One of the biggest things that trips us up as we try to understand the Bible is our habit of treating it like a plate of monkey bread. We come to it, and it’s all in one piece, but we see it as a bunch of little pieces stuck together; and we don’t want a whole lot of it, we only want a snack. We only want to know what the Bible says about this one thing, or maybe we just want something to comfort us or encourage us; and so we pull it apart. We treat it like a lot of small pieces stuck together for convenience, rather than as one book we need to understand as a whole, composed of individual books, each of which we also need to understand as a whole.
The tendency with this section of 1 Peter is to look at it and say, “Here, Peter’s talking about slaves, and here he’s talking about marriage,” and then go off and talk about the husband as the head of the household and the importance of female modesty and never actually come back to the book. That misses the heart of this passage. Look at 2:18-25. Peter begins, “Slaves, be subject to your masters with all respect,” but then he doesn’t actually say very much about slaves at all. He spends more than half those verses talking about Christ and his suffering, and most of what he says applies to everyone in the church, not just slaves.
For another, context matters. What do slaves and married women have in common? Under Roman law, both were completely under the authority and at the mercy of another person. What has Peter just been saying in verses 13-17? As slaves to God, we are to defer to other people and respect those who are in authority over us. Is that always going to be a positive experience? Will those authorities always treat us justly? No. If they don’t, where will that bite?
Fact is, it probably won’t be from the emperor first. Governments may be unjust, and even the best create a lot of injustice along the way because this world malfunctions all over the place. Except in times of all-out persecution, though, it’s rare that any government deliberately does as much damage to any one person as an abusive husband can. Slaveowners could be even worse, for obvious reasons. It’s challenging enough for Peter to say, “Respect the emperor,” even when the emperor is Nero or Caligula. What if you’re a slave and your master is a mini-Nero? What if you’re married to Caligula’s evil twin? What are you supposed to do about that?
American society being what it is, we instinctively analyze and respond to these questions in terms of legal rights and political power. We want Peter to say, “Rise up and demand justice”—but he couldn’t, because the people he’s addressing have no ability to do that. Slaves were entirely powerless. Wives could seek divorce, but they had no other option, and divorce would only leave them differently powerless. It was against the law for a man to kill his wife, but whether the authorities actually cared enough to prosecute him for her murder depended more on her social status and connections than anything else. If a man killed his slave, nobody cared. Other slaves might, but they didn’t count, and didn’t dare say anything. Legally speaking, unless you’re male and a Roman citizen, you’re going to submit—or else.
Peter’s answer is spoken into this reality, and the heart of it is an application of verse 16: as free people . . . but as slaves of God. You’re not free by the law of the world, but you are free in the Spirit. If you’re a slave, if you’re a married woman under Roman law, you’re going to submit. You can’t change that and you can’t control that. You can control why you submit. Do you submit resentfully, because you have to—perhaps because you’ll be beaten if you don’t? Peter says, look to Christ, and do it for him. Do it because he submitted to far worse for you in order to heal you and give you new life in God.
As we noted last week, this is very much in parallel with Ephesians 5:17-6:9. As we’ve also noted, where Paul’s concern in Ephesians is for the way believers live together and relate to one another as the body of Christ—it’s an inward focus—Peter’s focus in this letter is outward, on the way believers live in and relate to an unbelieving world. As such, while their fundamental understanding of Christian submission and worldly obedience is the same, they develop it in very different ways. Paul addresses families in the church, husbands and wives and children, and relationships between slaves and slaveowners who are fellow believers. Peter doesn’t address children at all because they had no standing in the society outside the church. He speaks mostly to slaves of unbelieving owners and wives of pagan husbands, and his concern is to teach them how to live in a way that will strengthen their witness, and the witness of the church as a whole, to the gospel of Jesus Christ. As in Paul, so in Peter, everything is subordinate to that.
