Likewise, Husbands
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.
1 Peter 3:7
As I mentioned last week, in light of that parallel passage in Ephesians 5—just as wives do not have the right to withhold from their husband that submission that is ultimately rendered to Christ on the grounds that he is not acting like Christ, so in the same way, neither do husbands have the right to withhold from their wives that love that is ultimately a picture of Christ’s love for the church. Husbands: You have to and you get to. You have no greater honor in earthly relations.
Doctrine. Since wives are co-heirs in the kingdom, husbands must lead patiently or have their access to the King restricted.
(i.) The imperative to husbands
(ii.) The implication about husbands
(iii.) The rationale for husbands
(iv.) The warning to husbands
The Imperative to Husbands
Note the similarity and dissimilarity in the command to husbands: ‘Likewise, husbands, live with your wives’ (v. 7a). LIKEWISE—that is the similarity. So there is a sense in which husbands are in the same boat as those Christians considered in other institutions: the citizen in relation to magistrate, the servant in relation to master, the wife in relation to husband: except, here, the husband is the authority figure in that relationship. So the “likewise” signals that the husband, as the head of the home, is also in an institution and designed for a purpose greater than himself. In this role, he is laying aside his independent status.
But then there is the dissimilarity. LIVING WITH (συνοικοῦντες), and then follows two items: ‘in an understanding way’ and ‘showing honor’ (v. 7b). There are obvious actions that are forbidden here, and they get most of the attention. Certainly, no man can call himself a Christian who excuses physical and verbal abuse. No church can call themselves a church belonging to Jesus Christ that shelters and enables those perpetrating domestic abuse. But positively, the husband is to see the house (oikos) he’s been charged with as a joint effort, just like in the Garden of Eden, where Eve was made a helper fit for him (Gen. 2:18).
The Implication about Husbands
This calling of husbands has an immediate implication. Peter doesn’t leave us to guess, which he could have by only saying ‘live with your wives in an understanding way’ (v. 7b). On the surface, that implies an element of patience, an element of sympathy perhaps. The Greek expression translated “understanding way” in our modern English is literally κατὰ γνῶσιν, that is, “according to knowledge,” knowledge being the noun and not a modifying adjective anyway. Peter is calling for an intellectual understanding of an objective reality—not the subjective way that we read “understanding” as beginning with sympathy, as defined by the one being sympathized with. There is a place for that, but that is not where these words call the man to mental action first. The King James Version reflects this. And the Bible assumes this elsewhere: “act like men, be strong” (1 Cor. 16:13).
Matthew Henry comments,
according to knowledge; not according to lust, as brutes; nor according to passion, as devils; but according to knowledge, as wise and sober men, who know the word of God and their own duty.1
This is according to the knowledge of what? What Peter has been talking about: This particular institution (marriage) with two differing natures (male and female). In other words, we are talking about an actual awareness of a reality that you are not simply her teammate in the same way as another man at work, or when you played sports, or perhaps a fellow solider in the military. She is there to help you in a unique way, but it will not be in the same way as those men who you motivate by other means that polite society cannot handle.
Peter takes the extra step for us. He doesn’t want us to just make logical inferences. He spells out the obvious to a culture in his day that didn’t really need to discover this. Perhaps the Holy Spirit had extra, pointed application meant for societies especially like ours, where one of our treasured idols is finding equality in everything. Peter says, ‘showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel.’ This is not an afterthought. This characterizes the action. The understanding and the honor we husbands are to show toward our wives is precisely an understanding and an honor with the weakness peculiar to women in mind. Now no one disagrees with that per se, but a typical easy way out is to suppose that all that is in mind is the man’s physical strength compared to the woman. I do not doubt that this is relevant—especially given the historical reality of physical abuse from men. However, we must go back to Genesis to Adam just as we went back there for Eve.
Just as there are things directed toward the wife (from the last passage) that the man needed to overhear; so there are things directed toward the husband (in this passage) that the woman needs to overhear. In a healthy society, men do not need to be told that the woman is the weaker vessel. It is assumed. It functions—as it does for Peter—not as a conclusion, but as a premise. The category was in place since childhood. All of nature testified to it, as we mentioned Paul’s argument from nature in 1 Timothy 2:13 last time. Or think of where Paul poses the question:
Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair it is a disgrace for him, but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? (1 Cor. 11:14-15)
When nature is teacher, all are her students. Her classroom may be conscience, or else in the larger auditorium of observed behavior. Whatever the media, the body and soul differences between the sexes are so plain that our sin must hire rogue tutors to talk us out of it.
So, nature and Scripture agree that men and women differ as to strength, and that this is paramount for leadership in all of life. That is crucial here. The weakness that Peter has in mind is specific to things that would require patience in a man; but patience is hardly needed for mere physical disadvantage. As the 1 Timothy 2:13 suggested about Genesis 3, there are feminine peculiarities that the devil will happily exploit if they make their way into leadership. The devil will make quick work of those qualities. Those are not bad qualities in a woman. They are good. They are for a purpose. But their purpose is not for proactively taking out barbarians at the gates or wolves at the fence. Those “every institutions” that Peter started off with are all at stake, all under fire, all theaters of one great spiritual war, and God made men to think and act in certain ways that will require other-worldly pace-setting in caring for those who were not given that ultimately spiritual strength. And Peter’s message for men is: Your wife is here to help you with that. Do not get mad at her if you find yourself lacking time, or strength, or fellow male camaraderie.
