My imitation of Christ hits its stumbling point at wifely submission. First, I made a mess of this. We married at ages 17 and 18, expecting our first child and barely able to crawl out of the grimy sinfulness that had taken us there. We didn’t have a clue.
Without any knowledge of God and how Jesus (the submission model) acts in Trinitarian relationship, our first notions of submission were flawed, patriarchal, and doormat-like. This wasn’t a good combo. It took a long time to climb out of the ruts.
Now, as I reflect on 1 Peter 3:1-7, I evaluate myself again. This passage contains weighty words to husbands and wives.
Peter tells us a wife’s godly behavior has the power to win a disobedient husband without her need to speak. Her gentle and quiet spirit does the talking and is of great worth in God’s eyes. She should do what is right and not give way to fear. A husband’s considerate and respectful behavior toward his wife is so significant to God, that if he doesn’t treat her gently as a fellow heir of God’s grace, God won’t hear his prayers!
These verses present a lifetime challenge. Submission and love are difficult. We’re sinners.
Peter looked into Jesus’ eyes for over three years. When Peter exalts Christ, we best heed what he says. The man had experiential knowledge of God incarnate. In our marriages, as in all other areas, Peter offers Jesus as the model and the cure.
Christ’s example of enduring suffering during his passion is the living example for our Christian lives. Imitating and identifying with Christ transforms every facet of our familial and social relationships. The cross touches everything. Because Christ suffered and died for us in submission to the Father’s will, sacrifice, suffering, and submission are all knotted together.
“But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps” (1 Peter 3:20b-21).
This is Jesus’ example (1 Peter 2:22-25):
- Commit no sin in response to unjust treatment.
- Don’t bring lying and exaggeration about the other into it.
- Don’t retaliate when insulted.
- Don’t threaten in return.
- Entrust yourself continually to the just Judge who sees all.
Peter tells wives and husbands to follow Christ’s model. If you’ve ever had a marital spat when emotions are high and you’re walking in the flesh, you know how difficult this is. We forget God’s seeing eye. With hard hearts, we women threaten to cut off the sex. With angry tongues, our husbands retaliate, searing us in return. We just veered from Christ’s model on all points.
Thank God that he heals and restores!
Because we’re enabled by him, we can quit sinning. We’re empowered to live lives that imitate God. The Lord heals and shepherds our soul wounds as we stumble through these lessons.
Christ’s example reshapes us during the messiness of living with another flawed human being for all our days. He demonstrates how to live when we’re sick, exhausted, stressed, or pushed to the limits, when words might be hurled and verbal arrows fly, when we’re tempted to blow the other’s transgressions out of proportion while coddling our own.
Christ was beaten down and physically destroyed in setting this ultimate example of submission and Christian living, so I pause here to address spousal abuse: God does not condone it.
After almost thirty-six-year-old marriage, I still find myself tripping over the utter selflessness of my Savior. Often my path toward submission involves threatening, arguing, and exaggerating. Then comes apologizing, allowing the tender Master to apply the balm to my soul wounds, and moving forward in obedience again.
So, once more, I yield to this passage and pray to become more like Jesus. I gaze at him with a heart that longs to obey, but which is so flawed that I’ll need to rely on him all my days. Lord, make it so.
Has submission been a stumbling stone for you, or have you coasted right on through?
Footsteps in the sand image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Coasted right through??????????
NOT really.
My father warned my husband that I would always get when I wanted.
Poor Chuck didn’t have a clue & neither did I until we had been married 20 years!
But then God put the Love & Respect book by Emerson Eggerichs in our hands.
Without even consciously trying to change, we both did – thanks to the gentle Holy Spirit!
Our marriage was transformed, our lives are changed.
Our home is more peaceful, we are able to discuss touchy subjects without too much angst.
Chuck understands that I am a bundle of emotion even when I don’t know it.
He understands that I am not like him and he has learned to be gentle with my heart.
