My Wife Did Not Sign Up for Any of This

A man told me he can carry the cost and that what he cannot carry is that somebody else is paying it.

His decision is his. He made it, he believes it, and if it were only his own money and his own weekends he would be, in his own words, completely fine.

But there is a house with other people in it. There is a holiday that is not happening, a car that is staying, and a wife who married a man with a particular trajectory and has been extremely gracious about a different one.

He said the graciousness is the hardest part. He said if she complained he would know what to do with it.

I do not have a wife and I am careful here. What I do have is a sister who runs a restaurant and who put me in the apartment over it, and I know what it is to have your decisions land on somebody who did not make them.

Peter writes to households where one person has come to Christ and the other has not, and the instruction he gives is not the one anybody expects.

The instruction is about conduct rather than argument

Here is the verse.

Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives. (1 Peter 3:1, King James Version)

Without the word. That is the phrase, and it is a strange one for an apostle to write.

He is addressing a real situation: households where one person had come to faith and the household had not, which in that world had genuine social and economic consequences for everybody in it.

And his instruction is not to explain better. It is without the word, which means without the case being made verbally at all, and the mechanism named is conversation, which in older English means manner of life rather than talking.

While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear, the next verse says. What is being watched is the living rather than the arguing.

Which is worth having for a man whose decision has landed on his family. His job is not to make the case. His job is what they are watching, and the making of the case has been explicitly taken off him.

You are relieved of making the case and left with the living. 1 Peter 3:1 says without the word be won by the conversation, and it is the Holy Spirit, Galatians 5:22 naming His fruit as the things a household actually notices, who produces what an argument cannot.

The instruction that comes back the other way

Peter and Paul both turn immediately to the other side of the house, and the instruction is about bitterness.

Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them. (Colossians 3:19)

Be not bitter. That is an unexpected warning, and it is worth asking why it is there.

A man carrying a costly decision, whose family is paying for it, gets tempted toward a very specific bitterness: a low resentment that they are not more enthusiastic about a price they did not set.

That is the trap, and Paul names it in four words.

Nothing here allows a person to make their household responsible for the atmosphere around their own obedience. The one who decided carries the weight of the deciding, and that includes the weight of everybody else's ordinary, unspiritual, entirely reasonable feelings about a holiday that is not happening.

You are the one carrying the weight of your own decision, including how other people feel about it. Colossians 3:19 warns against bitterness in exactly that direction. It is the same Spirit, Galatians 5:22 naming longsuffering, who supplies what a person runs out of about eight months in.

What Paul says about a household with one believer in it

There is a verse that says something about a mixed household that is startling and that people either overread or ignore.

For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean; but now are they holy. (1 Corinthians 7:14)

I am not going to overclaim what that means, because Paul does not explain it and the commentators do not agree.

What it plainly does say is that one believing person in a house changes the standing of the house, and that the presence of that person is treated as a benefit to everybody in it rather than as a cost.

So the accounting my friend is running, where his obedience is a pure debit against his family, is not the accounting Paul is running. There is something on the other side of it in that verse, and Paul states it about the children specifically.

You are being described as a benefit to your household rather than a cost to it. 1 Corinthians 7:14 says the unbelieving is sanctified and the children are holy. It is the Spirit of God, 1 Corinthians 12:13 by whom we are all baptized into one body, who is at work in a house through one person.

And if the guilt about your family has begun to sit on you at night, say it out loud to a person: a counselor, a pastor you trust, or the 988 crisis line, which answers every hour there is. Carrying a decision that other people are paying for is one of the loneliest arrangements there is, and it is worth another voice in the room.

What is actually promised, and what is not

There is a verse people quote to families in this position and it needs reading precisely.

But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:19)

All your need. Not all your want and not all your former standard, and Paul is writing that to people who had just sent him money out of their own poverty and who were not comfortable themselves.

Read the chapter it sits in. Paul has just said he knows how to be full and how to be hungry, both, and that he has learned it. That is the setting for the promise.

So what is promised is supply against need, from a source described as His riches rather than as a return on anybody's obedience. That is not nothing. It is also not a holiday, and I am not going to dress it up as one.

I lost my income and it did not come back the way it went, and I count that as worth it and never as an investment, and I would say the same thing standing in your kitchen.

You have supply promised against need from a source that is not a return on your obedience. Philippians 4:19 says according to his riches in glory rather than according to what anybody gave up, and it is His Spirit, Romans 8:23 called the firstfruits, who is named as the down payment rather than the reimbursement.