God's Design for Marriage

Scripture Reading

If you would turn to 1 Peter chapter 3, we'll continue our series titled Our Living Hope this morning. And if you would stand after turning to 1 Peter 3, we will read God's Word.

Hear now the holy and infallible word of God. Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct. Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of your hair, the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear—but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious.

For this is how holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening. Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God will stand forever. You may be seated.

Sermon Introduction

There are few topics that one is taught to avoid. This has even become a trope in movies. You should avoid at nice dinner parties that are polite to not talk about politics, and you should also not talk about sex. Marriage has increasingly joined that category in our culture. We are told that marriage is a private matter, to keep your opinions to yourself.

What happens in the home is nobody else's business. But the Word of God does not shrink back from these things. Scripture speaks plainly about marriage because it's not something that we invented. Marriage was designed by God. It is His institution. It belongs to Him, and because it is His, He tells us in His Word more about it, how we can understand it, what it was designed for, and how it is best to be used.

Two Sundays ago, in 1 Peter 2:12, this is what we read: "Keep your conduct among the Gentiles," or the nations, "honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God." This is a shift in Peter's letter as he's turning to application, even as last week we read about government, as we read about servants and masters, and now he writes about marriage.

He begins chapter 3 by saying, "Likewise," in the same way. Peter's continuing his teaching about how Christians live faithfully in the order that God has established. While marriage might be a little bit of a controversial topic in our world, we're not just simply comparing some sort of political definition of marriage this morning.

We're talking about something that God designed, something that He has given us, that He even says is a picture of the gospel. We can look for a marriage that is according to God's design or oftentimes as we encounter a broken reflection of marriage in our world. Our problem with marriage is not that it doesn't look like the 1800s or it doesn't look like the 1950s.

Our problem is that sinners continuously reshape marriage around themselves. We don't need marriages shaped by nostalgia. We don't need marriages shaped by movies, Disney, or romance novels. We don't need marriages shaped by whatever our culture says marriage is on a given year. We want our marriages to be shaped by God's design.

Last week, we saw that Christians are to be subject, not in control, and that is often difficult for us, we talked about, with the government and with slaves and masters. Why? Because we like to be in control. Remember I used the example even at my son's soccer games where I want to call something out? We all have a little bit of a sideline coach in us.

We want to be the one who decides. We want things our way. But God has established an order in His world. Government, as we talked about last week, is an institution that God has given us for protection. Marriage and family are institutions that God has given us for our good. These are not human inventions.

And this is where God's common grace, if you're familiar with that phrase, His common grace helps us to understand the world around us. See, God's common grace, we think of things as though He gives rain, He gives food, He gives families, He gives marriage, He gives civil government. He restrains evil. He preserves society.

This is God's common grace, that God continues to give good gifts and ordering to the world that He has made. Now, this common grace, it does not save us. It does not give us the gospel, but it is still a gift from God. Anyone may marry, raise children, be under a government that restrains evil, and recognize some good things and some bad things in the world.

In short, someone might reject God but still live in the world that God made. Here's the reality. Our world can be so disordered by sin, but it cannot cease to be God's world. And so we see that in even things like marriage and government. Marriage is a common grace. God gives it to mankind in the garden.

And God's Word teaches His people how to faithfully use that institution of marriage that He has given. And so this morning, we're going to look at three things. The sermon is outlined for you on page 22 in your bulletin. We're going to first begin with a little bit of a biblical survey of the design of marriage.

Then we're going to look at the calling of wives and the responsibility of husbands as we see in our passage. And even though we're talking about marriage this morning and perhaps you're a child in the room and you're thinking, "Well, I'm not married. I don't have to listen to Pastor John this morning."

Kids, one day, hopefully, you are gifted with a spouse. Listen and learn what God designed for it to be. Perhaps you think to yourself, "Well, I am married and things are going pretty well. I think we got it figured out." Don't you want to know all of the beauties that God intended it for? Perhaps you feel like you don't have it all figured out.

Perhaps you feel like things are broken and messed up. Perhaps you feel like you have a roommate or somebody who has simply become a coworker. Hear what God designed marriage to be. Perhaps you are someone thinking, "I was once married, and the brokenness and sin in that relationship wreaked havoc, and I don't think I'll ever be a part of a marriage again."

Perhaps you find yourself year after year longing and even saying, "Lord, why can't I have a wife? Why can't I have a husband?" And you long for a good gift that God gives in His world. Perhaps you feel like you've given up hope. Regardless of wherever you find yourself, here's what we read in Hebrews 13, "Let marriage be held in honor among all."

