Morning friend,

A week or so ago after one of our public teachings on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, someone e-mailed me a question. I asked her if I could answer it here and she said, “Please do.” She had asked her pastor how to handle her angry spouse and her pastor’s answer is a good example of why you need to educate yourself on what the Bible really teaches about how to manage relational distress and sin.

This week I taught our workshop, If He Doesn’t Hit You, Is it Still Abuse? and opened our doors to our CONQUER membership. If you struggle with knowing God’s love for you because of the abuse you’ve experienced, and/or the advice you’ve been given, please consider joining CONQUER. You will get the support, the information, and the Biblical clarity you crave.

Here is her question, her pastor’s response, as well as my thoughts on it.

Today’s Question: I wrote to my pastor and asked him this question.

“What if a wife is a victim of her husband’s hostility?”

His response was: “There is no “victim” if we understand that we are called to suffer for righteousness. “For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow His steps” (I Peter 2:21).

Christ was not a victim! He willingly gave His life for us.

…by whose stripes ye were healed” (I Peter 2:24). “Likewise, ye wives…” (I Peter 3).

Leslie, do you agree? If not, can you answer the question differently and respond to my pastor’s answer?

Answer: I’m going to assume you explained much more to your pastor than you have stated here about what’s going on in your marriage and some specific examples of your husband’s hostility. In my answer I’m also going to assume your husband’s hostility is frequent, harsh, scary and getting worse.

Because no one is perfect, any one of us might have a hostile outburst when stressed, tired, or hangry. But when that happens, a healthy sinner would repent and make amends, not excuses. Therefore, I’m going to assume that your husband has a long-standing pattern of being hostile towards you and you’re getting more than tired of it.

I’m sad your pastor is not better informed on abuse. Even though he is your pastor, he is misapplying Scripture and not speaking truth. It probably isn’t intentional, but it’s still damaging and dangerous because of his position. Let me unpack some of the problems I see with what he said.

First, he said there are no victims if we understand that we are called to suffer for righteousness. That sounds like spiritual gaslighting. Is your pastor saying an abused wife is called to willingly suffer for her husband’s sinful abuse? For his sinful anger? And that doing so is what God calls suffering for righteousness? Whose righteousness? Certainly not your husband's righteousness? He’s being sinful and harsh.

Your pastor is drawing an unequal comparison between Christ’s willing sacrifice when he went to the cross for our sin, and you being willing to suffer under your husband’s sinful hostility. First, Jesus was not always willing to sacrifice himself, especially to others' sinful hostility. For example, in Luke 4:28,29 it says, “When they heard this, the people in the synagogue were furious (Sinful hostility). Jumping up, they mobbed him (Jesus) and forced him to the edge of the hill on which the town was built. They intended to push him over the cliff, but he passed right through the crowd and went on his way.” Hmmm. Jesus didn’t willingly allow himself to suffer for righteousness. Instead, he valued his safety and didn’t let himself be harmed by their rage.

In John 10:39 it says, “Once again (not the first time) they tried to arrest him, but he got away and left them.” Later on, in John 11 it says, “So from that time on, the Jewish leaders began to plot Jesus’ death. As a result, Jesus stopped his public ministry among the people and went to a place near the wilderness…..” Again, we see Jesus did not allow other people to harm him, until there was a clear purpose.

Only once, when his Father said it was time, did Jesus willingly sacrifice himself to abuse. In all the other instances we read about in Scripture, Jesus was not willing, nor did he allow himself to be harmed. Jesus was a good steward of his body, his mind, and his life and we are called to do likewise. I’d be curious why your pastor didn’t encourage you to follow Jesus’ example in these ways.

Yes, it’s true that as Christians we may at times choose to willingly sacrifice ourselves in love for the good of the other (like Jesus did at the cross as well as when he stayed up late healing people or teaching them when he was tired).

