God’s understanding of beautiful is often different to ours, isn’t it? We talked yesterday about the things God sees as beautiful.
The passage written to women in 1 Peter 3:1-6 also talks about beauty. Verse 5 says: “This is how long ago the holy women who trusted God used to make themselves beautiful: They submitted to their husbands” (Beck). Wow, that’s different, isn’t it?
The William Barclay’s translation says: “Your BEAUTY must be the BEAUTY of your inner character and personality. It must consist of a gentle and serene character, a BEAUTY which the years cannot wither, for in God’s sight that is what is really precious. This was the BEAUTY with which once upon a time consecrated women, whose hopes were set on God, adorned themselves. They accepted the authority of their husbands.”
We live in a society of rebellion towards men, in fact toward all authority. Many modern women do not want to submit to anyone or anything! This is the same spirit of Lucifer who was cast out of Heaven because he did not want to submit to authority of God but wanted to be like God himself. It is an ugly thing and always ends in destruction, the destruction of marriage, home, and family.
But God says that submission is a beautiful thing. I wonder . . . do we think like God thinks? Or do we embrace the thinking of the enemy?
Do you notice that it talks about the women who lived “once upon a time”? Peter was talking about women who lived two thousand years previously. To us they are women who lived four thousand years ago. Our generation is completely opposite to these women.
And yet who is right? God’s Word never changes. It is an eternal (and therefore never goes out of date) and was given for every generation.
Psalm 119:160 says: “Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever.” The margin of my Bibles says: “The beginning of thy word is true.”
I notice the last verse of 1 Peter 3 where it says that all the angels and authorities in heaven are subject to God and to Christ. What about on earth?
Are you living a beautiful life today?
Love from Nancy Campbell
Painting: Leonid Pavlovich Baranov