“…and show her honor…” / 1 Peter 3.7

We love, appreciate, and honor all our pastors’ wives for the contributions each one makes to the ministry of our church. But you will understand if I give this distinct and personal expression of honor to my wife.

For 47 years now, she has served as this pastor’s wife. I was a pastor when she married me, and she is the daughter of a pastor…so she knew what she was signing up for.

She has joined and given her life to me. She has loved me, supported me, encouraged me, and honored me. She has rejoiced with me and wept with me. She has often suffered and endured with me. She has felt everything I have felt, and most of the time, more deeply and personally than I have. She has shared, sacrificed, and supplemented me as my honorable complement in every activity of our ministry together. She has followed me, served alongside me, and contributed her own spheres of ministry in ways I could not have fulfilled. I know that I could not have done whatever I have without her companionship and partnership in it all. She is not only the ‘apple of my eye’ of love, but I have also often called her – and publicly so – ‘the wind beneath my wings.’

And when I asked her to marry me … and she consented to honor me by allowing me the privilege and pleasure to honor her … I promised her that I would always live with her in obedience to 1 Peter 3.7 LSB:

“You husbands in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with a weaker vessel, since she is a woman; and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered.”

I knew enough about the root of that word ‘honor’ to know that it means ‘a valuing by which the price is fixed; to estimate the worth, to fix the value.’ It is, at its root, a ‘paygrade’ word and scale, if you please [as in 1 Timothy 5.17].

So, when I honor her, I only treat her according to her worth – both in herself and to me. Truly, ‘An excellent wife, who can find? For her worth is far above pearls [or any and all jewels]’ / Proverbs 31.10 LSB.

More than that, I understood that I must value her [and live with her accordingly] as God values her, for she is ‘a fellow heir of the grace of life’ … and that value is set on her by God Himself. She is God’s beloved daughter before she is my wife. And I sure don’t want to get crossways with God’s own jealousy for her or treat her with any less value than God has set on her.

So, Debbie, here’s a small coin of my inestimable honor I owe you. I sure do love you!