In the same way, wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; so that, even if any don’t obey the Word, they may be won by the behavior of their wives without a word, seeing your pure behavior in fear. Let your beauty be not just the outward adorning of braiding the hair, and of wearing jewels of gold, or of putting on fine clothing; but in the hidden person of the heart, in the incorruptible adornment of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God. For this is how in the past, the holy women who hoped in God also adorned themselves, being in subjection to their own husbands. So Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, whose children you now are, if you do well, and are not put in fear by any terror.
You husbands, in the same way, live with your wives according to knowledge, giving honor to the woman, as to the weaker vessel, as also being joint heirs of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv1–7 He proceeds now to another instance of subjection, and…
He proceeds now to another instance of subjection, and bids wives to be subject to their husbands. And as those seemed to have some pretense for shaking off the yoke, who were united to unbelieving men, he expressly reminds them of their duty, and brings forward a particular reason why they ought the more carefully to obey, even that they might by their probity allure their husbands to the faith. But if wives ought to obey ungodly husbands, with much more promptness ought they to obey, who have believing husbands.
But it may seem strange that Peter should say, that a husband might be gained to the Lord without the word; for why is it said, that “faith cometh by hearing?” Romans 10:17. To this I reply, that Peter’s words are not to be so understood as though a holy life alone could lead the unbelieving to Christ, but that it softens and pacifies their minds, so that they might have less dislike to religion; for as bad examples create offenses, so good ones afford no small help. Then Peter shews that wives by a holy and pious life could do so much as to prepare their husbands, without speaking to them on religion, to embrace the faith of Christ.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 He speaketh namely of them which had husbands that…
He speaketh namely of them which had husbands that were not Christians, which ought so much the more be subject to their husbands, that by their honest and chaste conversation they may give them to the Lord.
In the third place he setteth forth the wives’ duty to their husbands, commanding them to be obedient.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–7 1 Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your…
1 Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives;
Ver. 1. Be in subjection to your husbands] Yet with a limitation: subject the wife must be to her husband’s lawful commands and restraints. It is too much that Plutarch lays as a law of wedlock on the wife, to acknowledge and worship the same gods, and none else but those whom her husband doth. Serena the empress suffered martyrdom under her cruel husband Diocletian; and Elizabeth, wife of Joachimus, the Prince Elector of Brandenburg, was forced to flee to the court of Saxony, A. D 1527, from the perpetual imprisonment provided for her by her Popish husband (for receiving the sacrament of the Lord’s supper in both kinds), and died in banishment. (Luther in Epistol.)
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Be won by the conversation] κερδηθησονται, i.e. Be prepared for conversion, as Austin’s father and himself were, by the piety of his mother Monica. The Greek word for won signifieth gained, εποπτευοντες; and seems to allude to those good servants, Mat 25:20-23, who traded their talents, and doubled them with their good husbandry.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1–7 To your own husbands; this he adds both to…
To your own husbands; this he adds both to mitigate the difficulty of the duty,
subjection, in that they were their
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own husbands to whom they were to be subject, and likewise to bound and circumscribe their obedience, that it was to be only to their own husbands, not to others; and so while he persuades them to subjection, he cautions them against unchastity.
That if any obey not the word; the word of the gospel. He exhorts not only them that had believing husbands, but unbelieving ones, to be in subjection to them.
They also may without the word: not that they could be converted to Christ without the knowledge of the word, when faith cometh by hearing, Rom 10:17, but that they who either would not endure their wives’ instructing them, or who had before rejected the word, yet, by seeing the effects and fruits of it in their wives, might be brought to have good thoughts of it, and thereby be the more prepared for the hearing of it, whereby faith might be wrought in them.
Be won; or gained, viz. to Christ and his church: the same metaphor Paul useth, 1Co 9:19-21; Phi 3:8.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 5, 7 Our apostle having, in the foregoing chapter, entered upon…
Our apostle having, in the foregoing chapter, entered upon an exhortation to the practice of relative duties, particularly of subjects towards their rulers, and of servants towards their masters, he continues here his exhortation to husbands and wives in the former part of this chapter, beginning first with the wives’ duty, (as did St. Paul in all his epistles,) because the duty of subjection is the most hard and difficult duty; Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands.
Observe here, 1. The duty enjoined, subjection; that is, a loving and delightful obedience to the husband, owning of and submitting to his authority, in compliance with the command of God.
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Observe, 2. The persons from whom and to whom this subjection is due: from every wife to her own husband, believer or unbeliever. Christian or infidel; it is not lawful, upon any pretence whatever, for the wife to cast off this duty, which by the law of her creation, and the express command of God, is bound upon her.
Observe, 3. One special reason assigned why such wives as have unbelieving, wicked, and unconverted husbands, should take particular care to express that fear and reverence towards God, subjection and obedience, that chastity and conjugal affection towards their husbands, which the word of God calls for; namely, that such husbands as obey not the word, may without the word (preached) be won to the faith, by observing the efficacy and power of the word in the conversation of the wives.
Learn hence, That the wives’ holy and humble, pious and prudent, meek and patient, chaste and unsuspected conversation before God and the world, does recommend not only their persons to the love and esteem of their husbands, but also their faith and holy religion, (which produces such good fruits,) to their approbation and choice: If any obey not the word be won by the conversation of the wives.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v1 The apostle having treated of the duties of subjects…
The apostle having treated of the duties of subjects to their sovereigns, and of servants to their masters, proceeds to explain the duty of husbands and wives.
I. Lest the Christian matrons should imagine that their conversion to Christ, and their interest in all Christian privileges, exempted them from subjection to their pagan or Jewish husbands, the apostle here tells them,
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1. In what the duty of wives consists.
(1.) In subjection, or an affectionate submission to the will, and obedience to the just authority, of their own husbands, which obliging conduct would be the most likely way to win those disobedient and unbelieving husbands who had rejected the word, or who attended to no other evidence of the truth of it than what they saw in the prudent, peaceable, and exemplary conversation of their wives. Learn, [1.] Every distinct relation has its particular duties, which ministers ought to preach, and the people ought to understand. [2.] A cheerful subjection, and a loving, reverential respect, are duties which Christian women owe their husbands, whether they be good or bad; these were due from Eve to Adam before the fall, and are still required, though much more difficult now than they were before, Gen 3:16; Ti1 2:11. [3.] Though the design of the word of the gospel is to win and gain souls to Christ Jesus, yet there are many so obstinate that they will not be won by the word. [4.] There is nothing more powerful, next to the word of God, to win people, than a good conversation, and the careful discharge of relative duties. [5.] Irreligion and infidelity do not dissolve the bonds, nor dispense with the duties, of civil relations; the wife must discharge her duty to her own husband, though he obey not the word.
(2.) In fear, or reverence to their husbands, Eph 5:33.
(3.) In a chaste conversation, which their unbelieving husbands would accurately observe and attend to. [1.] Evil men are strict observers of the conversation of the professors of religion; their curiosity, envy, and jealousy, make them watch narrowly the ways and lives of good people. [2.] A chaste conversation, attended with due and proper respect to every one, is an excellent means to win them to the faith of the gospel and obedience to the word.
(4.) In preferring the ornaments of the mind to those of the body. [1.] He lays down a rule in regard to the dress of religious women, Pe1 3:3. Here are three sorts of ornaments forbidden: plaiting of hair, which was commonly used in those times by lewd women; wearing of gold, or ornaments made of gold, was practised by Rebecca, and Esther, and other religious women, but afterwards became the attire chiefly of harlots and wicked people; putting on of apparel, which is not absolutely forbidden, but only too much nicety and costliness in it. Learn, First, Religious people should take care that all their external behaviour be answerable to their profession of Christianity: They must be holy in all manner of conversation. Secondly, The outward adorning of the body is very often sensual and excessive; for instance, when it is immoderate, and above your degree and station in the world, when you are proud of it and puffed up with it, when you dress with design to allure and tempt others, when your apparel is too rich, curious, or superfluous, when your fashions are fantastical, imitating the levity and vanity of the worst people, and when they are immodest and wanton. The attire of a harlot can never become a chaste Christian matron. [2.] Instead of the outward adorning of the body, he directs Christian wives to put on much more excellent and beautiful ornaments, v. 4. Here note, First, The part to be adorned: The hidden man of the heart; that is, the soul; the hidden, the inner man. Take care to adorn and beautify your souls rather than your bodies. Secondly, The ornament prescribed. It must, in general, be something not corruptible, that beautifies the soul, that is, the graces and virtues of God's Holy Spirit. The ornaments of the body are destroyed by the moth, and perish in the using; but the grace of God, the longer we wear it, the brighter and better it is. More especially, the finest ornament of Christian women is a meek and quiet spirit, a tractable easy temper of mind, void of passion, pride, and immoderate anger, discovering itself in a quiet obliging behaviour towards their husbands and families. If the husband be harsh, and averse to religion (which was the case of these good wives to whom the apostle gives this direction), there is no way so likely to win him as a prudent meek behaviour. At least, a quiet spirit will make a good woman easy to herself, which, being visible to others, becomes an amiable ornament to a person in the eyes of the world. Thirdly, The excellency of it. Meekness and calmness of spirit are, in the sight of God, of great price - amiable in the sight of men, and precious in the sight of God. Learn, 1. A true Christian's chief care lies in the right ordering and commanding of his own spirit. Where the hypocrite's work ends, there the true Christian's work begins. 2. The endowments of the inner man are the chief ornaments of a Christian; but especially a composed, calm, and quiet spirit, renders either man or woman beautiful and lovely.