In Ephesians 5, Paul addresses marriage first because that was the area in which his call to mutual submission among believers challenged Roman culture most strongly. Peter addresses slaves first because submission to unbelieving masters was a harder and more painful reality than that of wives to unbelieving husbands. Slaves whose masters were cruel and unjust suffered unjustly, and would continue to suffer unjustly. Peter doesn’t deny that or try to play it down in any way. He does, however, ask an important question: “Is it really any better if you suffer because you deserve it?” The answer is, of course, no. If you suffer for doing good, he says, look to Jesus and endure it without fighting back. He did that for us because he trusted that God the Father who judges justly would have the final word over the injustice of earthly judges. If we do the same—if we bear unjust suffering patiently because of our love for Christ and trust in the Father—then our suffering isn’t pointless. If we bear undeserved suffering for God and for the sake of his name, Peter tells us, our suffering is for God. That understanding and that attitude turns our unjust suffering into an act of service to God which pleases him.
As Peter says this, he’s talking to slaves, but not only to them. He’s letting the whole church listen in because his words are for all of them, and all of us. If we’re all slaves to God, and if we’re all exiles and resident aliens in a world where we really don’t quite belong, then what’s true of those household slaves is true of every believer. For one, if we live faithfully with the Lord, we’re all likely to suffer unjustly; that reality was just more obvious in their case. And we’re all every bit as indebted to Jesus, who freely allowed himself to be tortured to death when he never deserved it. If he’d insisted on his rights and demanded justice, we’d all be damned.
For another, we all have to submit to others, not just the government. No, we don’t have legal slavery, but the critics of capitalism have long denounced it as “wage slavery,” and they’re not entirely wrong. Just think of Merle Travis’s 1942 classic “Sixteen Tons” and its picture of life as a coal miner. Yes, there’s a difference between being beaten for praying and being taken advantage of at work because you have a selfish, unjust boss who knows you can’t afford to quit. Employees have options and recourse that slaves didn’t. But if you’re in a position where those options are all theoretical and there’s no better job in sight, you’re just as caught.
Bad economies empower bad bosses, and it comes down to the same two choices in the end. If you’re being treated unjustly, you can resist in some way, even if all you do is complain, or you can look to God and bear the injustice with patience and grace for Jesus’ sake. Put another way, you’re going to be a servant regardless; you simply don’t have any meaningful ability to change that. The only true choice you have is whether to serve grudgingly, kicking and screaming, or to serve freely and graciously in the name of the Lord. The work is the same in either case. The heart is completely different—and it’s amazing how much that difference can mean.
In all this, Peter says explicitly, Jesus is our example. There are a couple different levels to this. One I think we see right off: Jesus suffered unjustly and he didn’t complain, or say bad things about the people hurting him, or question God for allowing him to suffer; instead, he trusted God and endured suffering for our sake. Therefore, when we suffer unjustly, we should behave the same way. This is true, but we can go deeper. Jesus didn’t just happen to be in that position. He didn’t just happen to be a person who was completely powerless in worldly terms, who could be executed in the manner used for the lowest of the low. His powerlessness was intentional, deliberate, part of God’s plan; he was powerless and vulnerable by choice. He didn’t accomplish his purpose despite being a man of no reputation but in part because of his social status, or lack of status. His powerlessness was part of his power, and unjust suffering wasn’t a bug in the program, it was a feature. In fact, it was a core feature. This is the one who is our example, who calls us to follow in his pattern of living.
When Peter speaks to wives, we see his concern for the witness of the church come into play again. Women married to unbelievers were in a difficult situation in Roman law and culture. The Roman writer Plutarch declared, “A wife ought not to make friends of her own, but to enjoy her husband’s friends in common with him. The gods are the first and most important friends. Wherefore it is becoming for a wife to worship and to know only the gods that her husband believes in.” The women Peter’s addressing were violating that completely, and so they had to be very careful in how they went about it. Carelessness on their part could easily endanger both themselves and the church.
