Loving Your Wife as the Weaker Vessel

Men are coffee mugs; women are like wine goblets.

Let me explain…

In 1 Peter 3:7, God commands husbands to “live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.”

Any verse that contrasts men and women or husbands and wives is sure to draw the attention and criticism of modern thinkers. This is especially true of this verse, which refers to women as "weaker vessels." I noticed that the "Got Questions" article on this topic treated the meaning of "weaker" as if it were some unsolved mystery. It's not. To some extent, its meaning is clear and straightforward. We’ll come back to that.

What does it mean to live with your wife in an understanding way? Marriage is a shared effort, with a man and woman each contributing according to their God-given design to achieve a common goal. It is a life lived together, and this shared life can be a source of great blessing or intense frustration. Which it becomes largely depends on whether it is lived with understanding.

As one commentary explains, living in an understanding way means “appreciating the due relation of the sexes in the design of God, and acting with tenderness and forbearance accordingly.” In practical terms, this means husbands must recognize that women are designed differently and learn to live and work with them wisely, honoring these God-given differences.

I love how Matthew Henry puts it: husbands are to live with their wives “not according to lust, as brutes; nor according to passion, as devils; but according to knowledge, as wise and sober men, who know the word of God and their own duty.” The mature husband is sober, wise, and dutiful.

Peter gives two facts that are key to living with your wife in an understanding way: she is the weaker vessel and an heir of the grace of life. Let’s consider those in reverse order.

First, the wife is a co-heir in the grace of life with her husband. In this sense, she is his equal and ought to be appreciated as such. Though man and woman are made differently, both are created in the image of God and share the same access to God the Father through Jesus Christ. In Christ, they are members of the same body, and as Scripture reminds us, the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor can the head say to the feet, “I have no need of you.” Their differences are designed to complement one another, not diminish their equal worth and shared purpose in God's plan.

It’s hard to improve on Calvin’s brief explanation in his commentary:

For since the Lord is pleased to bestow in common on husbands and wives the same graces, he invites them to seek an equality in them; and we know that those graces are manifold in which wives are partakers with their husbands. For some belong to the present life, and some to God’s spiritual kingdom. He afterwards adds, that they are co-heirs also of life, which is the chief thing. And though some are strangers to the hope of salvation, yet as it is offered by the Lord to them no less than to their husbands, it is a sufficient honor to the sex.

Second, the wife is a weaker vessel. The word vessel can have many meanings, but to keep it simple, it refers to an instrument made to accomplish a particular purpose. Elsewhere in Scripture, the word is used to describe cups. This brings me back to where we started: men are like coffee mugs, and women are like wine goblets.

If you were to look at the floorboard of my truck, you might see one or two coffee mugs. I grab a cup of coffee every morning before heading to work, and sometimes those mugs end up rolling around down there. The mugs might chip, but they rarely break.

Now, if all my mugs were dirty and the only option was a wine goblet for my coffee, I would either forgo the coffee or take the time to wash a mug. A goblet’s design simply isn’t suited for coffee, especially if it’s coffee on the go. Wine goblets are too weak to survive the rough treatment of a truck’s floorboard.

It is in this sense that a woman is weaker than a man in certain ways. For example, she is not suited for combat due to her constitution (Nahum 3:13). That kind of protection naturally falls to men. It’s instinctive for a wife to run and hide behind her husband when danger arises. However, for a husband to hide behind his wife is nothing short of cowardice. It would be ridiculous for a husband to resent his wife’s “weakness” in not being his physical protector. Can she contribute to the protection of her household? Sure. But is it one of her primary design features? No.

Some husbands expect their wives to act like men. They treat the wine goblet as if it were a coffee mug and resent it when it shatters on the floorboard. They are fools who do not live with their wives in an understanding way. They don't truly embrace biblical sexuality or, for that matter, patriarchy. In practice, they treat their wives in an androgynous manner, disregarding the distinct design revealed in nature and confirmed by Scripture.

The wise husband's treatment of his wife is guided by his understanding of her design. There are areas for which she is made that he is not, and in those areas, she is his superior. In 1 Corinthains 12:22, Paul says, “On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable…” Therefore, a husband should encourage his wife in her indispensable work. He must be a man who goes with the grain of creation, not against it. A husband who goes against the grain of creation will wear out his wife, and their household will know no peace—it will become a place of misery. Too often, men blame the misery in their homes on the weakness of their wives, but they have created an environment where what could be strength has instead become a weakness. This will hinder, among other things, their prayers.

As a postscript, it seems there is always some guy who tells me that I don’t understand how bad women are in general or how bad his wife is in particular. They take Scripture’s exhortation to husbands as an opportunity to rebuke wives for their failures instead. They claim that all pastors only rebuke men and never women, and consequently, they believe they are justified in focusing solely on the failures of modern women. This is the fruit of a bitter heart and a pathetically weak frame. Take the exhortation and grow, brothers. The goal here isn’t to kick you while you are down but to move you towards a more pleasant marriage and productive home.

Let her be the wine goblet. Embrace your design differences as a gift from God