2. The duties of Christian wives being in their nature difficult, the apostle enforces them by the example, (1.) Of the holy women of old, who trusted in God, v. 5. "You can pretend nothing of excuse from the weakness of your sex, but what they might. They lived in old time, and had less knowledge to inform them and fewer examples to encourage them; yet in all ages they practised this duty; they were holy women, and therefore their example is obligatory; they trusted in God, and yet did not neglect their duty to man: the duties imposed upon you, of a quiet spirit and of subjection to your own husbands, are not new, but what have ever been practised by the greatest and best women in the world." (2.) Of Sara, who obeyed her husband, and followed him when he went from Ur of the Chaldeans, not knowing whither he went, and called him lord, thereby showing him reverence and acknowledging his superiority over her; and all this though she was declared a princess by God from heaven, by the change of her name, "Whose daughters you are if you imitate her in faith and good works, and do not, through fear of your husbands, either quit the truth you profess or neglect your duty to them, but readily perform it, without either fear or force, out of conscience towards God and sense of duty to them." Learn, [1.] God takes exact notice, and keeps an exact record, of the actions of all men and women in the world. [2.] The subjection of wives to their husbands is a duty which has been practised universally by holy women in all ages. [3.] The greatest honour of any man or woman lies in a humble and faithful deportment of themselves in the relation or condition in which Providence has placed them. [4.] God takes notice of the good that is in his servants, to their honour and benefit, but covers a multitude of failings; Sara's infidelity and derision are overlooked, when her virtues are celebrated. [5.] Christians ought to do their duty to one another, not out of fear, nor from force, but from a willing mind, and in obedience to the command of God. Wives should be in subjection to their churlish husbands, not from dread and amazement, but from a desire to do well and to please God.
II. The husband's duty to the wife comes next to be considered.
1. The particulars are, (1.) Cohabitation, which forbids unnecessary separation, and implies a mutual communication of goods and persons one to another, with delight and concord. (2.) Dwelling with the wife according to knowledge; 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. (3.) Giving honour to the wife - giving due respect to her, and maintaining her authority, protecting her person, supporting her credit, delighting in her conversation, affording her a handsome maintenance, and placing a due trust and confidence in her.
2. The reasons are, Because she is the weaker vessel by nature and constitution, and so ought to be defended: but then the wife is, in other and higher respects, equal to her husband; they are heirs together of the grace of life, of all the blessings of this life and another, and therefore should live peaceably and quietly one with another, and, if they do not, their prayers one with another and one for another will be hindered, so that often "you will not pray at all, or, if you do, you will pray with a discomposed ruffled mind, and so without success." Learn, (1.) The weakness of the female sex is no just reason either for separation or contempt, but on the contrary it is a reason for honour and respect: Giving honour to the wife as unto the weaker vessel. (2.) There is an honour due to all who are heirs of the grace of life. (3.) All married people should take care to behave themselves so lovingly and peaceably one to another that they may not by their broils hinder the success of their prayers.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–7 Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own…
Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands,.... As well as subjects to princes, and servants to masters; though not with the same sort of subjection, but what is suitable to the relation they stand in to their husbands; See Gill on Eph 5:22. See Gill on Col 3:18.
that if any obey not the word; any husband who is an unbeliever, has no love for the Gospel, and gives no credit to it, but despises, disbelieves, and rejects it, the word of truth, of faith, of righteousness, reconciliation, and salvation. The apostle, though he includes all wives, and exhorts them in general to subjection to their own husbands, yet has a particular regard to such as had unbelieving husbands, and who, on that account, were scrupulous of living with them, and of being in subjection to them; and therefore, as the Apostle Paul also did, he advises them to abide with them, and behave well to them, using much the same argument as he does in Co1 7:10.
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they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; for though the ordinary way and means of conversion is the word, faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word; yet it may be sometimes done without it; or however by the agreeable conversation of professors, and so of religious wives, the hearts of such as were averse to Christianity, and the Gospel, as unbelieving husbands, may be so softened, and wrought upon, as to entertain a better opinion of it, and in process of time be inclined to hear and attend it; the consequence of which may prove their conversion, which is a gaming, or winning of souls; and which, as it is for their good, is for the glory of Christ; for as every soul that is delivered from the power of darkness, and is translated into the kingdom of Christ, is a loss to Satan, it is a gain to Christ, and to his church. The Syriac version, instead of "without the word", reads, "without labour"; as if the winning of unbelieving husbands was easily obtained by the conversation of their wives.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1–7 If any - He speaks tenderly. Won - Gained…
If any - He speaks tenderly. Won - Gained over to Christ.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1–7 The duty of wives to their husbands, how they…
CHAPTER III.
The duty of wives to their husbands, how they are to be
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adorned, and be in subjection as Sarah was to Abraham, 1-6.
The duty of husbands to their wives, 7.
How to obtain happiness, and live a long and useful life, 8-11.
God loves and succours them that do good; but his face is
against the wicked, 12, 13.
They should suffer persecution patiently, and be always ready
to give a reason of the hope that is in them; and preserve a
good conscience, though they suffered for righteousness, 14-17.
Christ suffered for us, and was put to death in the flesh, but
quickened by the Spirit, 18.
How he preached to the old world, while Noah was preparing the
ark, 19, 20.
The salvation of Noah and his family a type of baptism, 21.
Christ is ascended to heaven, all creatures being subject to
him, 22.
NOTES ON CHAP. III.
Verse 1. Ye wives, be in subjection] Consider that your husband is, by God's appointment, the head and ruler of the house; do not, therefore, attempt to usurp his government; for even though he obey not the word-is not a believer in the Christian doctrine, his rule is not thereby impaired; for Christianity never alters civil relations: and your affectionate, obedient conduct will be the most likely means of convincing him of the truth of the doctrine which you have received.
Without the word] That your holy conduct may be the means of begetting in them a reverence for Christianity, the preaching of which they will not hear. 1Cor 14:34, and the other places referred to in the margin.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 5, 7 1Pe 3:1-2. Likewise — As I have exhorted servants…
1Pe 3:1-2. Likewise — As I have exhorted servants to be in subjection to their masters, I in like manner say, Ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands — In all things just and lawful; that if any (he speaks tenderly) obey not the word — Disbelieve and reject the gospel; they also may, without the word — Though they neglect or reject that means of grace; be won by the conversation — The good behaviour of the wives — That is, be gained over to Christ. “Here St. Peter wisely intimates to the women, that the silent, but powerful persuasion of a becoming behaviour, would be more effectual in winning their unbelieving husbands to embrace the gospel, than many arguments, proposed perhaps with heat, for the purpose of convincing them. For when the husbands found what a happy influence the gospel had in making their wives sweet-tempered and dutiful in every respect, they could not but entertain a good opinion of a religion which produced such excellent effects.” While, with admiration and increasing love, they daily behold your chaste and spotless conversation coupled with fear — With a dutiful, respectful, obliging conduct, and a care not to displease.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1–7 Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own…
Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands - On the duty here enjoined, see the 1Co 11:3-9 notes, and Eph 5:22 note.
That, if any obey not the word - The word of God; the gospel. That is, if any wives have husbands who are not true Christians. This would be likely to occur when the gospel was first preached, as it does now, by the fact that wives might be converted, though their husbands were not. It cannot be inferred from this, that after they themselves had become Christians they had married unbelieving husbands. The term “word” here refers particularly to the gospel as preached; and the idea is, that if they were regardless of that gospel when preached - if they would not attend on preaching, or if they were unaffected by it, or if they openly rejected it, there might be hope still that they would be converted by the Christian influence of a wife at home. In such cases, a duty of special importance devolves on the wife.
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They also may without the word be won - In some other way than by preaching. This I does not mean that they would be converted independently of the influence of truth - for truth is always the instrument of conversion, Jam 1:18; Joh 17:17; but that it was to be by another influence than preaching.
