I Peter 3:1-7

I Peter 3:1-7

Having told the disciples to submit to the authorities and slaves to submit to their masters, Peter now turns to the relationship of husbands and wives. Many people with feminist leanings bristle under the idea of a wife submitting to her husband. The word used here, “meaning arrange yourself”, is the same word used for domestic slaves in verse 18. This passage is not about degrading wives or women, but about how the church and disciples are to live out their faith in the world. Christianity produced a unique situation, and they were in uncharted waters. In the Roman world, women were seen as inferior by nature and had no freedoms beyond their husbands. They were expected to adopt and conform to their husband’s religion. Christianity raised women as moral and spiritual equals. The disciples had to guard against these newly revealed equality terms turning into a rebellious conflict. In fact it would be possible for a Christian wife to look to her pagan husband as her moral and spiritual inferior. That may in fact be true, but it is unlikely that such an attitude would make the Christian faith attractive to the pagan husband or the world. Rather, by wholesome submission, the wife, who is a disciple, is bearing witness to a husband even if she never says a word about Jesus. We must never forget that we are not acting alone in our conduct as holy, obedient, and submissive individuals. In our faithful living, the Holy Spirit is going to work in the lives of those around us.

One of the dangers for well-to-do women in Rome culturally, and in any culture for that matter, was the focus of their efforts on enhancing their physical beauty. Peter doesn't forbid the use of things to enhance a woman's beauty. Rather, he wants to guard against the superficiality or surface-level appearance as being the only source of a woman's beauty. Women need not fall for the line that to be submissive means they must be empty-headed vanity addicts. Rather, women can at the same time expand the soul and care for their appearance.

Peter directs men to understand their wives. That is only possible by paying careful attention to the details and nuances of their person. Knowing when and where they are fragile is critical to living as a disciple and husband. “Weaker vessel” is not a degrading term, but it is descriptive. Men are like iron skillets. Women are like China vases. The man who doesn't know his wife will be a man who harms his wife and who has trouble praying for her and everything else in his world.

“Lord, help me as I attempt to “arrange my life under”. AMEN”