Introduction
We live in egalitarian times, and consequently I have selected a text which makes many moderate complementarians flinch, and which makes patriarchal types, of the eighth-grade-boy school of thought, gloat. Having done so, I simply ask one thing, which is that you hear me out.
The Text
“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. Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous . . .” (1 Peter 3:7–8).
Summary of the Text
The exhortation Peter gives here is addressed to the husbands (v. 7). Now this series of messages has been addressed to the unmarried young people in our midst, and so mark the application. Many of the things that husbands and wives need to know are things that they really needed to learn something about before they became husbands and wives. This exhortation would be one of them.
Men are charged to dwell with their wives knowledgeably—they don’t get to blunder around, excusing their clumsiness as just “a guy thing.” They are to give honor to their wife (v. 7), treating her as the weaker vessel (v. 7), and as the joint heir of the grace of life. Doing this means that his prayers are not going to be hindered. The clear implication is that refusal to do it means that his prayers will be hindered (Mal. 2:13-14). God calibrates His willingness to hear the prayers of men up against how those men treat women.
Peter then extends his exhortation to everyone—they should be like-minded (v. 8), compassionate to one another (v. 8), with true filial love (v. 8), tender-hearted (v. 8), and courteous (v. 8). Pay special attention to this last word courteous. Other renderings of this word call it “humble in spirit” (NASB), or of “humble mind” (ESV).
Weakness and Strength
I began by admonishing the carnal spirits among the “eighth-grade boys”—not to pick on them. This is just a metaphor for the attitude that treats everything as a competition, reads the phrase “weaker vessel,” and begins to chortle. “We win, we win!” Among other things, this represents a different sort of weakness when it comes to reading comprehension. What does Peter say should result from a wise male realization of feminine weakness? That is correct—honor. And the fact that honor is to be rendered here should teach us something about the nature of the weakness. What is weaker, a priceless Ming vase or a nine-pound sledgehammer? Do you have to be more careful with the former because it is somehow worth less? If you smashed the vase with the sledgehammer, would that constitute a win in your book?
Of course, there are other places where weakness is not wanted, and is entirely undesired. If you are a football coach and your left tackle is a weenie, that weakness will be exploited by the other team all game long, and serve you right. If you are a general and you have a regiment filled with cowards, that’s no good either. If you are a business owner and your bookkeeper can’t add or subtract, that is a weakness that your competitors will find out about soon enough. You want to get rid of all such weaknesses, which you don’t do by honoring them.
But in the Christian world, the differences between the sexes are to be respected and honored. Chesterton once wrote a poem called Comparisons:
If I set the sun beside the moon,
And if I set the land beside the sea,
And if I set the flower beside the fruit,
And if I set the town beside the country,
And if I set the man beside the woman,
I suppose some fool would talk
About one being better.
The light of the moon is “weaker” than that of the sun, which means that it is silver glory and not golden glory. It is glory nonetheless (1 Cor. 15:41).
Manners Between the Sexes
Someone has wisely said that manners should be defined as “love in trifles.” The point of manners is to orient us so that we know what is expected. They are intended to remove friction. Of course, when someone is a manners snob, what they do is introduce friction, making the whole thing feel like it is “conceit in trifles.” They weaponize manners, making you feel like a clodhopper trying to navigate high tea at Versailles. That’s not it either.
So my focus here would be that last word in v. 8—courteous. And because our subject is life between the sexes, I want to talk about manners as it relates to unmarried men and unmarried women.
Manners of this sort are catechetical. When they were more widely observed, they were a culture-wide training program, helping men by preparing them to obey 1 Pet. 3:7. The egalitarian revolt against this sort of thing succeeded in part by misrepresenting what the catechetical lesson was supposed to be. When, for example, a man holds a door for a lady, the message is not that women are helpless and can’t handle a door. It is false to say that the older patterns were trying to teach men to think of women as China dolls. The message was simply that men must honor women, and there were reminders of this obligation multiple times in a day.
When all this was abandoned in favor of women being “promoted” to being just one of the guys, they quickly found out that being one of the guys was vastly over-rated. We thought that the catechesis wasn’t doing all that much, and if we just dispensed with all the artificiality, then the innate goodness of humanity would emerge, and everybody would be naturally thoughtful and caring. What actually emerged was the fact that men and women are both sinners, and we found our entire culture engaged in a race to the bottom. We are not there yet, but we can see it from here.
Honor Is Visible
There are two things to remember about honor. The first is that invisible honor is actually dishonor. If your aged mother comes in the room, and you remain slouched in your chair with one foot on the table, you don’t get to say that you were honoring her in your heart. You stand up (Lev. 19:32).
The second thing to realize is that particular expressions of honor are culturally determined. The British salute with the palm out and the Americans with the palm down. Fine. You render that which will communicate genuine honor in whatever context you are in.
And so, men, treat the sisters as sisters, with absolute purity (1 Tim. 5:2). Practice rendering honor to all of them. You sisters, practice expecting it. If a guy is acting like a helpless schlub, don’t encourage it by mothering him. If you have ever cleaned a bachelor’s apartment for him, you are a big part of the problem. Before any of you get to “this man” and “this woman,” standing in front of a church, endeavor to learn what it means to have “these brothers” and “these sisters” in community together.
And Remember . . .
This whole section of 1 Peter 3 is downstream from the example of Christ, laid out for us earlier (1 Pet. 2:21ff). Wives are to imitate that, and unmarried women should be preparing to imitate that. Husbands are to imitate that, and young men should be practicing as they gear up to imitate that. And all of us who are called to be Christians should be imitating that.
And that is because, no matter who you are, Christ is before you.