By the conversation of the wives - By the conduct or deportment of their wives. See the notes at Phi 1:27. The word conversation, in the Scriptures, is never confined, as it is now with us, to oral discourse, but denotes conduct in general. It includes indeed “conversation” as the word is now used, but it embraces also much more - including everything that we do. The meaning here is, that the habitual deportment of the wife was to be such as to show the reality and power of religion; to show that it had such influence on her temper, her words, her whole deportment, as to demonstrate that it was from God.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv1, 7 Let wives, &c. In the first six verses he…
Let wives, &c. In the first six verses he gives instructions to married women. 1. By their modest and submissive dispositions to endeavour to gain and convert their husbands, shewing them such a respect as Sara did, (whose daughters they ought to esteem themselves) who called Abraham her lord, or master; (Genesis xviii. 12.) 2. To be modest in their dress, without vanity; 3. That women take the greatest care of the hidden man, i.e. of the interior disposition of their heart, which he calls the incorruptibility of a quiet and a meek spirit; 4. Not fearing any trouble, when God’s service or the duty to their husbands require it. (Witham)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
John Nelson Darby 1862 · Public Domain On v1 1 Peter Chapter 3
1 Peter Chapter 3
After this general exhortation, brief but important to believers, the apostle takes up the relative walk of Christians in a world where on the one hand God watches over all, yet where He permits His own to suffer, whether for righteousness’ sake or for the name of Christ, but where they ought never to suffer for having done wrong. The path then of the Christian is marked out. He is subject for the Lord’s sake to human ordinances or institutions. He gives honour to all men, and to each in his place, so that no one shall have any reproach to bring against him. He is submissive to his masters, even if they are bad men, and yields to their ill-treatment. Were he subject only to the good and gentle, a worldly slave would do as much; but if, having done well, he suffers and bears it patiently, this is acceptable to God, this is grace. It was thus that Christ acted, and to this we are called. Christ suffered in this way, and never replied by reproaches or threats to those who molested Him, but committed Himself to Him that judges righteously. To Him we belong. He had suffered for our sins, in order that, having been delivered from them, we should live to God. These Christians from among the Jews had been as sheep going astray; [5] they were now brought back to the Shepherd and Bishop of their souls. But how entirely these exhortations, shew that the Christian is one who is not of this world, but has his own path through it: yet this path was the way of peace in it!
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Likewise wives were to be subject to their husbands in all modesty and purity, in order that this testimony to the effect of the word by its fruits might take the place of the word itself, if their husbands would not listen to it. They were to rest, in patience and meekness, on the faithfulness of God, and not be alarmed at seeing the power of the adversaries. (Compare Php 1:28)
Husbands were in like manner to dwell with the wife, their affections and relationships being governed by Christian knowledge, and not by any human passion; honouring the wife, and walking, with her as being heirs together of the grace of life.
Finally, all were to walk in the spirit of peace and gentleness, carrying with them, in their intercourse with others, the blessing of which they were themselves the heirs, the spirit of which they ought consequently to bear ever with them. By following that which is good, by having the tongue governed by the fear of the Lord, by avoiding evil and seeking peace, they would in quietness enjoy the present life under the eye of God. For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and His ears are open to their prayers; but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil. And who, moreover, would harm them, if they followed only that which is good ?
This, then, is the government of God, the principle on which He superintends the course of this world. Nevertheless it is not now a direct and immediate government preventing all wrong. The power of evil still acts upon the earth; those who are animated by it shew themselves hostile to the righteous, and act by means of that fear which Satan is able to produce. But by giving the Lord His place in the soul, this fear which the enemy excites has no longer a place there. If the heart is conscious of the presence of God, can that heart tremble at the presence of the enemy ? This is the secret of boldness and peace in confessing Christ. Then the instruments of the enemy seek to turn us aside, and to overwhelm us by their pretensions; but the consciousness of God’s presence dissipates those pretensions, and destroys all their power. Resting on the strength of His presence, we are ready to answer those who ask the reason of our hope, with meekness and holy reverence remote from all levity. For all this it is necessary to have a good conscience. We may carry a bad conscience to God, that He may pardon and have mercy on us; but if we have a bad conscience, we cannot resist the enemy- we are afraid of him. On the one hand, we fear his malice; on the other, we have lost the consciousness of the presence and the strength of God. When walking before God, we fear nothing; the heart is free: we have not to think of self, we think of God; and the adversaries are ashamed of having falsely accused those whose conduct is unblamable, and against whom nothing can be brought except the calumny of their enemies, which calumnies turn to their own shame.
It may be that God may see it good that we should suffer. If so, it is better that we should suffer for well doing than for evil doing. The apostle gives a touching motive for this: Christ has suffered for sins once for all; let that suffice; let us suffer only for righteousness. To suffer for sin was His task; He accomplished it, and that for ever; put to death, as to His life in the flesh, but quickened according to the power of the divine Spirit.
The passage that follows has occasioned difficulties to the readers of scripture; but it appears to me simple, if we perceive the object of the Spirit of God. The Jews expected a Messiah corporeally present, who should deliver the nation, and exalt the Jews to the summit of earthly glory. But He was not present, we know, in that manner, and the believing Jews had to endure the scorn and the hatred of the unbelieving, on account of their trust in a Messiah who was not present, and who had wrought no deliverance for the people. Believers possessed the salvation of their soul, and they knew Jesus in heaven; but unbelieving men did not care for that. The apostle therefore cites the case of Noah’s testimony. The believing Jews were few in number, and Christ was theirs only according to the Spirit. By the power of that Spirit He had been raised up from the dead. It was by the power of the same Spirit that He had gone-without being corporeally present-to preach in Noah. The world was disobedient (like the Jews in the apostle’s days), and eight souls only were saved; even as the believers were now but a little flock. But the spirits of the disobedient were now in prison, because they did not obey Christ present among them by His Spirit in Noah. The long-suffering of God waited then, as now, with the Jewish nation; the result would be the same. It has been so.
This interpretation is confirmed (in preference to that which supposes that the Spirit of Christ preached in hades to souls which had been confined there ever since the flood) by the consideration that in Genesis it is said, “My Spirit shall not always strive. with men but their days shall be a hundred and twenty years.” That is to say, His Spirit should strive, in the testimony of Noah, during a hundred and twenty years and no longer. Now it would be an extraordinary thing that with those persons only (for he speaks only of them) the Lord should strive in testimony after their death. Moreover, we may observe that, in considering this expression to mean the Spirit of Christ in Noah, we only use a well-known phrase of Peter’s; for he it is, as we have seen, who said, “The Spirit of Christ which was in the prophets.”
These spirits then are in prison, because they did not hearken to the Spirit of Christ in Noah. (Compare 2Pe 2:5-9.) To this the apostle adds, the comparison of baptism to the ark of Noah in the deluge. Noah was saved through the water; we also; for the water of baptism typifies death, as the deluge, so to speak, was the death of the world. Now Christ has passed through death and is risen. We enter into death in baptism; but it is like the ark, because Christ suffered in death for us, and has come out of it in resurrection, as Noah came out of the deluge, to begin, as it were, a new life in a resurrection world. Now Christ, having passed through death, has atoned for sins; and we, by passing through it in spirit, leave all our sins in it, as Christ did in reality for us; for He was raised up without the sins which He expiated on the cross. And they were our sins; and thus, through the resurrection, we have a good conscience. We pass through death in spirit and in figure by baptism. The peace-giving force of the thing is the resurrection of Christ, after He had accomplished expiation; by which resurrection therefore we have a good conscience.
Now this is what the Jews had to learn. The Christ was gone up to heaven, all powers and principalities being made subject to Him. He is at the right hand of God. We have therefore not a Messiah on earth, but a good conscience and a heavenly Christ.
Footnotes for 1 Peter Chapter 2
4: In this passage, so to speak (as in this alone), Peter meets the doctrine of the assembly, and that under the character of a building, not of a body or a bride; that which Christ built, not what was united to Him. So Paul also presents it to us in Eph 2:20-21. In this view, though going on on earth, it is Christ’s work and a continuing process; no human instrumentality is referred to: I will build, says Christ; it grows, says Paul; living stones come, says Peter. This must not be confounded with the building into which men may build wood and hay and stubble, as the same thing; though the outward thing which God set up good, left to man’s responsibility, as, ever, was soon corrupted. Individuals are built up by grace, and it grows into a holy temple. All this refers to Mat 16:1-28. The responsibility of human service in this respect is found in 1Co 3:1-23, and the assembly is there given in another point of view. The body is another thing altogether, the doctrine is taught in Eph 1:1-23; Eph 2:1-22; Eph 3:1-21; Eph 4:1-32.; 1Co 12:1-31., and other passages.
5: An allusion, I suppose, to the last verse of Psa 119:176.The apostle constantly puts the Christian Jews on the ground of the blessed remnant, only making it a soul salvation..