Why? It is a fabric by which God's design in His world is held together. So marriage is for us all, whether we have partaken of it merely by the presence of our parents and watching their marriage, even if we never wed. Perhaps it is even in our longing. Let us look together at what God has designed marriage to be.

The Design for Marriage

For our little bit of survey, we're going to begin where God begins with marriage in Genesis 2 that we read a couple of weeks ago. We see God made the man, and then God says, "It is not good that man is alone." So God makes Eve as a helper for him and brings her to Adam. And Adam responds, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh."

Why? Because as he was naming the animals, not a helper was found fit for him. Marriage was not man's idea, though. Adam did not go to God and go, "Well, I'm naming all of these animals and having dominion, and I'm in this beautiful garden that you made. Gee, could I get someone like me?" God sees man and sees that it is not good that he is alone and makes a helper fit for him.

Marriage is God's idea. Adam didn't say, "I'm lonely." God said it's not good for man to be alone. Because marriage is God's idea, we should begin not by asking what we want marriage to be, but what has God designed marriage to be. God says it's not good for man to be alone. It does not mean that Adam was incomplete as an image-bearer.

He had fellowship with God and lived in that perfect garden, Eden. But God made man for relationship, and so he gives Adam a wife. Marriage is a gift of companionship. A husband and a wife are meant to share life together, to know one another, to help one another, to bear one another's burdens, to rejoice together, to walk through all of the joys and sorrows of life together.

A spouse is not an interruption to your autonomy or an interruption to the things that you want to do. Your spouse is a gift from God. But Genesis doesn't stop there with that relationship and that companionship. God also tells them to be fruitful and multiply. Marriage is designed to be fruitful.

Children are a blessing from the Lord, and for many marriages, this means receiving children as gifts, raising them, teaching them, loving them, and bringing them up in the fear and instruction of the Lord. Marriage is therefore not just about finding someone that makes you happy. It is about participating in something bigger than yourself even.

Marriage gives. Marriage serves. Marriage builds a household that can even bless others to the ends of the earth. Movies and TV often reduce marriage to simply just romance or to personal fulfillment. Does that person make you happy on that given day? A question like that does not build a healthy marriage.

But God's design is bigger still. See, marriage is also a covenant. There is a vow exchange. Malachi speaks of marriage in precisely those terms, of a covenant. A husband and a wife make promises before God and witnesses. You love when it is easy. You love when it is difficult. You remain faithful when your feelings might even rise and fall.

It's not that feelings don't matter, that affection doesn't matter, that romance doesn't matter, but by God's design, it is built on something deeper. Why? Those vows that you take in sickness and in health, in want and in plenty, in good times and in bad times, that's even one of the beauty of those witnesses that gather.

What is it that a bride and groom do? They bring their closest friends to stand with them, to witness and to testify the vows that they make. Who are the people that a bride or groom turn to on their worst days? If it's not their spouse, who are the other people they're probably going to turn and talk to?

Those bridesmaids and groomsmen. Testifiers of the vows that they made, calling them back to even faithfulness. Marriage even ultimately points beyond itself. In Ephesians 5, we read that it is a picture of Christ in the church. Every marriage in this room is a testimony of Christ's love for the church.

Every marriage in the world is a testimony of Christ's love for the church. Why? It's God's. God designed it. And part of the beauty given to it, even with someone who does not know Christ, is actually giving a testimony to the goodness of the gospel. Christian marriage tells the story of a covenant love and sacrifice, and that brings us to the ultimate purpose of marriage, that marriage is not ultimately just about us.

It is about God who designed it. A successful marriage is not necessarily easy. It is not necessarily impressive. It is not necessarily free from all conflict. Success by design is faithfulness. Do you love your spouse? Do you serve your spouse? Do you keep the vows that you made? Do you repent? Do you forgive?

Do you seek reconciliation? Do you submit your marriage to God's design? Sometimes faithfulness might look glorious. Sometimes it looks very ordinary. A husband serving his wife, a wife listening to her husband, apologizing when you were wrong, forgiving when you've been hurt, remaining faithful through sickness, sitting beside one another in grief, opening the Word together even if you don't feel like it.

These things might not look impressive to the world. Perhaps you've heard the old joke, I normally tell it in premarital counseling, that if you want to be told everything that's ever wrong with you, get married. Marriage is a very sanctifying thing. Why? You're talking about two sinners getting married and living in a confined space together.

There is going to be telling, "Hey, your sin got on me a little bit." Who's the person you're probably most comfortable being grumpy with or angry with? Probably not your boss. Probably not even your coworker that you're closest to. The people you end up having the most conflict with are actually the people that are closest to you, that are most familiar with your sin.