This is why Peter forbids fancy hairdos, jewelry and clothing, because they were commonly seen as signs a woman intended seduction. The Roman satirist Juvenal wrote, “There is nothing a woman will not permit herself to do, nothing she deems shameful, when she encircles her neck with green emeralds and fastens huge pearls to her elongated ears.” It was questionable for a married woman to go out alone to meet with a lot of men her husband didn’t know. If she went out dressed to the nines, her husband, his friends, and their society would assume the worst. By contrast, if she lived in such a way that the goodness and holiness of God could be clearly seen in her life, that would ease his concerns, and it might draw him to Christ.
Peter’s reference to Sarah is fascinating. She does call Abraham “lord” in Genesis 18:12, but she doesn’t address him that way—that’s in her internal monologue when she overhears God’s promise to Abraham that they will have a son. What’s more, Genesis never explicitly says Sarah obeys Abraham at any point. On two occasions we see the opposite, she tells him what to do and he listens to her and does it—in chapter 16 she tells him to sleep with her servant Hagar to father a son (resulting in the birth of Ishmael), and in chapter 21, after Isaac is born, she tells him to get rid of Hagar and Ishmael so there’s no rival heir to Isaac.
There are only two times where we see Sarah do what Abraham says—and both times are also bad ideas. In chapter 12, they go down to Egypt, and Abraham is afraid if the Egyptians know she’s his wife, the ruling Pharaoh will have him killed to take Sarah for himself; Abraham decides to tell them she’s his sister, and she goes along with it. Pharaoh takes her into his harem, and God has to intervene directly to set things right. This was such a spectacularly foolish thing to do, Abraham does it again in chapter 20 when they’re living in Gerar, ruled by Abimelech. Again she goes along with it, again the king takes her as his wife, and again God has to step in to straighten things out.
When we consider Sarah, then, what sort of obedience do we see? She and Abraham are living in a foreign land, potentially hostile, under precarious circumstances that leave them vulnerable to the will of the ruling power. Her husband isn’t acting in a godly manner, but she obeys him and suffers for his sake because he fears for his life. The wives Peter is addressing were likewise in a vulnerable position, living as exiles and resident aliens in a culture now foreign to them. He calls them to follow Sarah’s example in obeying husbands who aren’t obeying God, for reasons which both reflect Sarah’s obedience to Abraham. Again, one, their obedience is for the sake of the people of God, so as not to provoke the rulers and authorities to active hostility and opposition; and two, it’s for their husbands’ sake, to attract them to Christ.
We could say a lot here about how Peter is subverting the Roman social order, but most of it is outside the scope of this sermon. I do want to look at verse 7, however, which brings the point of this passage—that in Christ, we’re called to choose freely to serve others—home to husbands, who weren’t legally obliged to submit to their wives. He says to them, “Husbands, don’t you get any ideas.” The culture of the time thought women were inferior and rendered them powerless, and Peter’s been talking to wives about how to live out their required submission to their husbands; now he forbids married men in the church to take advantage of that. As New Testament scholar Karen Jobes puts it, “Peter teaches that men whose authority runs roughshod over their women, even with society’s full approval, will not be heard by God.”
Remember, in verses 13-17 Peter tells Christians to live with deference and respect to every person. This played out in particular, unbalanced ways in the Roman household, but it still applied to husbands (and slaveowners) just as much as to wives and slaves. Nothing in this passage in any way justifies any sort of abuse of power. Like Paul, Peter is clear with his male readers: whatever position of authority you may have, you have it only because of God, and under his authority, as his slave—and he judges without partiality. Having authority doesn’t mean God has given you the green light to use it as you please: God has given you authority to use as his representative in accordance with his will and his character, and that authority means your judgment will be stricter, not more lenient, held to a higher standard, not a lower one. Jesus suffered injustice, trusting in the one who judges justly; you do not want to be on the other side of that equation. Whether you’re powerful or powerless in worldly terms, you’re a slave of God either way. Your freedom is not for this world. You are free in Christ, which means you’re free to serve.
Photo © US Department of Energy. Public domain.