John Nelson Darby — Synopsis of the Books of the Bible: the New Testament (c. 1857–1862) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1 Analysis:—Exhortations addressed to married people, enjoining duties affecting their…
1Pe_3:1-7
Analysis:—Exhortations addressed to married people, enjoining duties affecting their mutual relations, from a Christian point of view
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1 Likewise, ye wives,1 be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if2 any obey not the word,3 they also may without the word4 be won by the conversation of the wives; 2, 3While they behold5 your chaste conversation coupled with fear.6 Whose7 adorning, let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair,8 and of wearing of gold,9 or 4of putting on of apparel; But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible,10 even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit,11 which is in the sight of God of great price. 5For after this manner in the old time12 the holy women also, who trusted13 in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their 6own husbands: Even14 as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters ye are,15 as long as16 ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement.17187Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1Pe_3:1. Likewise, wives, be in subjection to your own husbands.—The Apostle now passes on to conjugal duty, intending to make ὁμοίως convey the idea that the obedience of wives to their husbands is as sacred an obligation as that of servants to their masters. What may be the reason of his not noticing the duties of believing masters to their servants, to which Paul, in Eph_6:9; Col_3:25, has special reference? It is probably to be found in the circumstance that in the Churches to which he wrote this Epistle were only few believing masters, or none that had slaves. Estius sees in this circumstance an additional reason that this Epistle was addressed to the Jews of the dispersion, among whom were many slaves, but few masters.—αἱ γυναῖκες, address as in 1Pe_2:18; 1Pe_3:7; Eph_5:22; Eph_5:25.—ὑποτασσόμεναι, Participle, as ch 1Pe_2:18, governed by the principle, 1Pe_2:17, “Fear God,” etc., cf. Col_3:18; Gen_3:16.
To your own husbands.—Cf. 1Co_14:35; 1Co_7:2; Eph_5:21; Eph_5:25; Eph_5:28; Eph_5:33. ἴδος is not without emphasis; it adverts to an antithesis; it is to remind the wives, as Calvin rightly observes, of the duty of chastity, and warn them of all suspicious obedience to strange men. Believing wives married to unbelieving or pagan husbands might, even apart from the then prevalent demoralization of the conjugal estate, be tempted to seek close intercourse with enlightened men, strong in faith, and to be led by them; such a course might easily shake the confidence of the conjugal relation; hence the Apostle’s delicate caution. The Apostle takes it for granted that the greater number of husbands of believing wives are also believers in the publicly preached word; but even if (καὶ εἴ) this should not be the case, the wives must persevere in self-sacrificing, self-denying obedience, and thus seek to win their husbands, not by talking and arguing, but by the powerful preaching of a quiet conversation.—ἄνευ λόγου, without open preaching and peculiar arts of speech on the part of the wives.—διὰ τῆς ἀναστοροφῆς, by means of their behaviour and obedience; this is their principal task.—κερδηθήσωνται, cf. 1Co_9:19; 1Co_9:22; 1Co_7:17. To gain for Christ, for the Gospel, for the kingdom of heaven, for themselves—σώζειν. Calov remarks that the expression alludes to the great value of the soul, and to the holy joy in their conversion. The greatest gain is that of the converted themselves, Php_3:8. [Leighton observes: “A soul converted is gained to itself, gained to the pastor, or friend, or wife, or husband who sought it, and gained to Jesus Christ: added to His treasury, who thought not His own precious blood too dear to lay out for this gain.”—M.]—Grotius cites the language of the heathen orator Libanius, which shows how primitive Christian wives followed these exhortations. He exclaims: “What wives have these Christians!”
1Pe_3:2. When they behold your conversation, chaste in fear.—ἐποπτεύσαντες, cf. 1Pe_2:12, an insight flowing from close observation.—τὴν ἐν φόβῳ ἁγνήν.—The allusion is probably (with reference to 1Pe_2:17) to the fear of God, not to the fear of the husband, as in Eph_5:33.—ἁγνήν not=chaste in its restricted sense, but because of its close connection with φόβῳ and with the sequel, denotes chaste in a wider sense,=pure, holy, cf. Jam_3:17.—So Calov, not only with reference to conjugal fidelity and cleanness of the body.
1Pe_3:3. Your adornment let it not be the outward (adornment) of braiding the hair, and putting round golden ornaments, or of putting on of dresses.—This verse is closely connected with the foregoing. This holy conversation in the fear of God is described first negatively: “In contrast with the means used by wordly-minded women to attach their husbands, the Apostle specifies the means whereby a Christian wife may hope to win even a resisting husband.”—ὦν ἔστω sc. ὁ κόσμος, cf. 1Ti_2:9.—The Genitives are those of nearer definition, and describe the act of adorning, not the objects of adornment.—ἐμπλοκή, the artificial braiding of hair; female vanity is inexhaustible in the invention of new styles and fashions. Calov cites a passage from Jerome’s Epistle to Demetrius, in which he adverts to this subject, and quotes Cyprian’s sharp censure of women on this score. The views, which even the more serious heathen held concerning such trifles, have been collected by Steiger from Plato, Sophocles and Plutarch.—ἢ ἐνδύσεωε ἱματίων.—Peter, of course, adverts simply to the costliness of dresses. [But does not ἐνδύσεως allude rather to putting them on in an unbecoming and indecent manner? Alford says that ‘within the limits of propriety and decorum, the common usage is the rule.’ True, but where are those limits? Are they observed in the ‘full dress’ of the best society of either hemisphere? Is ‘full dress’ not a misnomer, and ought not our Christian matrons to use their influence in having full dress made more dress?—M.] Calov:—“Peter forbids not any and every adornment, but a modest and seemly adorning of the body, conformably to their several stations, is allowed,” cf. 1Co_12:23.
1Pe_3:4. But let it be the hidden man of the heart—price.—κρυπτὸς ἄνθρωπος=ἐσω ἀνθρωπος, Rom_7:22; 2Co_4:16; Eph_3:16. This hidden man is not, as Steiger holds, = καρφία, but that which the Spirit of God forms and develops in the secret workshop of the heart, namely, the new way of thinking, feeling and willing, the new spiritual life, the new nature, the inmost kernel of man’s religion, in as far as he has within him something flowing from the life of Jesus. [In other words the inner man is the Christian, the regenerated, daily-renewed man, adorned with the beauty of holiness with his (heart) affections centred in God.—M.].—ἐν τῷ ἀφθάρτῳ. Contrasted with those perishable, worthless trifles, 1Pe_3:3. A neuter adjective is used for an abstract noun (v. Winer, p. 266). Beza: = sinceritas, incorruptio. πραΰς= עָנִי mild, gentle, meek, Mat_21:5; 1Co_13:4, etc.; Eph_4:2; Col_3:12; Mat_11:29; Jam_1:20; Jam_3:13; 1Co_4:21; Gal_6:1; 2Ti_2:24. The contrary of self-will, pride, presumption, obstinacy, hardness, anger and envy.—ἡσυχίου, calm, tranquil, without passionate excitement. Bengel:—mansuetus, qui non turbat, tranquillus, qui turbas aliorum placide fert.—πνεύματος relates not to the Holy Spirit, but to the spiritual life, infused into believers by the Holy Ghost.—ὅ ἐστιν may be connected either with πνεύματος or with ἀφθάρτῳ. Bengel connects it with the latter, as being the principal subject, [but “the meek and quiet spirit” seems to be the main thing desired.—M.].—πολυτελής=πολύτιμος 1Pe_1:19.—[cf. Mar_14:3; 1Ti_2:9; Pro_1:13.—M.].—ἐνώπιον τοῦ Θεοῦ, “coram Deo, qui interna, non externa, spectat, cui placere curant pii.” Bengel.
1Pe_3:5. For after this manner formerly also the holy women, who hoped in God, adorned themselves, etc.—οὔτω refers to what immediately precedes. The proof of it [the meek and quiet spirit.—M.] is their obedience.—ἄγιαι γυναῖκες, Luk_1:70; Act_3:21; Eph_3:5; 2Pe_1:21; those women of blessed memory and singled out in the history of salvation; their personality is defined by their hope in God. If God is all in all in a man’s heart, it has renounced the idol ‘vanity’ and expelled passionate excitement, cf. 1Ti_5:5. Tertullian:—“Be clothed with the silk of honesty, the byssus of holiness and the purple of chastity: thus adorned, God will be your friend.” Bengel:—“vera sanctitas, spes in Deum: est hoc epitheton pars subjecti.”
1Pe_3:6. As Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord.—This obedience is illustrated by the example of Sarah, whom the Rabbis also were wont to set up as a pattern. She showed her obedience first in leaving with her husband the land of her nativity in reliance upon the promises of God, secondly in regarding Abraham as her Lord and calling him so, Gen_18:12, notwithstanding they were both descended from a common earthly parent, Gen_20:12.—ὑπήκουεν denotes the continuance of her obedience, which was rewarded by Abraham in his turn obeying her, Gen_16:2; Gen_21:12.—Grotius remarks that when the corruption of morals had become general at Rome, wives were called mistresses [of course in a good sense.—M.]
