It’s time to revisit submission and Sarah!
Way back in 2018, even before we wrote The Great Sex Rescue, I wrote a big series on submission. I haven’t revisited it much since then because I had already written the series! But this week I’ve found myself linking back to those posts as we’ve been discussing Doug Wilson, and so I thought it would be a good idea to re-run that whole series, since most of you haven’t ever seen it.
So let’s jump in with one of the more controversial passages: 1 Peter 3.
I get a lot of “drive-by” Bible verse quoting on this website
Especially when it comes to issues of women and submission, I’ll have a long, drawn out post on how women should handle a husband’s sin that is endangering the family, and someone will leave a comment that simply quotes Bible verses on how women should stay silent and obey their husbands. 1 Peter 3 is a big one for them. They often quote verses like:
1 Peter 3
Wives, in the same way submit yourselves to your own 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, 2 when they see the purity and reverence of your lives.3 …For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to adorn themselves. They submitted themselves to their own husbands, 6 like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her lord. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.
This is a very passive aggressive technique–it’s like saying “I’m absolutely right without having to make any argument because THE BIBLE.”
I’d like to spend this series looking at how Jesus wants women to act in marriage–and I’d like to lay the groundwork in this first post by looking at how using the Bible to silence women isn’t biblical at all. Today we’ll look at how that method of interpreting Scripture is seriously off; and then we’ll look at how too many who want to silence women ignore Jesus, who is, after all, The Word of God. Then later we’ll turn to how we should be treating and serving our husbands in marriage.
And I want to start with this passage in 1 Peter 3, because it is left so often in the comments that I just want to deal with it once and for all.
Scripture cannot contradict itself
We know that ALL Scripture is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16), and that means that Scripture has to tell one complete story–the same story.
Yet when someone uses “Drive-by” Bible verses, and I leave a long comment with plenty of Scripture references showing that the issue is far more nuanced than that, they typically ignore all my other Scriptural evidence and just repeat the verse, as if that is an argument.
Too often, commenters refuse to engage with the whole of the Bible. In fact, I had one commenter tell me that the ONLY woman that we are supposed to emulate is Sarah, since she’s the one that Peter specifically tells us to emulate. Apparently women shouldn’t take any significance out of how Mary or Deborah or Lydia or Elizabeth or Hannah or any other woman lived. Only Sarah. That makes it sound like the Bible for women should only be about 5 verses. Today I want to engage his argument. Let’s only look at the 1 Peter passage about Sarah. First, we’ll look at Sarah, the object of these words; and then we’ll look at Peter, the author of these words.
Did Sarah always obey Abraham?
Peter writes:
They submitted themselves to their own husbands, 6 like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her lord. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.
Reading this verse, and only this verse, gives the implication that Sarah obeyed Abraham in everything because he was her master. When Peter was writing this, though, he was writing to Jews, people who were very familiar with the Abraham and Sarah story. They would have read that verse with all of the history of Abraham and Sarah in mind. And what would they have thought? Let’s look at the four main interactions that the Bible records between Sarah and Abraham.
1. God called Abraham to leave his homeland, Ur, and go to a place that God hadn’t revealed to him yet (and would later become the Promised Land). And Sarah went with him.
As far as we know, God didn’t tell Sarah any of this, but she followed Abraham anyway.
2. In the longest interaction, Sarah and Abraham negotiated what they should do together (without God)
Genesis 16 tells the story of Sarah and Abraham remaining childless, years after Abraham received the prophecy that his descendants would be numerous and that God would bless them. So Sarah suggested that Abraham take her handmaid Hagar and use her to get offspring. In this interlude, we don’t see Sarah obeying Abraham, but instead Abraham listening to Sarah. (The mistake here is that neither checked in with God or did what God wanted).
3. Abraham was told to obey Sarah.
Many years later, after their son Isaac was born, Sarah told Abraham to get rid of his other son and Hagar, who bore him. Sarah knew that the promise was to come through Isaac, not Ishmael, and Ishmael was a threat to Isaac. Abraham didn’t want to do this, but God told Abraham to obey his wife:
But God said to Abraham, ‘Do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named after you.
So Abraham expelled Hagar and Ishmael. (God, however, did take pity on the two who had suffered so much, and protected Hagar and made sure that Ishmael thrived as well.)
4. Sarah agreed to lie about Abraham’s identity.
Twice when the couple were traveling through unfriendly territory, Abraham told Sarah to lie on his behalf and say that she was his sister rather than his wife (though he claimed it wasn’t a lie since she was his half-sister). As it turned out, the rulers took Sarah, who was very beautiful, into their harems. Sarah sacrificed her own well-being, and in at least one occasion God spared her any harm. What was her motivation? Was it obedience for the sake of obedience, as my drive-by commenters would imply?
