According to the numbers, young women today are more fixated on their appearance than previous generations. However, this fixation is not fixing the deeper problem.

What is a young lady trying to fix when she seeks a glow up? What is she hoping to gain through all the time, money, and effort devoted to her appearance? Thankfully, God knows both the problem and the solution. He gives us clear answers in 1 Peter 3:1-6. In these verses, he instructs Christian women how to behave before a watching world so that onlookers say “wow!” not at their looks, but at their behaviour.

Throughout this section of his letter, Peter has been teaching us how to keep our conduct excellent before the Gentiles (1 Peter 2:12). The goal is that those watching our behaviour will eventually ask, “How come you have that hope?” In 1 Peter 3:1-7, Peter is outlining a soul-winning strategy for marriage, which is why we’ve titled this series The Soul-Winning Marriage.

In last week’s article, we looked at the first lesson for wives: submit to win (vv. 1-2). You do this by being voluntarily subject to your own husband. This week’s article will cover the next two lessons found in verses 3-6.

Lesson Two: Focus on Being Spiritually Attractive (verses 3-4)

“Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair, putting on of gold jewellery, or the clothing you wear. But let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious.”

Ladies, as Christian women, you are not to be focused like so many women of the world are, on dressing up the outside to win affection and attention. “Do not” in verse 3 is a clear command. Peter is instructing Christian wives—and Christian women in general—not to let their adornment consist of an external display.

The word “adorning” in verse 3 comes from the Greek word kosmos (from which we derive “cosmetics”) and refers to how you decorate yourself or anything you do to look good. Peter draws examples prevalent in his own day, pointing to the elaborate, time-consuming hairstyles of Roman culture, as well as gold jewellery, and the putting on of clothing. He obviously isn’t saying these things are banned—otherwise, he’d also be forbidding wearing clothes!  Rather he’s illustrating the excessive attention that can be given to external adornment.

Peter is warning Christian women against making external things their primary adornment—the thing they trust to win affection, attention, approval. If you place your hope in external adornment, you can end up neglecting the very kind of adornment you ought to be prioritising.

In 1 Timothy 2:9, Paul actually tells Christian women to adorn themselves. That proves that it’s not wrong to practice adornment itself. However Paul qualifies this with the requirement that this adornment must be with respectable, modest clothing and with self-restraint. The basic meaning in the Greek word for adornment implies putting things in order. There is nothing wrong with putting hair and clothing in order, and there is no virtue in being slovenly or careless about the external appearance. However, the problems both Paul and Peter point to are the danger of relying on the external, and taking things to excess. That means external beauty must not be allowed to become your focus. When the urge for excess calls, Paul would say to restrain yourself — which means there is a time to say “no” to what you would want to do, whether in terms of modesty or excess.

In verse 4, Peter draws a contrast and gives us the alternative: “But let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious.” Peter is saying to invest more time in becoming beautiful to God! While man looks at outward appearance, the Lord looks at the heart (1 Samuel 16:7).

Does your morning routine reflect this priority? Do you prepare your heart to be pleasing to God with equal or even greater care than you take with your external appearance?

In these verses God is calling upon Christian women to focus on the inner person that God sees, “the hidden person of the heart,” and to make sure that is adorned “with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit.”

A gentle spirit is a meek spirit (it is the same word in Greek). Meek people are not necessarily weak, but rather have any power under control. A woman with a gentle spirit has learned from Jesus, who said, “Learn from me, for I am gentle” (Mt 11:29). As the commentator D. Edomond Hiebert explains, a meek woman is not going to be someone who is “pushy” or “self-assertive”. That is quite the opposite of the spirit of our age!

A quiet spirit is once again, not something our age commends. Women are encouraged to be loud and proud, like the “woman” Folly in Proverbs, but the woman with a quiet spirit is not loud and proud. Rather, she's humble and contrite(and trembles at God's word, see Isaiah 66:2). It’s worth noting that the same Greek word Peter uses here for quiet is used in Isaiah 66:2 to translate the Hebrew word for contrite.  