Of whom ye have become children.—ἦς ἐγενήθητε τέκνα. This is one of the Apostle’s frequent allusions to Isaiah; cf. Isa_51:1-2. “Look upon the rock whence ye are hewn (Abraham) and to the hole of the pit (or well) whence ye are digged (Sarah).” Sarah is here mentioned as the first mother of the people of Israel.—It is not ἐστὲ but ἐλενήθητε, because the expression ‘children of Sarah’ has not only a carnal but also a spiritual import. Steiger argues from this passage that the Apostle was addressing Gentile Christians as he would hardly have said to Jewesses, “ye have become Sarah’s children” without adding some such explanation as this; “You have now become Sarah’s children indeed or after a spiritual manner;“ but the opposite conclusion seems more in place. Did our Lord make such a qualification when He said to Zaccheus, the Jewish publican-in-chief, “He also is a son of Abraham”? Luk_19:9. Did He do it in the case of the infirm woman of whom He said that she was a daughter of Abraham? Luk_13:16; Joh_8:39. Even John the Baptist destroyed the delusion that those are Abraham’s children who are descended from him after the flesh, Mat_3:9. Believing Jewesses would have no difficulty in understanding what was meant, while to Christian Gentile women it would hardly have been equally intelligible and applicable. Weiss remarks, “To be called the daughters of Sarah was no particular distinction conferred upon Gentile women, but to be designated as the children of their venerated ancestress and that in the highest sense [i. e., of similarity of disposition), was the loftiest praise bestowed upon Jewesses.” This conclusion is corroborated by the quotation from Isaiah 51
If ye do good and are not afraid of any sadden fear.—ἀγαθοποιοῦσαι, not in that - - - - or because- - - -, or if - - - -, but: as those who - - - - [so German.—M.]. You evidence your relationship to Sarah by doing good. Grotius recalls the amiable reception which Sarah accorded to the stranger guests and the readiness with which she obeyed Abraham on that occasion, Gen_18:6; and in connection with the sequel refers to Genesis 20. But the sense is probably more general and the reference is rather to zeal in well-doing, as in 1Pe_2:15; 1Pe_2:20.—μὴ φοβούμεναι may be a quotation from Pro_3:25 : “οὐ μὴ φοβηθήσῃ πτόησιν ἐπελθοῦσαν οὐδὲ ὁρμὰς ἀσεβῶν ἐπερχομένας.—πτόησις, terror caused by something external. As those who are so full of trust in God, that they are not tenderly moved by any evil or by menaces similar to those Sarah had to pass through at the court of Pharaoh and Abimelech, cf. Heb_11:11. The sentence contains also an exhortation to strive more and more for the courage and manly fortitude of their ancestress, cf. 1Pe_3:14. [Estius says on πτόησιν: quod dum facitis, non est quod metuatis quidquam mali: velut, ne maritis vestris displiceatis, si minus corruptæ inceditis: aut ne serviliter vos tractent, si faciles ad obsequium vos præbeatis; ut solet sexus muliebris vanis pavoribus esse obnoxius. Sed et si forte nacti estis maritos iniquiores, silentio potius ac patientia, quam multis verbis studete eorum animos lenire.“ cf. Luk_21:9; Luk_24:37.—M.]
1Pe_3:7. Ye husbands, in like manner, dwelling according to knowledge with the feminine, as with the weaker vessel.—Ὁμοίως refers back to 1Pe_2:17 as in 1Pe_3:1. Weiss wrongly maintains that the exhortation to Christian husbands is out of place in this connection because it does not coincide with the point of view indicated at 1Pe_2:11-12. But why should it not coincide, if the Apostle addresses in turn the different conditions and classes of Christians, and shows to each how they should walk worthily among the Gentiles, honour all men and fear God? It would rather have been a grave omission, had he not reminded husbands of their duties; the exhortation was indeed peculiarly needed in order to avoid all misunderstanding and abuse of the obedience of women.—His first precept to husbands relates to συνοικεῖν=to dwell together, to have intercourse in general and then, as some of the ancients understand the word, with particular reference to conjugal intercourse. It should take place κατὰ γνῶσιν, according to knowledge—derived from reason and from the Gospel in respect of their peculiar relations and wants.—ὡς ἀσθενεστέρῳ σκεύει should be joined to συνοικοῦντες; otherwise συνοικεῖν would have no object, ἀπονέμοντες would have two ὡς.—σκεῦος is widely used of vessels, clothes and things in general, Deu_22:5; Luk_17:31; then of men with reference to their dependence and frailty and their destination for some particular purpose. We are like vessels in the potter’s hand, Jer_18:6; Isa_29:16; Isa_45:9; Isa_64:8. He can break or preserve, reject or prefer them to honour, Jer_19:11; Jer_22:28; Jer_48:38; Hos_8:6; Psa_2:9; Rev_2:27; Rom_9:21-22; 2Ti_2:20. In particular, the body is called the vessel containing the soul, 1Th_4:4-5. Here σκεῦος applies equally to husband and wife as is evident from the comparative ἀσθενεστέρῳ; it designates both as the handiwork of God, organized and designed for each other. The husband should be particularly moved to a considerate, loving and careful treatment of his wife by the thought:—“God himself has thus appointed and made the nature of woman.”—ἀσθενεστέρῳ. Calov:—“Women are weak in point of sex, the constitution of their body, mind and judgment, art, aptitude and wisdom in the conduct of affairs.” [Rather a sweeping judgment of woman, and as ungenerous as untrue. Woman is physically man’s inferior, but it is doubtful whether she is so mentally. This is not in the writer’s opinion a question of superiority or inferiority, but one of diversity. There are mental qualities in which woman excels man and others in which he excels her. They seem to be well balanced under equal advantages afforded to each. His experience in schools constrains him to admit that up to the age of sixteen, girls are decidedly brighter and better students than boys. If they do not progress after that period in an equal ratio, the fault belongs to vicious social habits and to the superficial and fanciful ideas as to the maximum attainments of females, but not to the natural endowment of their mind. It came forth from the Creator’s hand perfect after its kind, everyway adapted to man’s mind and the two equally and healthily developed, working together in one direction, supply each other’s defects and strengthen each other’s powers. United, this natural diversity blends in harmony. An excellent discussion of this subject maybe found in Adolphe Monod’s “La Femme,” Paris. 1860.—M.] Luther:—“Woman is weaker in body, more timid and less courageous than man, hence your treatment of her should be accordingly.” But as woman’s weakness is relative, man also being a weak, frail vessel, he, mindful of his own weakness, ought the more readily to sympathize with the weaker, τῷ γυναικείῳ σκεύει.
Giving honour as to those who are also fellow-inheritors of the grace of life, in order that your prayers be not hindered.—The second precept is: ἀπονέμοντες τιμήν: to accord τὸ νόμμον, what is due; τίμήν with reference to 1Pe_2:17. The honour due to, them, honourable treatment which implies also care for their bodily wants.—The reason of this esteem: they also are fellow-heirs of the grace of life; this is a higher reason than the former, flowing from the natural relation of the sexes. Woman becomes man’s equal in virtue of the gift of the grace of life accorded to and hoped for by both.—συγκληρονόμοις. Griesbach and others read συγκληρονόμοι, masculine; this reading gives the same sense, but the former is preferable, for they are destined with other believers to inherit the kingdom of heaven, καί denotes the participation, cf. 1Pe_1:4; 1Pe_1:10; 1Pe_1:13; Rom_8:17; Eph_3:6; Heb_11:9. The hypothesis is that both husband and wife are believers, or if either part be as yet unbelieving, it may become believing.—χάριτος ζωῆς; χἄρις; = χάρισμα, the gracious gift of life, of eternal life beginning here and consummated above, ci. Gal_3:28. Others explain: grace communicating life, or life given out of grace, i. e., flowing from it.—εἰς τὸ μὴ ἐκκόπτεσθαι. (Griesbach and others read ἐγκόπτεσθαι = עָקַר to be interrupted, lamed). This expression is used of the pruning, cutting down and tearing up of trees, hence to cut off [to cut off occasion.—M.], to hinder, render ineffectual. Common and private prayer, its power and effect are hindered, where such esteem is wanting, for prayer, in order to be effectual, exacts a reconciled mind, Mat_5:23; Mat_6:14; 1Ti_2:8; 1Jn_3:21. [“Cum vir et uxor non sunt bene Concordes, minus possunt oratione vacare et eorum orationes sunt minus exaudibiles.” Lyra.—M.]. Roos: “There is no room for prayer that may be answered where the husband despises and tyrannizes his wife and where a marriage is marred by discord.” Grotius: “Harsh treatment leads to insult and strife, which hinder the power and efficacy of prayer.” Mat_18:19; Sir_25:1. Wiesinger: “The consciousness of having sinned against the hope of salvation forces itself as an obstruction between God and him who prays, and thus bars the way of prayer.”
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. The conjugal state is not a human-Divine κτίσις, like the secular rule, 1Pe_2:13, but instituted by God Himself, Gen_2:18; Gen_2:24; Mat_19:5; it is a relation of life adapted even to the royal priesthood, to the holy people of God’s possession, in which they are to show forth the praises (virtues) of Him who has called us out of darkness into His marvellous light, 1Pe_2:9. On the other hand, we ought not to deny the existence of a pure celibacy; so Thiersch.
2. Although the necessity of the wife obeying the husband is recognized outside of Christianity, the equality of husband and wife, in virtue of Divine appointment and grace, were altogether unknown; hence there is every where (i. e., outside of Christendom) a great degradation of the female sex. “Christianity,” observes Steiger, “is equi-distant from the moral degradation of the female sex, which the Mohammedans and Rabbis would almost deprive of immortality, and from the secular exaltation and deification, which, especially since the middle ages, has been defended as Christian by those who confounded Germanism with Christianity, while it secured to woman anything but happiness.