The second half of that joke, though, is not just that you want to get married and you'll be told everything that's wrong with you, it also includes you want to be shown it, you want to see it, have children. Because then you're going to see your sin very differently. The ways that you are impatient, you might see in your own child. The goal of marriage is not to have a perfect marriage.

The goal is to faithfully live with someone else who is also walking in repentance. God made men and women in His image, equal dignity, equal worth. And in the fall, men and women have an equal need of grace, and in Christ, they have an equal standing before God. But equal dignity does not mean identical calling, which is what we're getting at in our passage in 1 Peter here in a moment.

God has ordered the relationship. Man is called to be the head of his household. The wife is called to submit to her husband, and this order existed before sin even entered the world. Adam was created first, and God gave Adam the command. Eve was created as a helper corresponding to him. There is order here.

There is distinction here. There is goodness here. Sin did not create the structure of the home. Sin corrupts it. In sin, the husband can turn headship into domination. In sin, the wife can turn her strength, her beauty, her resilience into control. Both are manifestations of the same sinful desire that we even talked about last week with government.

I want it my way. I want to be in control. So even as we looked at government last week and we saw God's good design for it, we're doing the same thing today. Husbands, this means we need to understand what biblical headship actually means. It's not authority for authority's sake. It's the responsibility to take responsibility.

A husband is not given a position so that everyone can serve him. He is given responsibility to serve those that God has entrusted to him, to lead, to protect, to provide, to cultivate, as we see in our passage, to understand, to honor, to love as Christ loved the church. All of this happens under another authority.

Just as we talked last week with the civil government, that Christ is above all things, all things brought into subjection under His feet, as Christ is the head of the man and the man the head of the home. So Christian leadership for husbands does not begin with the man standing over his family. It begins with a man saying, "Your will be done," recognizing that he's under authority.

God has established marriage with a purpose. So let's look at this together in our passage in 1 Peter now. And that's probably my record, and we'll probably never beat it. That's the longest sermon introduction I've ever given.

The Calling of Wives

Let's look at 1 Peter together now. Peter begins with the wives. He says, "Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands."

Likewise, in the same way, Peter is teaching Christians to live faithfully in God's ordered world, and wives are called to submit to their husbands. That is not a popular word, even as we talked about that with the government last week, but Peter does not apologize for it. He says it plainly because God's order is good.

And notice the situation that Peter's even addressing, "So that even if some husbands do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives." What if your husband does not believe? What if he disobeys the Word? What if he sins? Peter does not say then God's design no longer applies.

He calls the Christian wife to faithful submission. Her conduct may become a testimony even to her unbelieving husband, not by nagging him into the kingdom, not by manipulating him, but by a life of godly character, of godly conduct. Her submission is not ultimately about her husband. It is about Christ.

She is saying, "I trust God enough to live according to what he has commanded." And submission is not weakness. It is the willing use of strength under God's authority. A Christian wife does not have to win every disagreement. She does not have to establish herself as the authority in the home. Why? She trusts God.

She can do what is good. What if he's not doing what is good? She still has the choice that she can do what is good. She can live faithfully within God's order. And this does not mean submitting to sin. A husband does not have unlimited authority. A wife does not obey her husband when he commands her to disobey Christ.

A wife does not atone for or hide her husband's sin. Christ is Lord. He is the higher authority. His headship is not a license for cruelty, manipulation, abuse, or sin. Then Peter turns to beauty. Look at what he says. He says, "Do not let your adorning be external." Peter is not saying that a woman cannot care about her appearance.

He is saying that her deepest beauty cannot be found there. Hair fades. Clothing wears out. Physical beauty changes, but Peter says, "Let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit." That beauty does not fade. In fact, that beauty gets deeper and deeper with age.

A godly woman can become more patient, more faithful, more joyful, more peaceful, more trusting in God, more like Christ. That's a beauty that lasts. Young men who desire to be married, hear this. When you are looking for a wife, look for this character. Not the outward beauty that will fade, but this imperishable beauty of her character, of a woman who fears God and who is faithful.

Look for the kind of beauty that lasts. And women, your true beauty is not whether you look like you did—you fill in the age. I'm not going to fill in the age. Your true beauty is the work that God is doing in you. That in sanctification is more and more by the work of His Holy Spirit. A gentle and quiet spirit does not mean that you have no opinions.

It does not mean you have no strength. It means your strength is governed by trust. Do you see that? You do not have to fight for control because you know who is ultimately in control. Peter then gives us the example of Sarah. "For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves." They hoped in God.