For example, we might choose to donate our extra kidney to someone who needs a transplant. We might run into a house fire to rescue children who are trapped. We might jump into a pond to save someone drowning at the risk of our own life. We might sacrifice a vacation to pay someone’s overdue rent or college tuition. But these kinds of WILLING sacrifices are always done for someone’s good. They are NOT done to enable someone’s unrighteousness, foolishness, or for more sin to continue. For example, you would not be willing to sacrifice your hard-earned money to an addict to buy more drugs. That would be foolish for you and unloving to the addict.

Sacrificing yourself to your husband’s hostility does not lead to your husband’s good or well-being. It only enables his sinfulness to continue without consequences. The Bible warns, “what you sow you reap” (Galatians 6:7). When you sow weeds, you shouldn’t expect a crop of flowers or vegetables. When a person sows abusive hostility in a relationship, including marriage, reality says you don’t get to reap a peaceful, loving relationship. It is not wise for you to get in the way of legitimate consequences that may serve to wake up a sinner to his (or her) sin.

Second, your pastor misused that passage in 1 Peter 3 to support tradition, but I believe wrong thinking. Your pastor wrote: “likewise wives … .but never clearly defined what he thinks it meant, but implied once again, that your role as a wife should be to willingly suffer abuse in marriage. But I would ask for what purpose? Does choosing to suffer your husband’s hostility make your marriage healthier? No. Does it do your husband good? No. Does it do you good? No. Does it bring God glory? No. It is a losing strategy all the way around.

Therefore, the question “for what purpose” is crucial here and Peter does give you an answer. What should someone be willing to suffer and sacrifice for?

In the context, 1 Peter 3, Peter is talking about husbands who do not obey God’s word. Peter says that a wife’s godly behavior will speak to her unbelieving husband without words. We all know that actions speak louder than words. Most often that’s taken to mean that a wife’s kind, gracious, loving, and long-suffering actions will speak to her husband louder than any words about salvation or sin will.….and that’s true. But it’s also true that her loving actions might include boundaries and consequences that communicate with no words, “that this sinful behavior is not okay and I’m not willing to live LIKE THIS anymore.”

Remember Peter is writing in a patriarchal culture where women had no voice or rights per se. But Peter says something that is gold for Christian women who long to please God in these kinds of marriages. He’s not saying willingly to put up with abuse. He says, “You are her daughters (Sarah’s daughters) when you DO (action) WHAT IS RIGHT without fear of what your husbands might do.” Pater continues by saying “when you suffer for doing what is right, this pleases God.”

What might that look like (doing what is right)? Especially when you’ve already used your words over and over again to say stop, ouch, don’t, I don’t like it, it’s hurtful and nothing changes? Might it look like leaving the room when he’s being harsh? Refusing to drive together if he’s road raging? Calling the police if he’s threatening physical harm? Leaving the relationship temporarily or even permanently if he does not want to work to change his harshness and repair the broken relationship?

Your pastor could have encouraged you that 1 Peter 3 also reminds husbands to honor their wives and treat them in an understanding way. (vs 7). Colossians 3:19 says something similar. Women and wives matter to God. How husbands treat their wives matter to God.

Yes, God values the sanctity of marriage but not more than the safety and sanity of the people in it. Yours and your husband’s. You do not help your husband nor love him well by continuing to allow him to verbally batter you with no consequences. That harms not only you, it harms him, and it harms your relationship as well as any children who are watching or also receiving this harsh treatment.

Oswald Chambers said it best when it comes to choosing to suffer. He wrote: “No healthy Christian ever chooses suffering; he chooses God's will, as Jesus did, whether it means suffering or not.”

Therefore, your work is to ask yourself if it is God’s will for you to sacrifice the best of yourself to enable a man who is the worst of himself and does not want to change or grow? Is that a noble sacrifice or God’s will for you or for your husband? No.

CONQUER is now open until April 18^th. You can join here. Most times we need the support and encouragement of others walking the same journey to grow the courage to do what is right without fear.

Friend, in what ways are you learning to double check what others tell you the Bible says and ask the Holy Spirit for wisdom and think for yourself?