Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands…

1 Peter 3:1a

Peter’s use of “likewise” shows that this is a continuation of his teaching from the previous chapter about how Christians are to stand out and be different from the ungodly world around them in their day-to-day lives, even when they are being mistreated (2:9-24).  In the same way Christians citizens must honor the government who persecutes them (2:13-17) and Christian slaves must show respect to masters who mistreat them (2:18-24), Christian wives must show respect to less-than-stellar husbands (3:1-2).

Women were generally not treated well at all in the ancient world.  For example, consider the marriage culture of ancient Sparta as described by Will Durant in his work The Life of Greece:

“Marriages were usually arranged by the parents, without purchase; but after this agreement the bridegroom was expected to carry off the bride by force, and she was expected to resist; the word for marriage was harpadzein, to seize.  If such arrangements left some adults still unmarried, several men might be pushed into a dark room with an equal number of girls, and be left to pick their life mates in the darkness; the Spartans thought that such choosing would not be blinder than love.  It was usual for the bride to stay with her parents for a while; the bridegroom remained in his barracks, and visited his wife only clandestinely; ‘in this relation’ says Plutarch, ‘they lived a long time, insomuch that they sometimes had children by their wives even before they saw their faces by daylight.’” 

It is therefore likely that some of the Christian wives to whom Peter wrote back then were in forced marriages in which there was little love.  The husbands who Peter said “do not obey the word” were likely non-Christians who treated their wives in the ways described above by Durant or below by brother Guy N. Woods.  It is possible that even some Christian husbands, influenced by the ungodly culture around them, failed to apply Peter’s instruction concerning them (3:7), or Paul’s teaching to love their wives (Eph. 5:25-33; Col. 3:19), to their marriages.  Thus, one can easily imagine that there were a lot of proverbial “bitter brides” among Peter’s original readers in the church.

Yet God still told them to follow the example of Old Testament “holy women who hoped in God” like Sarah (3:5-6) by “be(ing) subject to your own husbands” and to make their conduct “respectful and pure” (3:1-2).  He then supplied the reason: so that their husbands who “do not obey the word…may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives.”  In this we see the wisdom of God alluded to earlier by Peter when he taught us to convert people by not only what we teach (2:9-10) but also by how we act even in the face of oppression and tribulation (2:11-24; cf. Matt. 5:13-16).  As Guy N. Woods wrote:

“The lot of women in non-Greek countries, particular before the influence of the gospel began to be felt, was a deplorable one.  Aristotle writes that among the barbarians (non-Greeks) women and slaves held the same rank; and though among the Greeks her position was not quite so degraded, they considered her as holding only an intermediate position between free persons and slaves, mother of her children, but not worthy to educate them, qualified to receive orders, but never to give them.  As the influence of Christianity began to exercise itself such barbarous ideas were destined to fail; slavery was to perish, and women to be elevated to their proper place in society; it was essential to the well-being of the cause which was to produce such effects, however, that these changes should be gradual and not violent; produced by instruction and not by revolution.”

The world thinks that positive change is brought about quickly through bullying, intimidation, nagging, insults, and the like.  In reality, positive change is brought about slowly as the immature and ungodly see and are influenced by the godly behavior of the mature and righteous.  We must keep this in mind in our efforts to both improve our own marriages and save souls.  Lord willing, we will study this passage more in the next article in our series on 1 Peter.

— Jon