A Second Letter

Rachael,
  I’ve been thinking more about the question of what it means to truly do good and not harm to our husbands. I expounded a lot last time on what it means to make our hearts trustworthy and therefore be prepared to follow his leadership, but the verse that follows is interesting and complicated as well. Examining the idea of what it means to “do good, and not harm all the days of [our lives]” can be intimidating simply because the command is so vague. Certainly the rest of the chapter, in some ways, alludes to the actual answer of what it means to ‘do good,‘ but is there a direct or specific response that should form in our hearts as a gospel-centered answer to this somewhat moralistic demand?   
I put this same question before my Pastor, Brad, the other day; his answer to what it means to look at this passage from the perspective of seeing and applying the gospel in it was very encouraging. He stated that looking at a passage like this as gospel-centered doesn’t always mean that we must find the exact wording of the gospel in it, nor does it mean that we must drain it of its moralism or alignment with the law. Rather, looking at the out-workings of the law in the passage and understanding that Christ has fulfilled the law for us and now the righteousness of Christ, having been imputed to us, gives us claim to the perfection exemplified in the Proverbs 31 woman. Simply put, positionally we are the Proverbs 31 woman via the righteousness of Christ and where we don’t see ourselves lining up with the actions or the heart of that woman, it is because we are living in opposition to who we truly are in the gospel. That is when the questions of the false gospels we believe and the idols we worship may arise: once the positional righteousness of us as a woman of excellence is proclaimed and the lies of the flesh are exposed. How much more vigor will we possess then in digging out the roots of those false gospels that keep us from being the Proverbs 31 woman Christ has already secured us to be if we first deeply understand the reality that this gospel message is true?! I thank God he spoke through Brad to remind me of the truth of God’s Word in regard to this message of positional righteousness; how freeing it felt to continue studying the ways of the Proverbs 31 woman having grappled with these profound truths yet again. God is so gracious in the way He walks us through his word!
With that in mind, I returned to the verse 12 of Proverbs 31 by means of comparing the passage with others that are explicitly directed toward the heart of a woman. So, my journey for understanding truly began by seeking the ‘fear of the Lord’ (Prov 9:10) as my path toward insight in I Peter 3. There is so much that could be said concerning this passage and the conduct of a God-fearing woman, but that would take another 6 weeks to expound.

What primarily caught my attention in this passage were verses 5 & 6.

“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.”

