I found God. Somewhere along the way, I feel like I lost my husband.

A wife wrote that sentence on a Christian forum this month, and then she explained it. She got serious about God. Her husband did not come with her. “Once I began taking my faith seriously, I expected us to pursue God together, but that hasn’t happened.” She started comparing. “I became jealous and started comparing us to couples who studied the Bible together and had husbands who spiritually led their families.” She stopped asking him about his prayer life and his Bible reading, because a book told her she could not nag a man into God. Then she asked for advice from Christians who had been there.

The Bible has a direct word for that house, and the word is not what most people expect.

Peter wrote to wives first.

“Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear.” (1 Peter 3:1-2)

You may be forwarding him messages, but Peter directs a wife’s attention to how she lives. Conversation here means her conduct, not her talk. A husband who is not where she is with God can be won by what he sees while they live under the same roof. This does not mean she is forbidden to talk to him about God. Peter is showing her that talking is not the only way her husband can hear her.

It would be good for couples to share the faith. However, this verse is not talking about guaranteed conversion. Peter mentions the idea of the husband being won as a possibility. As painful as it is for couples to live under one roof but not pursue God as they thought they would, this does not even hint that the husband’s faith is the responsibility of his wife. That remains an issue between him and God. The wife is responsible for her own conduct.

She measured her husband against couples who study together. Peter gives a wife a measure too, and it is not the couple down the pew.

“Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters ye are, as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement.” (1 Peter 3:6)

Sara. Think about who her husband was in Genesis. Twice Abraham let his wife pass as his sister, and twice a king took her. In Egypt: “The princes also of Pharaoh saw her, and commended her before Pharaoh: and the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house.” (Genesis 12:15) In Gerar: “And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, She is my sister: and Abimelech king of Gerar sent, and took Sarah.” (Genesis 20:2)

Peter points to Sara, counted in Scripture among the holy women who trusted in God. Twice, to save himself, Abraham put Sara in jeopardy. Those two episodes did not erase her own standing before God. Peter calls women who do well her daughters, and adds “not afraid with any amazement.” He does not name the fear. A wife in that kind of a house can recognize her own.

She can keep reading where he sees the book open and keep praying where he cannot hear her. That is work she can do without waiting for him to begin. It does not require her to stop every conversation about faith. It does require giving up the comparison that makes another woman’s husband the measure of her own.

Peter did not stop with wives. Six verses later the chapter turns.

“Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.” (1 Peter 3:7)

Ask her what she read this week. Then be quiet and let her tell you. She is not a problem for you to manage. She is an heir together with you of the grace of life.

The wives got two verses about living with a husband who does not obey the word. The husbands got one verse, and it ends with a warning Peter did not give the wives: your prayers can be hindered. Not hers. Yours. A man who will not try to understand his wife cannot read past that warning as though her spiritual life has nothing to do with him. How you treat her matters to God when you pray.

For the wife: keep reading. Keep the door shut when you pray for him. “But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.” (Matthew 6:6) Stop the ledger. Nobody handed you one.

Hebrews 11 lists Sara by name among the faithful. “Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised.” (Hebrews 11:11) The Bible names her because she judged God faithful. She believed the promise, and although she was past the age of childbearing, the child was born. Abraham, her husband, is three verses above her on that same list, named for leaving his country when God called him. They are counted one at a time, and both of them are counted.

Share

Donate to help the mission