Thoughts on 1 Peter - Day 13

    
                                        1 Peter 3:1-7
  Wives, in the same way submit yourselves to your own husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, ² when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. ³ Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. ⁴ Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. ⁵ For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to adorn themselves. They submitted themselves to their own husbands, ⁶ like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her lord. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.
⁷ 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,...


   The next passage in Peter deals with marriage and relationship between husband and wife. The interesting thing is that it follows right after the passage we just talked about which is no longer living for yourself,  but living under a new overseer who has given us a gift, the precious gift of life. This doesn't mean that we were dead before but spiritually speaking,  the spirit part of us was not alive. We were like zombies, I suppose, living for the flesh, craving me, me, me and devouring whoever we were next to, to satisfy that desire. Now that our spirit is alive by the Spirit,  we are craving God. We want more of Him and we want to live lives pleasing to Him.

  So what does this have to do with marriage? Pretty much everything. A secular marriage/relationship is me centered. It has been described as 2 ticks without a dog. Even the glorious quote "you complete me", succinctly describes the problem. It's about"me". I want you for"me". God's love for us was completely different. Do we complete Him? Hardly. He is complete. So why does He love us? I guess because He is love. Love is an out flowing from His heart that wants the best for everyone, and that best is Him. When people look at God as this megalomaniac who says"love me or I will send you to Hell, they don't get it.  God is saying, "I am what will make your life complete. In fact I am so good for you that you could call the absence of me in your life'hell'".

Therefore, a God centered marriage is between two people who are not living for themselves. The godly wife is not trying to draw attention to herself by her outward appearance but rather is trying by her fruit of the spirit to point people to Christ.She doesn't need to control her husband or fear being out of control because she already is out of control.  She is controlled by the overseer of her soul. The godly husband doesn't take advantage of that because he is not about getting his own way but Christ's. He knows that he should love her like christ loved him ; tenderly, gently, patiently, and sacrificially. The husband should love the wife for who she is in order to complete her demonstrating the love of Christ to an onlooking world. If this is the way marriages worked there would be a zero divorce rate.

Lord, I lift up to you my marriage. I pray that both Karen and I would follow your example and truly love the way you modeled. Amen