3. Peter, defining prayer as the centre and support of conjugal life, takes as lofty a conception of the matrimonial covenant as Paul, although the Pauline idea that the marriage of Christians is a figure of the relation of Christ to His Church does not occur in Peter (cf. Ephesians 5).
4. True love in the conjugal state depends upon and is rooted in mutual esteem; where this is wanting, the conjugal state is shaken at its very foundation; but it is not only esteem of the personal qualities and excellencies of either part, but also, and chiefly, the appreciation flowing from the thought: Thy partner, like thyself, is a child of God, purchased with the same precious blood of Christ, and called, like thyself, to be an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
There must be some special reason why wives are reminded of their duties before the husbands, and charged with obedience as their principal and foremost task.—Christian wives need not ask, which husbands must we obey? The direction is unmistakable: your own husbands; consequently, also unbelieving, harsh, and wayward husbands.—Noble art!—to be silent with the mouth, and to speak in the life. Augustine tells of Monica, his mother, that she spoke of Christ to her husband by her feminine virtues, and that, after having borne his violence without a murmur or complaint, she gained him at the close of his life to Christ, without deploring in the believer what she had suffered at his hands as an unbeliever.
1Pe_3:2. There is often a veil before the eyes of a hard husband; doubt not that it can be removed, so that he may admiringly look upon the mystery of a profoundly-Christian mind, and with melted heart fall down at the feet of Jesus.—Fondness of rule and dress is a bad propensity, which is sometimes found even in Christian wives.—The proud daughters of Eve may see themselves reflected, as in a mirror, in Isaiah iii.—What is the heavenly bridal array of the believing daughters of Sarah?—Where hope in God is firmly established, no evil can terrify us.—It is the greatest calamity of wedded life to see prayer hindered and room given to Asmodeus [the devil matrimonial or disturber of married life.—M.].—How do husband and wife walk in the light of Divine truth?—It is the greatest folly if husbands act the part of tyrants to their wives.
Starke:—Although wives should mainly fear God that they may shun evil and do good, yet ought they to fear their husbands also, that is, not only to give them no cause for suspicion and jealousy by unseemly speech, behaviour or works, Pro_7:10, but they should also make it their study to please them.—Holy women, influenced by the Holy Spirit, will observe the proper medium in dress, cf. Est. ii: 16; Gen_24:22; Rom_12:2.—Are you astonished to see persons covered with gold and pearls, with jewels and similar vanities? Rest assured that a believing soul, resplendent in virtues, is far more glorious and pleasant to God and His angels, Psa_45:14-15.—The most respectable dress! Is it to be this? You say, it does not suit me, it is old, and makes no show. Well, that depends upon whom you want to please: God?—if so, it should be glorious, but inward; or the devil, the prince of this world?—then you need not care for Peter or Christ, dress after your own fashion, Pro_7:10.—As the Old and the New Testaments have only one Messiah, one faith, one hope and one charity, so they have only one inward soul-ornament, Act_15:11; Isa_61:10.—Wives may lessen or increase the cares of their husbands, Pro_31:12.—If a husband and wife do not live after God’s ordinance, their prayers and worship are utter vanity and loss, 1Ti_2:8.
[Leighton:
1Pe_3:1. “The common spring of all mutual duties on both sides is supposed to be love: that peculiar conjugal love that makes them one, will infuse such sweetness into the authority of the husband and obedience of the wife, as will make their lives harmonious, like the sound of a well-tuned instrument; whereas without that, having such an universal interest in all their affairs, they cannot escape frequent contests and discords, which is a sound more unpleasant than the jarring of untuned strings to an exact ear.”—M.]
[Publius Syrus:—Casta ad virum matrona parendo imperat. The submissive wife rules by obedience.—M.]
[Jay:
1Pe_3:2. Chaste conversation implies “diffidence, the blushings of reserve, the tremulous retiring of modesty, the sensation that comes from the union of innocence and danger, the prudence which keeps far from the limits of permission, the instinctive vigilance which discerns danger afar off, the caution which never allows the enemy to approach near enough even to reconnoitre.”—M.]
[Leighton:—With fear.—“Fearing the least stain of chastity, or the very least appearance of any thing not suiting with it. It is delicate, timorous grace, afraid of the least air, or shadow of any thing that hath but a resemblance of wronging it, in carriage, or speech, or apparel, as follows in the 3d and 4th verses.”—M.]
[Plutarch:
1Pe_3:3. Conjug. Præcep. c. 26. “An ornament, as Crates said, is that which adorns. The proper ornament of a woman is that which becomes her best. This is neither gold, nor pearls, nor scarlet, but those things which are an evident proof of gravity, regularity and modesty.” The wife of Phocion, a celebrated Athenian general, receiving a visit from a lady who was elegantly adorned with gold and jewels, and her hair with pearls, took occasion to call the attention of her guest to the elegance and costliness of her dress; “My ornament,” said the wife of Phocion, “is my husband, now for the twentieth year general of the Athenians.” Plutarch in Vit. Phoc.—Plato De Repub.:—“Behaviour and not gold is the ornament of a woman. To courtesans, these things, jewels and ornaments, are advantageous to their catching more admirers; but for a woman who wishes to enjoy the favour of one man, good behaviour is the proper ornament, and not dresses. And you should have the blush upon your countenance, which is the sign of modesty, instead of paint; and worth and sobriety, instead of gold and emeralds.”
The sense of antiquity on this subject was very strong. Clemens Alex. Pædag. Lib. 3, cap. 4, says: “The women that wear gold, plait their hair, paint their faces, have not the image of God in the inward man, but in lieu of it, a fornicating and adulterous soul.” The Apostolical Constitutions, Lib. 1, cap. 8, 8, forbid women to wear exquisite garments fitted to deceive, or gold rings upon their fingers, because all these things are signs of whoredom. Jamblichus in Vita Pythag., Lib. 1, cap. 31, p. 165, maintains “that no free women wore gold, but whores only.”—An inquiry into the sources from which false hair, now so generally worn by women, is procured, might possibly abolish this vicious and unchristian fashion.—M.]
[Leighton:
1Pe_3:3-4. “The soul fallen from God hath lost its true worth and beauty, and therefore it basely descends to these mean things, to serve and dress the body, and take share with it of its unworthy borrowed ornaments, while it has lost and forgotten God, and seeks not after Him, knows not that He alone is the beauty and ornament of the soul, Jer_2:32, and His Spirit and the grace of it, its rich attire, here particularly specified in one excellent grace; and it holds true in the rest.”—M.]
[Philip Henry:—“Besides this” (secret prayer) “he and his wife constantly prayed together morning and evening, and never, if they were together at home or abroad, was it intermitted; and, from his own experience of the benefit of this practice, he would take all opportunities to recommend it to those in that relation, as conducing very much to the comfort of it, and their furtherance in that which he would often say is the great duty of yoke-fellows, and that is ‘to do all they can to help one another to heaven.’ He would say that this duty of husbands and wives praying together is intimated in that of the Apostle, 1Pe_3:7, where they are exhorted to live as heirs of the grace of life, that their prayers (especially their prayers together) be not hindered; that nothing may be done to hinder them from praying together, nor to hinder them in it, nor to spoil the success of their prayers. This sanctifies the relation, and fetches in a blessing on it, makes the comforts of it more sweet, and the cares and crosses of it more easy, and is an excellent means of preserving and increasing love in the relation. Many to whom he had recommended the practice of this duty have blessed God for him, and for his advice concerning it.”—An Account of the Life and Death of Mr. Philip Henry, by his Son, p. 58, Lond., 1712, quoted by Brown.—M.]
[Gataker (quoted by Brown):—“Let such married persons as God hath blessed in this kind” (by their being equally yoked in the best sense) “learn what cause they have to be thankful to God, either for other. Let the jars and discord that they see between other men and women mismatched, and the cross and cursed carriage of them, either toward other, together with the manifold annoyances and grievous mischiefs and inconveniences that ensue ordinarily thereupon, be a means to put them in mind of God’s great mercy and goodness toward them, and to make them more thankful to Him for the same. And since they have received either other from God, let them therein show their thankfulness to God by endeavouring to bring either other nearer unto God, by helping either other forward in the good ways of God. Do either with other as Anna did with her son Samuel: as she had him of God, so she bestowed him on God again: return each other again to God, and labour to return them better than they received them. The better they shall make each other, and the nearer they shall bring each other to God, the more good, through God’s goodness, shall they have either of other. The more man and wife profit in the fear of God, the more comfortably and contentedly shall they live together, the better shall it be for them both.” From “A Good Wife Indeed.” The same author has also sermons entitled, “A Good Wife, God’s Gift”, “Marriage Prayer”, and “Marriage Duties”, which are well worth consulting.—Fordyce’s Sermons to Young Women, in 2 vols., London, 1794 (rare) are also very valuable.—M.]