Why can a wife submit? Because she hopes in God. Why can she do good when her husband does not obey the word? Because she hopes in God. Why can she refuse to live in fear? Because she hopes in God. Peter says Sarah obeyed Abraham. Sarah was not perfect. Abraham was not perfect. We'll get there in our Genesis reading if you're unfamiliar with Father Abraham.

Their marriage was not perfect. But God was faithful, and Sarah trusted. Peter says you Christian women are her children if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening. Not because Sarah was perfect or you just need to be more like Sarah, but because you share her hope. She is a woman of faith. A Christian wife can say, "I will honor God's design because I trust God."

Now, someone might rightly ask, what if your husband abuses his authority? What if he is harsh, selfish, manipulative, unfaithful? What if he sins against you? We need to be clear about this. Peter is not giving husbands permission to do whatever they want. He is not telling wives to call evil good. A husband's authority is not absolute.

He is under authority, and Christ will hold him accountable, even as we saw last week in talking about the government, that ultimately, who is the judge who judges justly? What about when the government errs and does wrong? Submission does not mean obeying a command to sin. It does not mean concealing abuse.

It does not mean pretending that everything is well or refusing to seek help. There may be times when because of a husband's sin, a godly wife needs to reach out to the church officers or to the civil authorities for protection or help. Why? These are institutions that God has established in his world for our good.

These are authorities God has ordained in his world. The restraining of evil is part of God's good design, and so is even the rebuking of sin. What then does it mean to submit? It means that a wife does not seize her husband's God-given role or make herself the final authority in the home. But it does not mean that she must approve of sin or submit to sinful demands.

She can speak truthfully about his wrongdoing. She can call him to repentance. She can seek for protection and even help. And what if your husband sins against you in an ordinary but painful way, in the way that sin is so common in relationships? What if he is thoughtless? What if he is impatient? What if he is selfish?

Christian submission does not mean pretending that other people's sin does not hurt. It means responding in faith, seeking what is good, speaking truth and love, and entrusting yourself to God. I've heard a Christian woman put it this way, that when she gets in conflict with her husband, it took her a while into marriage, but then she realized the best place that she could actually address his sin was on her knees.

And this was her prayer, "God, come get your guy. Come get him. Convict him of his sin. Help him to see it. Help him to repent." Peter's instruction is not that a wife must put her hope in her husband. He says that holy women hope in God. Your husband may fail you. He may even misuse his authority, but Christ will not fail you.

This is even the direction in 1 Corinthians 7 that we see given to the church, that if a godly woman following Christ finds herself when she comes to faith that she is married to an unbeliever, what is she to do? Is she to leave and abandon him? No, but rather by her conduct he might behold the gospel. A wife's submission is never a substitute for her husband's repentance.

God calls her to faithfulness, and he calls her husband to account. Both stand under the lordship of Christ. So Christian wife, you can honor God's design without pretending that your husband always honors it. You can do good without calling evil good, and you can entrust yourself to God without placing yourself at the mercy of sin.

The Responsibility of Husbands

Peter then turns to husbands, and he gives them only one verse. If you notice there, we have six verses directed to the wives and one to the husbands. Don't mistake the brevity for simplicity. Don't mistake it that there's somehow less of a duty here. He writes, "Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way."

Understanding. Know her. Husbands and those who hope to be husbands, do you know the woman that you love? Do you know what encourages her, what discourages her, what burdens her, what fears she might have, where she is weary, when she needs encouragement? A husband cannot faithfully lead a woman that he refuses to know. Headship requires attention, it requires presence, it requires responsibility.

Imagine yourself as the head of a corporation or your own workplace. What are the things that if you're responsible for caring for it, that you're going to need to understand? You're going to want to understand all of the different pieces of the business. You would learn where it was thriving, where it was struggling, what employees were best in which department.

You would pay attention to all of the people under your care, what they needed, what stood in the way of their work. You would know that you could not lead well if you did not understand what was happening. Now husbands, how much more should you seek to understand your own wife? You may know every detail of your business, every statistic about your favorite sports team.

You may update because you know all of the things about your investments, but do you know what is happening in your wife's heart? Do you know what weighs on her, what brings her joy, what she is carrying that she hasn't even found the words to tell you? It is possible to manage a household without truly knowing your wife.

You can pay the bills, you can fix the things that break, you can make decisions, and you can fail to understand the woman that God has given you as a wife. Peter calls you to something deeper, men, than management. He calls you to live with her in an understanding way. You did not marry your wife to manage a small corporation.

You did not take a bride simply to maintain a property together, nor were your children given to you as just little employees to manage until they go off to college. You were given a wife to love, to know, to honor, and to care for, and that relationship continues even after the children are out of the home.

