In the same way, you husbands must give honor to your wives. Treat your wife with understanding as you live together. She may be weaker than you are, but she is your equal partner in God’s gift of new life. Treat her as you should so your prayers will not be hindered.
-I Peter 3:6, NLT
Do you notice what is missing in this exhortation to husbands?
Nowhere in this verse–or the corresponding ones for wives–do I see Peter tell us divorce is on the table for failing to follow his instructions. These are important exhortations to follow, BUT Peter is not treating these as marriage ending issues.
This is news for the evangelical subculture in my experience.
I want to throw up thinking about male pastors talking about their wives potentially divorcing them if they lacked the consideration Peter tells them to exhibit in this verse. That sort of considerations are irrelevant as it comes to talking biblical divorce.
We who divorced a spouse over adultery were not simply dealing with inconsiderate spouse issues. We were dealing with marriage ending sin–namely, adultery (see Deuteronomy 22:22, Matthew 19:9, etc.)!
Honestly, pastors who talk this way are like someone telling an amputee about the time they had to have a doctor remove their ingrown toenail. Both involve pain and removal of something, but that is where the similarity ends. They are NOT the same thing!
Inconsiderate behavior–while sin–is not marriage ending sin per this verse in I Peter. That is NOT the consequence Peter warns us about in this verse.
This is important because it shapes how faithful spouses are treated. Someone who fails to see this basic fact from I Peter will be ill-equipped to help faithful spouses.
Christians who think this way are going to minimize the trauma adultery survivors experience. They will categorize the “amputation” as the same as the “hangnail” removal.
So, it is no surprise the care we get from such Christians is seriously lacking. They assume I Peter 3:6 says something it does not.
Faithful spouses did not “amputate” over a “hangnail” issue; we “amputated” over adulterous “gangrene” that threatened our very spiritual and emotional existence!
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*A version of this post ran previously.