In Genesis 12:13, we learn why. Abraham says:
Say you are my sister, so that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared on your account.
Abraham doesn’t say, “do what I say because you’re my wife and you must obey.” He says, “protect my safety and act to bless me.”
If we are to emulate Sarah, then, what do we learn from these four stories that the Bible tells us about their interactions?
The overall message of Sarah’s life would be: Follow your husband when God is clearly telling him something, even if you’re scared, but confront your husband when he is obviously not following God. Don’t do things without checking with God first. And, as Peter reiterated in his letter, do what is right (don’t lie for other people).
Who did Peter think we should obey?
The Jewish readers of Peter’s letters also would have read his words through the eyes of their own relationship with Peter. These people knew Peter (they likely were part of the Jerusalem church that was later scattered in the persecution), and so they would take what they knew of Peter into account when trying to figure out what Peter meant by things.
Let’s look at just one chapter in the book of Acts that sheds light on Peter’s thinking about obeying one’s husband and following God’s will: Acts 5. Acts 5 opens with the story of Ananias and Sapphira, a married couple who had decided to sell a piece of property, keep back some of the money, but tell the apostles that they were donating the whole thing to God. Ananias came in first and gave the apostles the money, and then he was struck dead for lying to God. A little while later Sapphira came in, and Peter checked with her, too–“was this the whole price?” She said it was, and Peter said,
How is it that you have agreed together to put the Spirit of the Lord to the test?
He gave her the chance to separate her actions from her husband’s. And if she had–if she had told the truth, in contrast to her husband–she would have been spared. As it was, she was struck dead, just like Ananias. Doing something wrong just because your husband did it is no excuse before God.
Later in the chapter Peter makes the point even more clearly. Peter and the apostles were arrested by the temple police, and had to defend themselves before the council. They were ordered to stop preaching in the name of Jesus, and Peter declared,
“We must obey God rather than man!”
To Peter, we serve God and God only. We obey God, not men. He was absolutely adamant about this in the way that he lived his life and in the way that he taught the early church. And these two events were pivotal to the early believers. The readers of Peter’s letter, then, would not have taken his words to mean that women should just follow men and do whatever their husbands wanted. That’s putting the husband in the place of Jesus, and that’s idolatry!
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So what would the readers of Peter’s letter have thought about emulating Sarah?
My drive-by commenters believe this verse clearly says that women should always obey their husbands no matter what. However, the readers of Peter’s letter would never have thought that. First, they would have known that Peter didn’t think this; but second, even if Peter had wanted to tell his readers to do so, he would not have used Sarah as the example. Sarah’s life was hardly the picture of a wife obeying her husband in everything! Instead, when contemporary Jewish readers encountered Peter’s command that women emulate Sarah, who obeyed Abraham “rather than giving way to fear”, that last part would have given them the context of what Peter meant.
They would have known that it was not a command to obey in all circumstances. Instead, they would take that bit of the verse–“rather than giving way to fear”–and hearken back to to the times that Sarah DID obey, even when it was scary.
First, there was the time when Sarah acted to save Abraham’s life. Even though he was acting badly, and even though she was in an impossible situation, she acted for his good. In the context of this passage, where Peter is talking to women married to unbelieving husbands who have no choice in the matter, remembering Sarah and how God kept her safe regardless is a comforting thought.
And second, she acted without fear when she followed Abraham out of Ur, because God called him. That was a pivotal time in Jewish history (really the beginning of Jewish history). It would make sense that Peter would remind his readers of it.
The messages they would take?
- When you’re in an impossible situation with your husband, God will protect you.
- When God is speaking, you follow by faith.
It’s that simple. They would never think that it meant that women should not confront their husbands’ sin, or that women should forget God’s will and only follow their husband’s will, because that would go against everything they knew of Sarah, and everything they knew of Peter. Instead, they would have remembered Sarah exercising faith when God told Abraham something. And that’s an important lesson for all of us–it just isn’t the lesson that these drive-by commenters think.
Drive-by verse quoting is immature and silly.
We learn about God and how we should act through the whole of Scripture, together, with each piece showing a different part of the puzzle. When people choose to ignore the rest of Scripture because of one verse–well, then they’re the ones not treating the Bible seriously. So next time you’re trying to figure out what the Bible says on a complicated issue, and someone quotes one Bible verse as if it makes further discussion unnecessary, they’re the ones in the wrong. It’s okay to ignore them, but if you can, try to make them defend their position when other Bible stories contradict it. Next we’ll look at Jesus, because He is the author and perfecter of our faith, and He is the one that we need to see all Scripture through.
