Duties of Husbands and Wives

The Duties of Husbands and Wives

1 Peter 3:1-7

Introduction:

There is trouble with marriages today

U      Redefine what marriage is

U      Divorce rate:  1996 was 49%

U      Census Bureau report from 2002 said, “"About 50% of first marriages for men under age 45 may end in divorce, and between 44 and 52% of women's first marriages may end in divorce for these age groups. The likelihood of a divorce is lowest for men and women age 60, for whom 36 % of men and 32 percent of women may divorce from their first marriage by the end of their lives. A similar statistical exercise was performed in 1975 using marital history data from the Current Population Survey (CPS). Projections based on those data implied that about one-third of married persons who were 25 to 35 years old in 1975 would end their first marriage in divorce.”

Perhaps it is time to get back to the owners manual and read the instructions.

I.                   The Duty of the Christian Wife vv. 1-6

1.      The duty stated:  “be submissive to your own husbands.”

1)      Great response to that statement today, uproar

               Premarital counseling

               During wedding ceremony

2)      Setting:  Many wives were coming to Christ

                     Cared deeply about their husbands:  nonbelievers

                     Questioned:

                           How can I win them?

                           Should I leave them?

                           What is my responsibility to them?

2.      The duty defined: negative and positive

1)      Negatively:  What it does not mean:

a.       Wife is less important than her husband Genesis account dispels that idea, the wife is necessary. 

b.      Women are inferior.  God is no respecter of persons.

c.       All women are subject to all men. 

2)      Positively:

a.       Wife is to put herself under the leadership of her husband

b.      She is to do this voluntarily out of love

c.       It is a mutual, humble, cooperation with one another

3.      The purpose of this duty vv. 1-2

      To win the husbands to Christ

They were not going to win them by beating them over the head

They would win them by showing the reality of Christ in their lives

Who better to see how much a person’s life has changed that a husband?

I believe that very often believer’s lives do not speak loudly enough of the reality of Christ!!

We often seem to rely on programs and gimmicks when God desires to speak through our lives.

4.      The priority of this duty vv. 3-4  It was to take precedence over:

1)      Arranging of the hair:

Hours and hours working on

Many addicted to extravagant hair

Matter of life and death

Fear bed and someone touching hair

2)      Wearing of jewelry:  gold, making an elaborate show

3)      Type of clothing worn

Seemed to have the idea that if they put forth the best that the world had to offer they had a better chance of winning their husbands

The truth is:  Let your life speak for you

God doesn’t use styles of the world to win the lost, He uses the lives of His people.

5.      The example of this duty: vv. 5-6

      How was Sarah an example of submission to her husband?

                  Left their home and went abroad

                  When Abraham took Isaac up for the sacrifice

                  She called him lord

II.                 The Duty of the Husbands v. 7

1.      The duty stated:

1)      Dwell with them with understanding:

               Idea of knowing intimately

               Knowing needs of wife and meeting those needs

               Understanding strengths and weaknesses

2)      Giving honor to the wife as the weaker vessel

               Lift to a position of honor

3)      Look at as a fellow heir of the grace of life

               So much for the inferior idea

2.      The motive for fulfilling this duty

Our relationship with our wives affects our relationship with the Lord

3.      The duty exemplified in Christ Ephesians 5:21-33

Husbands are to love their wives just a Christ loved the Church

This makes the submission part extremely easy

We have no problem with the concept of submission to Jesus

            -When someone loves us like that it is not hard

R. Kent Hughes in Disciplines of a Godly Man:

The opening charge in Ephesians 5 is a clear call to radical, sacrificial love: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”  This call to marital love was a bare-knuckled swing at the domestic commitment (or lack of same) of men of the day – just as it is today.  Taken seriously, the naked form of these words, “love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, “is staggering!  An honestly received, the punch it delivers flattens many Christian men…because they fall so short.”

This love calls for:

1)      Death: 

Mike Mason in The Mystery of Marriage

“Marital love is like death – it wants all of us”

Hughes:

“The realization of what this call means may at first be frightening, but it is also beautiful, because a man who embraces such a love will experience the grace of death to self.  Marriage is a call to die, and a man who does not die for his wife does not come close to the love to which he is called.  Christian marriage vows are the inception of a lifelong practice of death, of giving over not only all you have, but all you are.”

2)      Suffering:

3) Intercession:

      On the evening Christ died He prayed for us