Image: "Purity", 2013, Severna Park, Md
1 Peter 3:3–4 Do not let your adornment be merely outward—arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel—4 rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God.
1 Peter 3:8–9 Finally, all of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another; love as brothers, be tenderhearted, be courteous; 9 not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary blessing, knowing that you were called to this, that you may inherit a blessing.
1 Peter 4:11 If anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God. If anyone ministers, let him do it as with the ability which God supplies, that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belong the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen.
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My favorite moment at any normal wedding is that instant when the groom sees his bedecked and gloriously arrayed wife for the first time. Usually, the wedding march has started and everyone is standing and facing the door where she will appear But not me. I look at her second. My attention is first focused on the groom for the fleeting instant of shocked appreciation and delight. It's worth all the trouble and preparation for me. This was especially true when it was my own sons who were standing there at the altar.
It becomes obvious from scripture, that God uses the special metaphor for marriage as revelatory of His relation, as a husband, to His wife, the church. There are too many passages to even scan for this teaching. But within today's passage, (3:1-4 in particular) we get a glimpse of the quality of this relation. Peter calls for wives to be "adorned" for their husbands unto the end that they might be "won" over to Christ (if she had previously married as an unbeliever to an unbelieving husband). And what was the nature of this "adornment" that so grabbed the husband's attention and like the young groom, filled him with deep respect, appreciation, and gratitude? It was the "incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit which is very precious in the sight of God!" Here we find the true, unfading beauty which is worth far more than any "gold" which might adorn her hair.
What God is here telling us is that this is the "beauty" that He sees in His Church. We can think of Him as we think of the young groom, delighting in exuberant joy at the vision of His bride. The beauty of Christ's Church which furnishes our God so much joy is that very inward, hidden, incorruptible, gentle, and quiet spirit. What Peter here exhorts godly women to attain is absolutely incumbent upon all men also. We, along with them, comprise God's "Wife", His bride, and therefore we must not somehow think that this teaching is for women only. It is not.
If any further proof is required then the remaining sections of this chapter furnish it in abundance.
Is not the love that Peter commends in vs. 8 just this same, quiet, gentle spirit reaching out to others as a loving wife opens her arms to her husband? We must remember that when God created man and woman that both were created in the image of God and, to a very large extent, that image was their corporate nature. The created differences in the two genders are not only complementary but are designed to be mutually assimilated. Husbands are to learn from their wives to value life and all things through that special feminine insight God gives to women. Women are to learn from their husbands an appreciation for distinctly masculine perspectives on such things, for example, as vocation and external calling. Becoming "one flesh" is both a declared status established by God at the moment of formal marriage and a process that happens as the couple jointly undertake their life together. When husbands "dwell" (vs. 7) with their wives with understanding, then that husband cannot help but be impacted by the special perspectives and wisdom that she displays. The same is true for the wife.
Thus it is how God wants us to understand Him and His relationship to us, His Church, through this Scriptural ideal of marriage. Our affections within marriage, if we cultivate them in the manner God has commanded, will more and more grow to reflect God's affections toward us. We understand Him better and more deeply when we understand the love and affection that can and should exist between men and women.
What we must also understand is that God already sees us as beautiful. His Bride has already been purified, washed in the shed blood of Jesus Christ, and therefore without spot or blemish in His eyes. You and I, as members of that elected community, have been sanctified and dressed in the spotless white robes of His Bride. All Peter is here exhorting is for us to appreciate this metaphor and then to so direct our steps as to bring our present lives into conformity with what is already true. We are eternally beautiful, like a Godly Wife. So, let us act like it.
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