And we’ll see what Jesus would say to people who believe like my drive-by commenters!
Our Submission Series
- What does it mean to obey like Sarah?
- Does the way we talk about submission make marriage into an idol?
- In the case of ties, he wins--Is that what submission means?
- Are you following God or your husband?
- What does submission really mean?
You may also enjoy other posts on submission:
- The Marriage You Want--about the kind of marriages that thrive
- Keith's series on the Danvers Statement (the statement defending complementarianism)
- PODCAST: Are we making a strawman out of complementarianism?
- PODCAST: We sum up the Danvers Statement's issues!
In the first incident of Abram using his wife as a human shield, we don’t know whether or not Sarai was intimate with Pharaoh. It seems so: Genesis 12:17 But the Lord inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram’s wife Sarai. 18 So Pharaoh summoned Abram. “What have you done to me?” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife? 19 Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her to be my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go!”
In the second incident of Abraham using his wife as a human shield, we do know that Sarah was NOT intimate with Abimelek, because Scripture plainly states so. Genesis 20:4 Now Abimelek had not gone near her, so he said, “Lord, will you destroy an innocent nation? 5 Did he not say to me, ‘She is my sister,’ and didn’t she also say, ‘He is my brother’? I have done this with a clear conscience and clean hands.”
Here’s my point: Did these incidents figure into how long Abe and Sarah waited for a child. God wanted this child to be Abe’s child. How could anyone be certain Isaac was Abe’s child if Abe wouldn’t stop pimping his wife to foreign dignitaries! Could those two even see THEIR PART in having to wait so long for the child.
As a recovering pastor’s wife, I have experienced several times my husband used me as a human shield, of course not to the extent of Abraham and Sarah. It’s difficult to rebuild trust after these times.
That’s such a good point! Also, I’m so sorry for what you went through in your marriage. Truly.
I’ve heard several messages where it has been suggested that the delay was to make sure no one thought the baby was not Abraham’s. I also heard one message which suggested the levels of stress Sarah must have experienced during these times could also have caused delay, since it would have been hard for her body to cope with pregnancy and childbirth while she was healing from such a traumatic experience. Although I’m not sure it’s fair to bracket Sarah with Abraham (“Could those two even see THEIR PART in having to wait so long for the child”). Yes, she could have told people she was Abraham’s wife, but since he’d told her that he would likely be killed if she did, that would be a very hard thing for her to do – keep quiet, be forced into marriage with a foreign ruler but know your husband is safe and well, or speak up, still be forced into marriage with a foreign ruler but know that your words resulted in your husband being killed?
It almost sounds like unless your husband is asking you to sin you are to obey him?
In the Ancient Greek East, there was the system of kyrioi which was an institution where women were under a Kyrios, i.e., Lord or male relative (could be husband, father, son, or other male relative). Legally, the Kyrios was responsible to be a guardian of the woman’s marriage and property rights such as arranging marriage or representing her in court. In the Roman West, women had a lot more freedom than the Kyrios system in the Greek East. So 1 Peter 3 is written to christians in Asian Minor where Kyrioi laws were present. When Peter is saying Sarah obeyed Abraham, I think he is clarifying what this obedience is by “calling him lord”. Peter is drawing parallels between Sarah’s situation in “calling Abraham lord” with women in Asia Minor being under the legal guardianship of the Kyrioi. These women have to live under this system, and Peter is telling them how to best continue to show christian behavior in situations where they have “to obey every human authority” such as the Kyrioi system especially in circumstances where the husband is an unbeliever. However, Peter uses the word submit rather than obey so the wife may possibly convert the husband by her godly behavior. The wife submits in situations that don’t compromise her Christian believes, but is to”do what is right and do not give into fear” in situations that may compromise her Christian believes. So I believe that Peter is telling these women how to exist in those particular circumstances with an unbelieving husband and not because he expects obedience to husbands in general. And the example of Sarah “calling him Lord” is because she existed in similar circumstances, but in the end, it was the Lord telling Abraham to obey her. So if the women in Asian Minor can convert their husbands they will be like Sarah.
This makes so much sense. I wish more people would consider context when interpreting the Bible, instead of reading it in the light of their own times and culture! A while back, I heard someone say “The Bible is written FOR us but it was not written TO us” and I try to remember that when I am reading it, and think about who those first readers were and how they would have understood it in their context.