The Rationale for Husbands
By “rationale” here I mean the positive rationale: ‘since they are heirs with you of the grace of life’ (v. 7c). The nature and constitution of the male and female are not the same, but here is where equality actually resides: not only as the image of God, but the restored image—not only in something of the soul about God, but something united to Christ. So Paul says that on this count, “there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:27). Peter had just called the wife precious to God. The man who will not defend her to death—as Ephesians 5:25 strongly suggests—commits the greatest crime in that category that Paul explains this way:
But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever (1 Tim. 5:8).
To care for one’s wife unto death means protection against immanent and violent death. Notice the connection between nature and grace here. The inequality of their constitutions in nature is the ground of the Christian husband’s more serious attention to protecting her body and soul because she is an heir of grace. She is Christ’s treasured possession, and you, husband, are the King’s royal guard, fighting for her safe passage-way to heaven.
In order to see more of the corrective against a selfish man who would isolate his strength from his wife’s good, just think of all the places in the New Testament where being unreconciled to a brother in the Lord is a problem; and then pile on top of that problem this one flesh union. For example,
So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift (Mat. 5:23-24).
Strife between members of the body is a kind of violence against the head of the body—“for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 Jn. 4:20). We see this also in 1 Corinthians 10 and 11,
Whenever a husband dishonors his wife, he dishonors God. Calvin explains this:
It is evident, that God is despised in his gifts, except we honor those on whom he has conferred any excellency. But when we consider that we are members of the same body, we learn to bear with one another, and mutually to cover our infirmities. This is what Paul means when he says that greater honor is given to the weaker members, (1 Corinthians 12:23;) even because we are more careful in protecting them from shame.2
The Warning to Husbands
One more reason given, and this one very negative: ‘so that your prayers may not be hindered.’ (v. 7d). This is straightforward, but still takes a little theologizing. A few things can be ruled out. First, let us remember the distinction between condemnation and discipline. Paul says, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1), and later in the same chapter, “those whom he justified he also glorified” (Rom. 8:30). No child of God, who has been united to Christ through faith, is ever lost. However, what else does the Scripture say?
And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? (Heb. 12:5-7)
Such discipline is painful, and it is meant to be. Such discipline can last for a long time. The stubbornness of the man will be a factor.
As to what this includes specifically, Peter does not elaborate. Does it mean that God will literally not answer a single prayer during a season where a husband is in this kind of sin toward his wife? My response to that is: Why the need to know? The words are straightforward for our fear of the Lord and our prompt obedience.
Practical Use of the Doctrine
Use 1. Correction. I mentioned that both nature and Scripture agree that men and women differ as to strength and that this is paramount for leadership in all of life. That is undeniable from the context. I think that this is why the context is typically ignored in sermons and commentaries on this subject. All of the emphasis inflates the imperative and the threat in isolation. It is the exegetical version of what complementarianism did with its doctrine. It attempted to take a position against egalitarianism on the arbitrary ground of function apart from nature. But function apart from nature means that God just so happened to say that the man must lead, which is one main reason why this same doctrine restricted male leadership to the home and the church. Even that was watered down. Scripture plainly says things about male leadership in home and church, and it does not (arguably) say things just as plainly about male leadership in the civil and other vocational realms. Leaving aside how biblicism operates in those conclusions. What matters here is that, once one is persuaded that there is a distinct body-and-soul male nature and a distinct body-and-soul female nature, then the logical fountains are broken open on male headship in the rest of life. Then Peter’s language speaks volumes.
So much of the trouble in reading passages about the mutual duties of husbands and wives toward each other is that we live in an age in which the design has never been seen. For a man to be doing anything good that would be in tension with harshness is unintelligible for most people today, and therefore so is the true sense of this “understanding way.”
In a society that is occupied by an enemy government, the most important thing for that occupying force to do is to disarm the males of the population. Different conquerers throughout history have done that in different ways. When the Assyrians occupied Israel, they killed and carried off the fighting men, and then intermarried with those who remained. Thus the Samaritans. When Muslims would conquer each land in Palestine, then Asia Minor, and then North Africa, on their way up to take Europe, they would impose the jizya, their poll tax, they would intermarry, making any weapon and even owning horses illegal for all non-Muslims.
Over the past century, those who have occupied our country have used the more effective means of anti-masculinity propaganda through mass media, and even poison to the body and especially to the brain. And the sons of Jacob have awakened to a knowledge of what needs to be done, and so stand between a righteous anger and an unrighteous anger. You wouldn’t see it, if you didn’t have a Dinah, or a Rachel, or in other words, those weaker vessels under your care.
Young men, when you are awakened to such a reality and you look around at all the obstacles to those first moral motions, do not get angry at those who God has not wired to see what you see. You were given strength to lead, provide for, and protect your wife and your children. Having a wife is not what is restraining you. Live with your wife in this great war over everything with knowledge, and that includes with great gentleness.
Use 2. Consolation. In the case of both the wife and the husband: Know that the Bridegroom has stood in the place of the bride: “as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Eph. 5:25). He stood in the place of His bride not only for our example, but as our Substitute, as our Righteousness, and a continual clean slate for us to get up and obey and be transformed.
___________________________________________
1. Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, 2428.
2. Calvin, Commentaries, XXII.2.99.
