There’s nothing more controversial today than marriage. If you want to start an argument in the sophisticated circles of our society, just bring up marriage. People argue over what constitutes marriage, why marriage no longer works, and how old fashioned traditional marriage is. More and more people are forsaking marriage, choosing to live together instead. Why is this relationship at the center of such debate?

I have some suggestions. First, the horrible failure rate for marriages. When it is estimated by many that half of all marriages will end in a painful, difficult divorce, why in the world would people want to enter into such a covenant? Simply put, if the “bridge is broke, don’t cross it.? Who would deny the difficulty of two people with such radical differences living together as one? Marriage takes commitment and devotion, two things that are valued but not expected or practiced in our postmodern setting. It is hard work and if it demands self sacrifice in order to maintain the commitment, it has got to go.

Second, the confusion of gender roles in marriage. Feminists have come along and argued that traditional marriage confines a woman to a traditional role which stifles her individuality and personal value. Throwing off all restraints that tradition seemed to burden a woman with demands that marriage be gotten rid of as well. The only way to “remodel? a woman’s role is to throw the “baby out with the bath water? and come up with a new arrangement. Until some other alternative comes along, living together or simply living single will suffice. Such an arrangementhonors the full integrity of both partners better than marriage does.

Third, the very “definition? of marriage is too rigid. Marriage is really an institution that originated in Scripture and since Scripture has been undermined in our world, so has anything that relies on Scripture. So if you are going to limit marriage to one man and one woman and to an institution that God has the authority to describe and that is supposed to last as long as the lives of those within that marriage, just chunk the whole thing. After all, since sexuality has now been severed from the marriage context approvingly in our culture, who needs marriage?

Those are the top reasons I see for marriage falling out of favor today. The response of many has been to end marriage as we know it. Is that the proper response? That would be like getting rid of all cars because the one you bought was a lemon. That would be like determining whether baseball was a good sport by only attending a Kansas City Royals baseball game. God has never been ignorant of our tendency to think this way. His instructions for how we are to behave in marriage were designed to counter these tendencies. The problem with marriage is not a problem with marriage–it is a problem with us. Any weakness in marriage comes about because we are not thinking and acting within marriage the way God wants us to. What needs to happen is not a change in marriage but a change in us.

What I believe will fix most of these problems is submission–not to each other but to God’s will! Too many times we mess marriage up by living like we want or think best rather than living as God wants us to. This can be seen easily in a couple of ways. The worst thing you can do in preparing for marriage is to live together with the other person. Success in living together in no way translates to success in marriage. Statistics show that rather than being good practice, it is an arrangement that all but dooms your future marriage. Now doesn’t that seem strange? My thinking says that a trial run should give you greater chance at succeeding. That is not the case. Man’s logic fails here. We need to quit relying on our logic and start thinking as God has designed. The only failure rate worse that marrying after living together is marrying a second time. That, too, is strange. Wouldn’t the lessons from one failed marriage make a second marriage a sure thing? Not necessarily. Because no matter who you marry, you are still you. And where the problem often lies is in you. If my marriage fails, the problem will lie in me, not in marriage. We need to learn submission to God’s instruction about marriage–not just to the arrangement, but to the manner.

I believe the answer lies in providing the world a demonstration of biblical marriage. I don’t say this just to defend God’s institution. God is not just the author of marriage. He is the one who has described how the partners should behave in marriage. If we will obey his instruction, the institution won’t be up for debate. I have come to appreciate the issues Peter is getting to with his instruction in 1 Peter 3. Keep in mind this was in part of the letter written how Christians should live before the unbelieving world. So these instructions are for Christians married to unbelieving spouses. I am going to apply the passage to how we need to live in marriage in order to impress and influence the world, because I think marriage was intended by God to model faith. Call it “marriage evangelism? if you want, for God says that how we treat each other in marriage has an instructional facet to it (Ephesians 5). I have come to believe that if we would honor what God wants from us in marriage, we will no longer argue over who has the authority and who should be in submission and how “she should obey me? or “he should treat me better.? In fact, as one speaker put it, “I believe in a wife submitting to her husband, but I don’t believe the husband ever has the right to demand it. In fact, I know that when I am worthy of submission, my wife submits; and when I am unworthy of it, she does alot.? So in marriage, men need to concern themselves only with being worthy; women need to concern themselves with submission. When the husband or the wife either try to analyze it, demand it, worry about it, talk about it or define it, the image of marriage is distorted. They simply need to live it. They hoped in God. They dressed with holy character. They submitted to their husbands.

Peter begins by talking to the wives. There are six verses to the wife and one to the man. Why is that? Women need conversation and men need reader’s digest. The women need God to converse with them with many words and men just want it straight. How good is God about communicating to us?! And his concerns are completely different? Why is that? Each partner is unique and the role they are to play in marriage demands different things. What I look for from my wife is not necessarily what she looks for from me–have you discovered that to be the case? And what I might do to be comfortable in marriage may not really be what she needs from me. God realizes this and gives us help by showing us the things we need to focus on for the good of the other spouse.

Submission was set as the tone to this entire section. We see that in v. 13 and v. 18 of chapter 2. So Peter says that “in the same way,? wives are to submit. Wives are to view the marriage relationship as one with an obligation to submit, as all relationships are. Remember that submission is finding what the other party needs or wants from you and fulfilling that, so long as it does not compromise faith. But what does submission within the marriage context mean?

Tip number 1: Speak volumes with your life.

Don’t preach and nag and instruct. In stead, provide an example by how you live. And the guiding behaviors include purity and reverence. In other words, make it your ambition to live in order to please God and as you do, you will please your husband. God wants a life of moral purity and he wants a life that shows that you fear him more than anything else. The example is the holy women of the past. Notice the progression in them:

So if such an example is valuable to us, how will we live? Do what is right Do not be frightened. When you live by standards of the world, you are simply living in fear. You are afraid if you don’t dress like them, your husband won’t accept you. You are afraid if you don’t act like them, you won’t be liked. Fearing God means you have to fear no one else. Tip number 2: Accentuate inner beauty above external beauty. It is not wrong to want to look good. (Where does this come from?) But often what we are willing to do to look good according to the standards of the world makes us look bad according to the standards of our faith. The pagan women would make sure they had nice clothes, braided hair, and lots of gold to get the attention of their pagan men. The idea was that these things were used to make themselves look beautiful to others. The irony is that these women had to find the right thing to add to themselves to be perceived as beautiful to their pagan husbands. But Christian women were to pursue something else. They were to pursue inner beauty–character. They were to be beautiful rather than just look beautiful. Let me say a couple things about this.