He says my tone is different, he doesn’t feel blamed anymore.
God is so good!
We praise Him!
Thank you, Rita, for detailing the growth path in your marriage. This is a blessing to hear. We’re all works in progress, aren’t we!
P.S. I LOVED seeing your wedding photo, thanks for adding both photos of you & Tim!
You can definitely see the age progression, can’t you!
Melinda, I love the way you addressed this, as another opportunity to follow Jesus, our perfect example. I had not seen this subject addressed that way…great teaching! As always, your transparency about being quite human is a blessing, Melinda! We ALL fall, and yet it’s only when we “confess” our sins that we are forgiven (I John 1:9); we’re never asked to pretend they don’t exist. I love the way the Bible also tells the truth about all our “heroes,” presenting them not as perfect but as they are, “sinners saved by grace”! You hit the nail on the head over and over in this blog, Melinda! Were you hiding in our home?
Thanks again reminding us to look to Jesus!!!
LOVE & PRAYERS,
Aunt Jackie
Amen! Transparency and confession are real Christianity in practice. When we wear a false facade, we discourage others around us, our fellow strugglers, because we appear to be perfect when we are not. Jesus wants us to be real.
Hahaha. Smooth sailing (sarcasm). I am a recovering and being transformed out of being a control freak. On top of sexual abuse issues that lend fear to the most basic marital issues, control is not something you have when you willing place yourself under the authority of your husband. Let’s just say I often did and do have better ways of doing something than my husband and it used to be it was my way or the nagway. It is not an intelligence or ability thing the Lord is calling women to engage in with their husbands – it is a willingness to love the other person within the God-designed blueprints of marriage that are a pattern of Christ and the Church. It was set up this way before the Fall, but sin has marred the pattern of the Trinity and the Christ/Church relationships we are called to have. I am not less before God than my husband – salvation and intelligence and ability all God-given and awesome. He knows my heart will work best when I am not striving to have my own way, but choose to elevate another for the good of both and all others involved. Like Christ with the Father in dying for my sin. He who was without sin (Christ) willingly became sin for me that I might be restored to fellowship with the Father and have right standing (Christ’s sinless reputation) before the Father. Christ was fully God, equal with the Father in character, power, ability, intelligence, etc. YET He chose to humble Himself for me. He is my hero and my model as a wife. I am blessed to have a husband who loves me in an understanding way through all this and his prayers have been answered in a wife who is able to rest and feel safe within all parts of her relationship with her husband. However, I know many do not have this kind of marriage and this task of willingly putting themselves under someone who does not treat tehm in an understanding way, sacrificially leading the home in a way that honors the Lord, makes not giving way to fear in the loss of control, soooo much more difficult. But not impossible, because Jesus did it and we wives who belong to Him by faith, have His Spirit in us enabling us to walk in the footsteps of our Savior. Praying we as women in the faith continue to strive to glorify God in the way we subject ourselves to our husband’s authority. Give the gospel wings by not tying it down with stumbling stones.
Beautiful, Kripsie Anne! Thank you for sharing. It’s hard to get off “my way or the nagway,” isn’t it? We want to keep using those words! I love your explanation of Christ’s sacrifice and model.
Boy! Do you ever know the answer to this question!! If it had not been such a stumbling block for me, perhaps you would have had an easier time. Our culture’s teaching is so far removed from this concept that if we don’t know the Word , study the Word, stay in the Word, AND we easily fall in to the world’s standard. It seems with me it is two steps forward and one step back. I thought that by this time in my life, I would have been much better than this!! But, it is by keeping my eyes on Jesus–you are right, He alone is our model–not our Christian sisters, not our mothers, although these may be helpful, they, too, were not perfect as He alone is.
Indeed! Only Christ provides the perfect model. This is why we have to fix our eyes on him, considering how he endured the cross while despising the shame of it. He did it all in submission to the Father. He’s our example.