[Bp. Jeremy Taylor:—(Marriage Ring): “Marriage was ordained by God, instituted in paradise; the relief of a natural necessity, and the first blessing from the Lord. Marriage is a school and exercise of virtue. Here is the proper scene of piety and patience, of the duty of parents and the charity of relatives; here kindness is spread abroad, and love is united and made firm, as a centre. Marriage is the nursery of heaven, fills up the numbers of the elect, and hath in it the labours of love and the delicacies of friendship, the blessing of society and the union of hands and hearts. Marriage is the mother of the world, and preserves kingdoms, and fills cities, and churches, and heaven itself. Like the useful bee, marriage builds a house, and gathers sweetness from every flower, and labours, and unites into societies and republics, and sends out colonies, and feeds the world with delicacies, and obeys their king, and keeps order, and exercises many virtues, and promotes the interest of mankind, and is that state of good things to which God hath designed the present constitution of the world.”—M.]
Footnotes:
[1]1Pe_3:1. [Cod., A. B. and Sinait. omit αἱ. ὁμοίως goes back to 1Pe_2:13—M.]
[2]1Pe_3:1. [καὶ εἴ, even if; the force of καὶ εἴ is, “put the worst case, even if your husbands are positively disobedient to the word, your duty is clear.”—M.]
[3]1Pe_3:1. [κερδηθήσονται; another reading is κερδηθήσωνται. Rec Cod. Sin.—On ἵνα with a Fut. Indic. see Winer, 6th ed. p. 258, and cf. Rev_22:14; translate “that they shall be won.”—M.]
[4]1Pe_3:1. [ἄνευ λόγου, without word. Translate the whole verse: “Likewise, wives, be in subjection to your own husbands, that even if any obey not the word, they shall be won without word by means of the conversation of the wives.”—M.]
[5]1Pe_3:2. [ἐποπτεύσαντες=having beheld, when they behold.—M.]
[6]1Pe_3:2. [The German renders “your conversation chaste in fear.”—M.]
[7]1Pe_3:3. [ὦν=of whom, i.e., your adornment.—M.]
[8]1Pe_3:3. [ἐμπλοκῆς τριχῶν=braiding of hair, cf. 1Ti_2:9.—M.]
[9]1Pe_3:3. [περιθέσεως=putting round (the head, the arm, the ankle or the finger). Translate the verse: “Your adornment let it be not the outward of braiding of hair, and putting round golden ornaments, or of putting on of dresses.”—M.]
[10]1Pe_3:4. [ἐν τῷ ἀφθάρτῳ=in the incorruptible ornament of.—M.]
[11]1Pe_3:4. [τοῦ πρᾳέος καὶ ἡσυχίου πνεύματος=the meek and quiet spirit, which, etc.—M.]
[12]1Pe_3:5. [ποτὲ καὶ=formerly also.—M.]
[13]1Pe_3:5. [ἐλπίζουσαι (Part, of Imperfect, according to Winer, 6th ed., p. 305)=who hoped.—M.]
[14]1Pe_3:6. [No necessity for “even”; the Greek has simply ὡς.—M.]
[15]1Pe_3:6. [ἧς ἐγενήθητε τέκνα=of whom ye have become children.—M.]
[16]1Pe_3:6. [αγαθοποιοῦσαι states the condition on which they have become Sarah’s children; render, therefore, “if,” instead of “as long as.”—M.]
[17]1Pe_3:6. [καὶ μὴ φοβοΰμεναι μηδεμίαν πτόησιν=and are not afraid of any sudden fear. πτόησιν=fear from without, some external cause of terror. See additional observations under “Exegetical and Critical.”—M.]
[18]1Pe_3:7. [This verse needs entire recasting; the E. V. is involved. We translate, closely following the original: “Ye husbands, in like manner, (refers to πάντας τιμήσατε, 1Pe_2:17) dwelling, according to knowledge with the feminine, as with the weaker vessel, giving honour as to those who are also fellow-inheritors of the grace of life, in order that your prayers be not hindered. So Alford. The Cod. Sin. reads συνομιλοῦντες, “companying with,” for συνοικοῦντες, and supplies ποικίλης, manifold before χάριτος.—M.]
[19]1Pe_3:8. [It is better to retain in English the adjectival construction of the original, substituting being, in Italics. instead of be ye.—M.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv2–7 behold--on narrowly looking into it, literally, "having closely observed."
behold--on narrowly looking into it, literally, "having closely observed."
chaste--pure, spotless, free from all impurity.
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fear--reverential, towards your husbands. Scrupulously pure, as opposed to the noisy, ambitious character of worldly women.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 5. Duties of wives, 1Pe_3:1-6, and husbands, 1Pe_3:7.
5. Duties of wives, 1Pe_3:1-6, and husbands, 1Pe_3:7.
1. Likewise—On the principle laid down in 1Pe_2:18.
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Ye wives— The same precept is found in Eph_5:22; Eph_5:24, and Colossians 2:28, yet not with the reason here assigned. That the husband does not obey… the word of the gospel, constitutes no exception to the rule of subjection, but is rather a special ground of its obligation, in order that he may be won to Christ by the powerful argument of the wife’s holy and obedient conduct.
Without the word—Not, as Alford, the wives’ word, in preaching to or exhorting them, but, as before in the verse, the word of the gospel, the preached word, which had not yet won them to faith in Christ.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–7 1. Likewise, ye wives] The sequence of thought is…
1. Likewise, ye wives] The sequence of thought is every way suggestive. The Apostle passes from the all but universal relation of the master and the slave as one element of social life, to the other, yet more universal, and involving from the Roman point of view almost as great a subordination, of husband and wife. Here also it was his object to impress on men and women, especially on the latter, the thought that the doctrine of Christ was no element of disorder. The stress which he lays on their duties may be fairly taken as indicating the prominence of women among the converts to the new faith. Of that prominence we have sufficient evidence in the narrative of the Acts (actsr 16:13, Act_17:4; Act_17:12). In what follows we have again a reproduction of the teaching of St Paul (Eph_5:22-24; Col_3:18; 1Ti_2:9). It is not without interest to recall the fact that Aristotle makes the two relations of which St Peter speaks, that of husband and wife, that of master and slave, the germ-cells, as it were, out of which all political society has been developed (Arist. Pol. i. 2).
be in subjection to your own husbands] The use of the Greek adjective for “own” is not intended, as some interpreters have thought, to emphasize a contrast between obedience rendered to their own husbands and that which they might be tempted to give to others, but rather to lay stress on the fact that their husbands, because they were such, had a right to expect the due measure of obedience in all things lawful. The words that follow indicate the frequency of the cases in which the wife only was a convert. The Greek text runs “that even if any obey not the word,” as though, in some cases at least, it might be expected that husband and wife would both have been converted together. In “the word” we have the familiar collective expression for the whole doctrine of the Gospel. The Greek verb for “obey not” implies, as in chap. 1Pe_2:7, Act_14:2, Heb_3:18; Heb_11:31, a positive antagonism rather than the mere absence of belief and obedience.
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may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives] The Greek for “word” has no article, and the probable meaning is not “without the open preaching of the word of Christ,” but rather, without speech, without a word [being uttered]. On “conversation,” see note on chap. 1Pe_1:15. Here, where “conversation” is used as the direct antithesis to speech, the contrast between the new and the old meanings of the word is seen with a singular vividness. The silent preaching of conduct is what the Apostle relied on as a more effective instrument of conversion than any argument or debate. In the verb “be won,” literally, be gained over, we have the same word as that used by St Paul in 1Co_9:19-20, and by our Lord, in teaching which must have made a special impression on St Peter’s mind, in Mat_18:15.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–7 (1) Likewise ye wives . . .—Third division of…
III.
(1) Likewise ye wives . . .—Third division of second prudential rule: subordination conjugal. Here, again, the form in the original is participial, joining this injunction on to 1Pe_2:13; 1Pe_2:18, where the word is the same in Greek, “wives, in the same way submitting yourselves.” Whether this imposes for all time upon Christian wives as complete a submission towards their husbands as is here enjoined might perhaps be questioned, because the special reason for the command in this place was to allay suspicions engendered by the boldness with which Christianity proclaimed the freedom of the individual. St. Peter has just been giving injunctions for absolute submission, even to injustice, on the part of slaves; and the progress of Christianity has abolished slavery altogether. The measure of the Christian wife’s submission may safely be left to her own enlightened conscience, guided by other passages of the New Testament not written, like this, for a special emergency.
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Your own husbands.—This does not order submission to the husband in contrast to submission to other directors, but rather gives a reason for obedience. “The Christian wife that hath love to God,” says Leighton, “though her husband be not so comely, or so wise, or any way so amiable, as many others, yet because he is her own husband, and because of the Lord’s command in the general, and His providence in the particular disposal of His own, therefore she loves and obeys.”