Here you and I sit, studying a specific “holy woman” of the Old Testament: the Proverbs 31 woman. She may not have been a person in that the author of this passage wrote a biographical piece concerning her contributions to the Jewish lineage as Moses did of Sarah, but she is a faithful woman of old to be sure. We see that she is like Sarah also in that her conduct is one that reflects a woman respecting her husband, “calling him lord” as she “adorn[s herself], by submitting to her own husband.” How interesting too, that Sarah, who is given as our example in I Peter, was one whose mistakes are readily displayed in Genesis. At times she followed Abraham into sin (Gen 12:10-18, Gen 20), other times she led him into sin (Gen 16), and still more, there were times when she laughed in the face of God’s covenant promises (Gen 18:9-15). Yet, Sarah is still upheld in scripture as an example of a woman who submitted to and respected her husband, and by so doing, displayed her fear of the Lord. What a blessing to have the entirety of such a woman exposed before us! We are able to see the beauty of walking in obedience to God and his precepts as well as view Sarah’s testimony to the redemptive and intervening work of our Heavenly Father. As we study marriage and what it means to be a godly wife, there will always be a temptation to hold ourselves to high standards and then become vastly frustrated when we fail. This stems out of a wrong belief about God, namely that he is not a gracious God and that he only uses and loves those who “succeed” by human measures. Clearly, God graciously allows us to become examples of godliness, as he used Sarah for such, in spite of our sin. Let this reality then, rather than push us toward whaling defeat, set us forth on a path toward godliness with still greater vigilance.
The next portion of the verse brings us to the deepest and most comforting connection I found between I Peter 3 and Proverbs 31. Peter ends his address to the women by stating, “... do good and do not fear anything that is frightening” (I Peter 3:6). This same phrase “do good” is what has been so heavily debated in my mind as I have studied Proverbs 31. Here, Peter gives the answer to the question, “what does it mean to ‘do good and not harm’?” The answer is most simply that we “do not fear anything that is frightening.” He leaves the specifics a woman might desire from him behind and instead allows the ambiguity of this command to encapsulate all the things we may fear at all different life stages. We are not to fear the future, though it is frightening. We are not to fear being vulnerable before the husband God gave us, though it is frightening. We are not to fear aging, though it is frightening. We are not to fear the power of other women judging or gossiping about us or our husband, though it is frightening. We are not to fear the future of our children, though it is frightening. We are not to fear others rejecting the gospel, though it is frightening. The list could go on forever with things of earth that frighten, but the point is clear; to do good to our husbands means to reject a fear of earthly things over which God has complete control. What a breathtaking reality check-- the thing that will do our husband “good and not harm all the days of [our lives]” is as simple and as complex as not succumbing to futile fears. It is easy to believe that in order to do good to my husband I must become the wife who most clearly exudes the supportive “cheerleader” spirit for him, or that I must be the most knowledgeable woman concerning the Word of God or know how to perfectly communicate with him. Instead, these passages teach us that those wonderful blessings spring forth out of the diligent work on “not fearing what is frightening.”
There is an added blessing in this principle also, that I, in my singleness, may readily   attend to this command by the grace of God. All women at any stage of life ought to pursue “not fearing what is frightening.” If I take advantage of the time I have now to practice not fearing what the future may hold, how much more naturally and quickly will that notion come to me in the years ahead if it is something the Lord has instilled in me in years past. Even this week I have felt myself struggle to grapple with this concept. It is second nature for me to embrace anxiety, and by that, do harm to myself, those who surround me, and most probably my future spouse. This is not the proper out-workings of studying scriptures on holy womanhood! These scriptures should propel me toward repentance and security in Christ alone. Even as I say that this should be the reality, my heart struggles to relent of its previously acquired fear because it feels so natural and all of culture (both within and without the church) endorse such fears. Thus, I am forced to examine the more deeply laid root than culture or the natural fears of the world. To what absurd false gospel does my heart now cling? The moments when I feel the most overwhelming emotion of panic are those times when I reflect on the sins of my past and the embarrassment that they caused me; those times when I sinned greatly before God and others-- often out of my own fear-- and thus estranged my relationship with men in the past. How often this creeps into my mind wavers from time to time in direct relation to how deeply rooted my trust in the Lord is at the moment. But, there are often fleeting moments of panic as I contemplate how my fears brought harm to the men of my past as I sense that these fears most clearly pushed them away from me. Often I am left believing that my sin in the circumstances ended all hope for a relationship that could have developed ‘once upon a time.’ My false belief is that my sin possesses greater sovereignty than God Himself, when in reality God graciously allows my sin to wield for me a path through life that directs me more clearly toward an understanding of His sovereign hand in my life that ultimately leads to the restoration of my weary soul. God has perfectly planned my days to increase my worship of him and to sanctify me in a marriage that will be better than that which I imagined for myself and the men that possess my past.
Secondly, there is a belief within my soul that, though marriage is possible and good for me, the Lord does not hasten to secure it for me and instead leaves me wandering aimlessly in poor, depraved city of Columbus, Ohio. Here my beliefs about singleness are exposed: I do not view it as a gift but as an futile in-between period in my life, and that something better will come along if God would only hurry to make it a reality. There is no hope for me to find contentment in God in my future if I do not first seek contentment in him right now. So, this will be my prayer in weeks to come: that I would seek with great earnestness the beliefs that lay siege on my soul, that rob me of my contentment in Christ and the freedom to “not fear what is frightening” so that I may better work out the practicalities of doing good and not harm all the days of my life, by the unending grace of our heavenly Father for the greater glory of his name!