Did you know that Sarah called Abraham "lord"? Not "Lord" with a capital L, which is only reserved for God, but "lord" with a small l. I Peter 3:5,6 reads, "For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands: Even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters ye are..."
What does this mean and how is it applicable to us today? Are we suppose to call our husbands "lord"? If we take Scripture as a whole, we know exactly what God meant by this. He wants us to reverance our husbands. He wants us to give them honor. He wants us to submit to them and even obey them. What does this look like?
It means we don't scold them or tell them what to do. We never are to treat them as children. We never speak evil of them to others. We only think highly of them and dwell on their good qualities. It means we are kind, gentle, and loving to them. It means we do what they ask, when they ask without grumbling or complaining. It means we speak highly of them to our children and others, building them up. If they are doing something we don't like, we don't scold them. We continue to act loving and kind and win them without a word as the Bible teaches.
Is this easy? No, but most of us have fallen into a rut of treating our husbands disrespectfully and dishonorably. We must begin practicing treating them as our authority with respect and honor for as we submit and obey our husband, we are submitting to and obeying God. Practice makes perfect. Change your thinking, then your behavior will change, and gradually even your feelings will change.
Logging you in...
Cynthia · 590 weeks ago
Lori Alexander 122p · 590 weeks ago
The Bible is God's Word written in and through history which contains many imperfect people, including Sarah. In I Peter 3, God's Word, through Peter, extols Sarah's virtue as a godly, obedient wife . We can look back into the history section of the Bible and see that Sarah appears to have had some faults, many of which were similar to my faults the first twenty years of marriage. Both of us were strong willed women who believed we knew better than our husbands on most things.
Peter, and God, were fully aware of these passages when Peter gives the final word on Sarah, using her as a godly example of an obedient wife. We do not know if this was a general characteristic throughout her life with a few significant exceptions, or whether obedience to Abraham became the pattern of her life in her latter years. Sarah lived some fifty years after the last incident in Genesis, plenty of time for her life to have shown obedience to her husband after learning from her mistakes.
No matter what life Sarah lived, God says we too are to be in subjection to our own husbands and reverence them. And he repeats this message multiple times in multiple ways because it is that important to Him.
Jon · 590 weeks ago
Ken · 590 weeks ago
I am not one who advocates pinning a husband or wife to a wall as any normal course of action, but in the context the concept was originally proposed was a wife who was constantly acting out and out of control and she wanted to get a reaction out of her husband who would simply run away from her, which made her even more out of control. What was discovered in counseling the two was that in spite of all her upset and antics, this wife was longing for her husband to stand up to her and tell her "stop it."
I am not opposed to a wife telling a husband to "stop it" in a firm, meaningful and hopefully gentle manner if a husband is acting out. For that matter, a godly husband should take the lead and tell his wife to pin him to a wall and tell him to stop it when acting out of character, out of control, because obviously at that time he needs help.
Our wives are our help meets, to help meet our needs. I fully expect my wife to use her brains to help get her husband to where he needs to be when I begin to go against the ideals I have clearly outlined for my life and for the family.
Perhaps the two instances where Sarah goes against Abraham are just such instances. Imagine that Abraham was being disobedient when God told him to send Hagar and Ishmael away, and over time God used Sarah to accomplish his purpose.
There are times, especially times that a husband is under stress, or walking in sin, that a wife has every right to call this to his attention. To pin him in a hallway to get his attention, or to walk up and give him a big bear hug and say, "I love you. The kids love you. But this cannot keep going on with you being upset all the time." That does not violate anything that the scriptures teach on submission of wives.
Submission is not blind obedience, but a heart attitude to serve and please one's spouse. I fully expect Lori to do what it takes to get my attention if I have gone out of control, and I have given her the tools and permission to do so. What a wife has to be careful of is motive, and how she approaches things.
A wife can suggest limits to her husband but he will ultimately be the one who must decide if they are wise, or even acceptable to him. No godly husband should want to live with a submissive mealy-mouthed wife. It is a partnership of equals, and sometimes my employees have to tell me that I am wrong. Does that make them not submissive to me? Not at all, because I can tell them, "I will think about it," or "You are right" or "No, do it my way."
An attitude of submission is the willingness to "please my husband in everything." BUT, a good wife knows that at times I had best not please him in the short run, because in the long run he will have regrets. So my pleasing him aims for the longer view of life and the relationship. It would be pretty silly for my wife to help me out of a party and know I had drunk too much, but still let me drive because I had insisted. She looks to the time when I have my wits about me, and pleases me with that not in the short term enabling me to go to jail or kill someone.
So I am not necessarily a fan of pinning anyone, but I am an advocate for pleasing one another with a global and not myopic view of life. I also know that there are times that it takes a little bit extra to get a spouse's attention, and without that attention, the spouse may continue to spiral downward. In those rare cases, either spouse must do what the Lord places on their heart, and seek godly counsel.