It’s weird, I’ve heard so many sermons on things like Psalm 23 or the parable of the farmer sowing seed where the speaker says something like “we need to understand the historical and cultural context and how people looked after sheep/grew crops back then if we are to understand this correctly” and yet as soon as we get to anything about marriage, leadership or women’s roles, we get “The Bible is clear. It says this so we need to do it.” without any reference at all to historical and cultural context!
“This makes so much sense. I wish more people would consider context when interpreting the Bible, instead of reading it in the light of their own times and culture!”
In my experience (the Dispensation of Hal Lindsay), in The Plain Reading of SCRIPTURE, the demon locust plague of Revelation (the trippiest book of the Bible) was plainly helicopter gunships armed with chemical weapon stingers and piloted by long-haired bearded hippies. I hearken back to that every time I hear “The Bible is Clear”.
Yes, exactly. This whole passage is for women married to men who don’t obey the word, and in that situation women have no choice. It’s not supposed to be about modern women married to Christian husbands!
“Twice when the couple were traveling through unfriendly territory, Abraham told Sarah to lie on his behalf and say that she was his sister rather than his wife (though he claimed it wasn’t a lie since she was his half-sister).”
Many years ago, I read that this might have been a case of “crossed signals”. That in Abraham’s culture a sister outranked a mere wife in the kinship pyramid and that adopting your wife as your sister elevated her position in the family/clan. And since this was a point of pride, Abraham would have stressed this to foreigners like Pharoah. And if the foreigners did not have (or understand) this custom…
That sounds to me like the writer was feeling uncomfortable with the idea of Abraham handing his wife over to another man to save his own skin/gain wealth, and so is trying to excuse it as ‘cultural misunderstanding’, but I don’t buy it. If that were so, all he had to do when the other guys claimed Sarah for themselves was to tell them she was already married to him – the fact that he kept silent shows that he was happy for his wife to end up raped by another man as long as HE was ok.
Trying to clean up the image of ‘Bible heroes’ is quite common – I think a lot of people feel very, very uncomfortable at the actions of some of them! But if they’d been able to be perfect through their own efforts, Jesus wouldn’t have needed to have come. These aren’t perfect people, but very, very flawed people in need of God’s transforming power. I guess at least the writer in your example wasn’t trying to put the blame on Sarah – I’ve read some commentaries which claimed she ‘flaunted herself’ in front of the other men and that’s why they wanted her.
“the ONLY woman that we are supposed to emulate is Sarah, since she’s the one that Peter specifically tells us to emulate”
Without going into deep Bible research to create a spreadsheet for verification, it seems to me that most of Jesus’ interactions with women were when women were doing things that their men would have disapproved of/was socially suspect. Is this commenter saying that they believe Peter’s words take precedence over Jesus’ actions*? That’s putting Peter before Jesus. The most common definition of idolatry is putting something before God/Jesus. It’s an obvious inconsistency that Christians who participate in their definition of idolatry want other Christians to think they are teaching the truth.
Yet, the Bible is so complex, there’s so much material to try to remember and mentally reference, that a good talker can easily convince people of things. Not everyone can spend their life cross-referencing everything they are taught. This is why it is so important for teachers/preachers/pastors to be educated in a variety of views and to be expected to take the time to research, verify, and have strong arguments for what they teach. It’s why we should create a culture where sloppy arguments and cliches and repetition in place of logic are called out.
I didn’t realize that one sentence in this post hit such a hot button for me. I have a lot more to say, but I’ll leave it here for this comment.
*I suppose more intellectually curious people could debate if we are comparing Jesus’ actions to Peter’s words or a gospel author/compiler’s words about Jesus’ actions to Peter’s words, but that’s probably more than that commenter wants to get into and I’m not sure that it changes the point of making an idol out of Peter.
A lot of people like to forget verses that describe what is required for the Husband to do.
Ephesians 5:21
Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
This means a husband is also to submit to his wife.
Ephesians 5:25-5:30
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,
27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.
28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church—
30 for we are members of his body.
These scriptures are how to treat a wife. As Christ Jesus loved and died for the church so should the husband for his wife. In this way of speaking it’s a metaphor for how the husband is to put his wife first in love over himself.
To lead his wife to Jesus and speak scripture over her guarding her and protecting her. Showing her the love of Jesus through his actions. Then it also says to love her like he loves himself. This is to make sure that he understands his wife is his equal in the sense of her deserving respect and that she deserves love.
I am a single 35yr old man and I pray one day I can show my future wife this kind of love from Jesus. My heart hurts for all women that are mistreated and abused, it’s wrong and never can be justified. I pray in the name of Jesus that women are set free from mistreatment and abuse, that guardian angels will be sent to them for protection, in the name of Jesus Amen.
That’s lovely, Steven!
Thank you and God bless you and your team