In the Same Way, part 3

“In the same way,” young people, you must trust the wisdom found in gray hair. You need to submit to those who have lived life and have an understanding that cannot come without age.
 

1 Peter 3:1 “Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives.” “In the same way,” wives, be submissive to your husbands. This is not calling for wives to live in submission merely for the sake of keeping them under, but rather to submit to God’s way of getting things done, so that HE can lift them up.

You see submission ALWAYS works to the submitted one’s advantage. If you don’t believe that, then just do it your way and see how effective you are. See if you can come up with a better way than God’s way.

An ungodly man can be won over by the godly behavior of his wife. And in this case godly behavior is displayed through your own submission to him. Women who are married to non-Christian men often make the mistake of thinking that their submission to Jesus is more important than their submission to their husbands; consequently, they will do anything for Jesus and nothing for their husbands. But the truth is that Jesus is saying that the only way to submit to Him is through your submission to your husband. There is no such thing as submitting to Jesus but not your husband. 

You can fight this principle all you want, but keep in mind, “God will resist the proud but will give grace to the humble.” That is the idea behind Jesus entrusting Himself to the One who judges justly. Jesus was being completely mistreated; He was misunderstood; He was reviled and ultimately crucified. But instead of taking things in His own hands, He put all of that in the hands of the One who will balance the books in the end.
 

What does that mean? It means that even if you are mistreated your whole earthly existence; there is another life to come, one where everything you did for Jesus will pay off. He will lift you up in due time. I imagine that once we get to heaven and we see the glory of God, and walk the streets of gold, and God balances the books, we are going to look back at our earthly existence and say something like, “I can’t believe I was so concerned about what was happening to me on earth! I can’t believe, in light of the glory I’m now experiencing, that I used what I considered an injustice to me as an excuse to disobey the Lord.” 

We get so tied into this life that we forget the Biblical principles we are supposed to be living by, simply because they don’t seem to be working to our benefit currently. What did the commercial on TV say? It’s my money and I want it now! We could adapt that to our current situation and say, “It’s my blessing and I want it now!” What if Jesus had done that? What if He had had enough deprival, enough criticism, enough mistreatment, and finally came to the point of saying, “Forget My Father’s plan. I’m going to start doing things for Me! After all, I am the Savior of the world and I’m being neglected.”
 

Had Jesus had that attitude… do you see how that could have affected every one of our futures? What would our eternity be if we didn’t have the sinless Savior? What if Jesus had not lived a Godly life in the midst of ungodliness?

That is the nature of what Peter is saying to those who live with ungodly husbands. Your attitude toward the Will of God will affect their eternity. And if your attitude is such that there is no way you are going to submit to that ungodly man, then God’s heart is breaking over his eternity.

Continued tomorrow