this was simply an undisputed truism in cultures that evaluated strength physically, and it was the very reason that women were less valued than men. Peter turns this on its head by calling on Christian husbands to honor their wives as weaker vessels, for the crucial reason that – unlike the surrounding culture where women had no inheritance rights, except through marriage, and then it was her husband who inherited – in God’s family, men and women are heirs together of the grace of life (3:7).
The counter-cultural, even subversive, nature of the gospel is too easily missed by those of us who live in societies whose views of justice were shaped by the biblical view of things, cultures that stood in stark contrast to the surrounding cultures in the value that they placed on those whom the world did not value, and for the dignity and honor that they demanded be shown to all people within the household of God, whether Jew or Gentile, male or female, rich or poor, slave or free.
These are as radical today as when Peter first wrote them, and see how understanding and embracing what he is writing here would still help Christians on mission turn our little worlds upside down, not to mention experience far greater joy in our marriages.
Don’t focus on being in charge but on serving (3:1).
Don’t focus on how you look but on who you are (3:2-6).
Don’t focus on differences but on shared humanity (3:7a).
Don’t focus on praying to live but on living to pray (3:7b).
What at first may sound archaic, a word from the ancient past, becomes a fresh and challenging word to us when we read it in context and understand that Peter is calling us to live countercultural lives for the sake of the mission God has entrusted to each of us: the mission of reclaiming the world for him, beginning with the most basic social unit in every culture, the family. Our personal mission field always begins at home, and we neglect it to our peril and put at risk our own effectiveness every in every other circle of relationship. To both men and women the word is clear: “let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart and the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight in very precious” (3:4).
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