Whatever steps people take, in the end, external beauty always decomposes and fades. There is no remedy for this perishing; however, the inner beauty of a woman with a gentle and quiet spirit is said here to be “imperishable.” That alone makes it worth focusing on, but even more significantly, Peter tells us here that it is also precious in God's sight!

Knowing this, do you need to invest more time in becoming beautiful in this way? Peter prescribes this for Christian wives and, therefore, as a model for all Christian women. While the world wants you to fix your hopes on external beauty, Christians need to show the world that you have a hope beyond this world by focusing on internal beauty. To say it again, it’s this focus on being spiritually attractive that lets the watching world (including an unsaved husband) see your hope. That’s the second lesson.

Lesson Three: Follow Sarah's Example (verses 5-6)

Peter continues: “For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening.”

The Greco-Roman culture in which Peter’s readers lived had its ways, but he tells them to reject the excesses of the culture and become a ‘tradwife.’ Not the contemporary version looking back to the 1950s but looking back to a time when women would adorn themselves in a very different way.  In verses 5 and 6, Peter points us back to “the holy women who hoped in God”. Their hope in God showed itself in the fact that they made themselves attractive by submitting to their husbands. That’s radical.

As a specific example, he highlights Sarah who “obeyed Abraham, calling him lord.” She practised submission by leaving her homeland and following her husband, despite the reality that God had appeared to him and spoken to him, and not to her. This was Sarah accepting Abram’s headship, and is adornment by submission. The Bible says she obeyed (hupakouōin Greek—to listen under) by rendering submissive acceptance. Sarah hoped in God and was submissive to her husband. In Genesis 18:12 we get insight into the way she thought (habitually) when we see her speaking to herself, and yet she still speaks of her husband with an attitude of submission by referring to him him as “my lord”. This inner beauty made Sarah attractive even in her older years.

It is crucial to remember that the word likewise in verse 1, links all this submission back to the pattern of submission established in 1 Peter 2:13-17. This means that even if your husband asks you to sin—as Abraham did when he told Sarah to lie—you must not obey. Christian wives must only submit as someone who is free, and “as servants (slaves) of God” (1 Peter 2:16).

Finally, it’s really worth noting what Peter says in verse 6, that Christian wives who “do good and do not fear anything that is frightening,” are children of Sarah! What an encouragement! God knows that living in submission can raise all manner of fears! Fears of disappointment, difficult circumstances, or most likely fears of not getting what we want. Sarah, like Abraham, gave into that fear on occasion. And yet Christian women who walk by faith like Sarah as their default attitude, refusing to be controlled by fear, and submitting to their own husbands, are the children of Sarah and show the world an entirely different hope. This is a call for all Christian women to put their hope in God, and not in what they can gain from this life. As you do, a watching world will see your hope is elsewhere and will be compelled to ask why.

One last note: Peter’s lessons are NOT the gospel! Even true Christians must beware making rules about appearance into an attempt to be justified by your own efforts in God’s sight! The solution to that problem is faith alone in Christ's sacrifice for sinners alone. We must all simply repent and believe the Good News to be justified by God—as a gift (Romans 3:24), and then we will have real hope. This passage in 1 Peter 3, is all about how to put your hope (once you have it) on display! To miss the gospel and focus on these verses as religious rules in order to be pleasing to God in order to achieve heaven is legalism. However to say “I’m saved, so none of this matters!” is to miss the point of this passage. This is how you put your hope on display, and your focus on being spiritually attractive shows a transformed heart that loves and wants to please God.

Summary: From 1 Peter 3:1-6 we have seen 3 lessons for Christian wives (and an ambition for all Christian women):

1. Submit to win (vv.1-2)

2. Focus on being spiritually attractive (vv.3-4)

3. Follow Sarah's example (vv.5-6)

In the next article, we’ll begin looking at the lessons Peter has for Christian husbands in v.7.