And every parent should hope for that day, and even dread that day, that their children leave the home. You cannot faithfully shepherd someone you are unwilling to know. Peter continues, "Showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel." Peter is not saying that women are spiritually weaker. He is not saying that they are less valuable, as even immediately he says, "Because she is an heir with you of the grace of life."

The wife is an heir with her husband. Same Savior, same grace, same imperishable inheritance that we've been talking about through this letter, same resurrected Christ, same name placed upon her in the waters of baptism, the same living hope. She is your fellow heir, and because she is your fellow heir, you must honor her.

A husband's strength is not given to him for himself. His strength is given for the good of others. This is why in Ephesians 5 we can read, "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her." That is what it means to be a faithful husband. Not grasping, not domination, not, "I am the man, so everybody do what I say."

Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. Martin Luther, the Protestant reformer, put it this way. This quote's in the front of your bulletin. "The Christian is supposed to love his neighbor, and since his wife is his nearest neighbor, she should be his deepest love." When you look at your wife, do you see your nearest neighbor?

She should receive your deepest love, not merely your authority. Your love, your patience, your attention, your sacrifice, your honor. Husbands, where is the place that you fail to show honor? Where are you impatient? Where have you stopped listening? Where have you stopped pursuing your wife? Where have you begun to treat headship as a right rather than a responsibility?

That's really the heart of the address to husbands here. Is it a right that he has or is it a responsibility that he has? Peter says, "Showing honor to the woman," because headship in the home is the responsibility to take responsibility. And then comes the sobering warning to husbands, "So that your prayers may not be hindered."

You cannot separate your relationship from your wife and your relationship from God. Man, imagine that you were planning on getting into work 10 minutes earlier. You decided you're going to read the Proverbs in a month, a chapter a day, and you get in a fight on the phone with your wife as you're driving to the office.

That extra 10 minutes that you left early, you were planning good intentions to sit down and do Bible reading. Where's your heart going to be? Are you ready to hear the word having maybe just said a cruel or harsh word?

That your prayers may not be hindered. You cannot mistreat your wife and then pretend everything is fine. You cannot walk into your home and say, "My will be done," and then go and kneel down to pray and say, "Your will be done." Those two prayers don't come from the same lips. God cares about how you treat your wife, how you speak to her, how you lead her, how you listen to her, how you love her, how you use your strength, because you are not the Lord.

Christ is Lord, and that changes what marriage looks like. This is marriage as designed by God. The sinful husband hears lead and thinks control. He hears take responsibility and thinks everybody must obey me in the way that I want them to obey me when I want them to obey me. But Christian headship begins on our knees.

Your will be done, not my will be done. If Christ is your Lord, your authority must look like Christ. As this brings us back to the larger picture, why does Peter speak this way? Why does he take this time to tell the church about God's ordering in His world? Every institution, the government, even as he addressed slaves and masters, as he addresses marriages, all of those are inhabited by sinners.

Governments fail, husbands fail, wives fail. The problem is not God's ordering, the problem is our sin. From the beginning, sinners have wanted to establish their own order. The temptation in the garden was not just to eat the forbidden fruit, it was the desire to decide for ourselves what is good and evil, to become our own authority.

This is that same tension that we still wrestle with, this desire to be in control.

But we don't begin with ourselves, we begin with God. God made a world, He ordered it. And every earthly authority, he has placed under the feet of Christ, our King. The government is not Lord, the husband is not Lord, the wife is not Lord. Christ is Lord, and that is what makes submission possible. The governing authorities, slaves and masters in marriage, a wife can submit to her husband because she ultimately trusts Christ.

A husband can exercise headship without becoming a tyrant. Why? Because he's living a life that should be submitting to Christ. Every earthly authority is limited. Every earthly authority is accountable. And even as Peter shifted in the book, that we are to keep our conduct honorable so that others might see it, we see this pattern, and it's particularly pronounced here when it comes to marriage.

Why? Ephesians 5 tells us that marriage is a picture of the gospel. The way husbands and wives, you love one another, shows Christ's love for the church. There's a visibleness to that covenant that you make in the way that you love one another. And in Scripture, we see that it proclaims Christ's love for the church.

So we should strive for marriages that conform to God's design and that love as he loved.

Closing Prayer

Let us pray. Father, Lord, we do thank you for the gift of your good design of marriage. Lord, we do pray that marriage would be held in honor by all, not just in the church, not just in our state or country, but in all of the world, that your design would go forth in a way that is for the good of man, for the flourishing, that we might be fruitful and multiply.

For the ways that we can sin in marriage and wound those that we often are called to love the closest, help us to see and love our husbands and wives as the nearest neighbors, as heirs of life with us. Pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.