That if any obey not the word.—Rather, in order that even supposing some (at present) disobey the word. “The word” is, of course, the Gospel, the declaration of the fulfilment of the prophecies in Jesus. And those who “disobey the word” are, according to constant usage, the Jews. The present verb is used of the Jews in Act_14:2; Act_17:5; Act_19:9; Rom_10:21; Rom_11:31; Rom_15:31, besides St. Peter’s own use in 1Pe_2:8; 1Pe_4:17. The only places where it is distinctly used of others are Rom_2:8 (of Jew and Gentile together), Rom_11:30 (where the Gentiles are compared with the Jews), Heb_3:18 (of the Israelites in the wilderness), Heb_11:31 (of the men of Jericho), 1Pe_3:20 (of the refractory antediluvians). In any case it must mean a wilful refusal to submit to the Word, in spite of being intellectually convinced. (See especially 1Pe_2:8.) For every reason, therefore, it is more probable that the case here supposed is that of Hebrew (Christian) women, married to men of their own race who reject the gospel.
They also may . . .—The order here is not so neat as in the original, and it spoils the point to insert the definite article before “word.” It should run, In order that . . . through their wives’ conversation, without a word, they may (literally, shall) be gained. There is something almost playful in the substitution of “their wives” instead of “you,” and in the “without a word” contrasted with “the word” before. St. Peter seems to enjoy laying the little innocent plot. He was himself, as the Prayer Book reminds us, a married man. And what he means here, is not that those who have resisted the public preaching in the synagogues, should even without that public preaching be won; rather, that though the gospel as uttered verbally only provokes them to opposition, the gospel as submissively acted by their wives, without a word said on the matter, ought to convert them. “This model of submission and humility,” says M. Renan, meaning the Lamb of God, “is made by Peter the law for all classes of Christian society. The wife above all, without setting up for a preacher (sans faire la précheuse), ought, by the discreet charm of her piety, to be the great missionary of the faith.” The word rendered “won” keeps up the playfulness of that which goes before; it means “to turn a profit,” and there is just enough of ruse in it to make the enforcement of submission to a husband of opposed religious views seem an enticing little speculation. The tense of the original verb indicates that the scheme is certain to succeed. (Comp. Mat_18:15; 1Co_9:19-20.) Archbishop Leighton points out that in Hebrew the name of the book of “Ecclesiastes; or, the Preacher,” is a feminine, and the same is the case in Psa_68:11, and elsewhere.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1–7 Likewise, ye wives. St. Peter has spoken of the…
Likewise, ye wives. St. Peter has spoken of the duties of servants: why does he omit those of masters? There must have been Christian masters in Asia Minor, as is plain from Eph_6:9; Col_4:1. But we notice that St. Paul, though he has a few words for masters, addresses slaves at much greater length. Probably Christian masters were comparatively few, while large numbers of slaves had embraced the religion which could do so much to comfort and elevate the oppressed. Again, the immediate purpose of the apostle is to inculcate submission to authority; therefore, having enforced upon Christian servants the example of their Lord, he proceeds to speak of the duty of Christian wives. Christianity was in its infancy; it was to be the means of abolishing slavery, and of raising woman to her proper place in society; but as yet slaves were cruelly oppressed, and women were ill treated and despised. Aristotle tells us that among the barbarians (and a large proportion of the population in the greater part of Asia Minor was barbarian, i.e. non-Greek) the woman and the slave hold the same rank ("Pol.," I 2:4). In Greek communities the case was different; but even among the Greeks women occupied a very subordinate position. Christianity would introduce a great and sweeping change in the relations of the sexes, as well as in the relations of master and slave. But the change must be gradual, not violent; it must be brought about by the softening and purifying influences of religion, not by revolt against recognized customs and established authority. Indeed, Christianity would introduce an element of division the Lord had said so; (Luk_12:51-53) families would be divided. It could not be otherwise; Christians must not set even family ties above the love of Christ. But Christian wives must be peacemakers; they must, as far as possible, live at peace even with unbelieving husbands. They would often have much ill treatment to endure in those coarse, cruel days; they must bear it with the quiet strength of gentleness. Be in subjection to your own husbands; literally, submitting yourselves. The participle, as in 1Pe_2:18, seems to look back to the imperative, "submit yourselves," in 1Pe_2:13. The present participle implies that this voluntary submission is to behabitual. The adjective "your own" (ijdioiv) emphasizes the duty. That, if any obey not the Word, they also may without the Word be won by the conversation of the wives. There is a well-supported reading, "Even if any." Husband and wife would often be converted together; but if this should not be the case, and if the unbelieving husband should set himself in direct opposition to the Word of God (for the words "believe not" have more than a negative meaning, (as in 1Pe_2:7) still Christian wives must submit themselves. They must do this for the glory of God, and with the hope of saving their husbands" souls; that those unbelieving husbands may be won to Christ and to everlasting life by the silent eloquence of the quiet self-restraint and holy behavior of their wives, without argument or preaching on the wives" part. A self-denying holy life will do more to win those with whom we live in close intercourse than even holy words, and much more than debate and controversy. This seems to be the meaning of a]neu logou rather than the other possible interpretation, "without the preaching of the Word." Be won; literally, be gained. Each soul converted is a gain to Christ, to the kingdom of heaven, to itself, in this case also to the wife who is the happy instrument of saving her husband. (comp. 1Co_9:19, 1Co_9:20) The word rendered "conversation" here, as elsewhere, means "conduct, behavior." (Compare, on the whole subject, the teaching of St. Paul, Eph_5:22-24; Col_3:18; 1Ti_2:9-11)
Vers. 1-7.
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Duties of husbands and wives.
I DUTIES OF WIVES.
1. Obedience. Holy matrimony is a very sacred thing. It is not a mere human ordinance (ajnqrwpinhsiv,; 1Pe_2:13) it is not a creation of human law. Human law, indeed, surrounds it with its sanctions, regarding it as a civil contract; but it was instituted of God in the time of man"s innocency; it is an image of the mystical union between Christ and his Church. It is a school of holy love, a discipline of sweet self-denials for the loved one"s sake, which ought to help Christian people greatly in the pursuit of holiness. But it is Christianity that has restored wedlock to what it was at the first, and given it a yet deeper and a far holier meaning. The frequency of divorce among both Jews and heathens; the dislike of marriage, which had become so serious at Rome; the Greek habit of regarding the wife as the mistress of her husband"s house, the mother of his children, but not as the helpmeet, the partner of his cares, the sharer of his joys and sorrows; the depreciation of woman; all this had made the ordinary view of marriage very different from what God had intended it to be, from what it now is in Christian families. It is to Christianity, not to civilization (for the Greeks and Romans were as civilized as we are), that we owe the sweet sanctities of wedded life and the quiet happiness of home. But at first Christianity introduced a fresh element of division. From time to time one member of a family circle would have to put the constraining love of Christ above the love due to father or mother, husband, wife, or child. The case of a Christian wife with an unbelieving husband would be one of especial difficulty. She would probably have to hear her religion derided, her Savior insulted; she would have to endure constant reproaches and sarcasms, often hardships, and even brutal cruelty. St. Paul had considered the case in 1Co_7:13-17. St. Peter here counsels submission; the power of gentleness might succeed in winning those who could be won in no other way. Let Christian wives be very careful to respect their husband"s authority; let them fear to give them so much as the shadow of a reason to suspect their purity. Let the holy fear of God lead them to regard even the unbelieving husband with due reverence; let them carefully avoid giving any unnecessary offense, or unduly putting forward the differences, great and fundamental as they were, which separated them from one another. Thus let them hope and pray for their husbands" conversion. The silent eloquence of a holy, self-denying life will generally be more powerful than argument and controversy. Thus they would have the best hope of winning their husbands to Christ, of "gaining them," as the word literally means. Compare Archbishop Leighton, "A soul converted is gained to itself, gained to the pastor, or friend, or wife, or husband who sought it, and
2. gained to Jesus Christ; added to his treasury, who thought not his own precious blood too dear to lay out for this gain." The earnest words of Christian men and women are sometimes greatly blessed, but a humble holy life will often win souls which no eloquence could touch.
3. Simplicity in dress. Christian women should be quiet and modest in their attire. St. Peter"s language is, of course, comparative, like Hosea"s words, twice quoted by our Lord, "I will have mercy, and not sacrifice." He does not mean to forbid all plaiting of hair or wearing of gold any more than putting on of apparel; he means that these are poor and contemptible compared with the costlier ornaments which he recommends in their stead. Christian women should be simple and unaffected in dress as in behavior. In general, the best rule is to avoid singularity. "There may be," Leighton says, "in some an affected pride in the meanness of apparel, and in others, under either neat or rich attire, a very humble, unaffected mind.... "Magnus qui fictilibus utitur tanquam argento, nec ille minor qui argento tanquam fictilibus," says Seneca. "Great is he who enjoys his earthenware as if it were plate, and not less great is the man to whom all his plate is no more than earthenware. In this, as in other aspects of Christian duty, the enlightened conscience is the best guide. But Christians must never allow their thoughts to dwell on these things; they must learn not to care for finery, not to love display. To quote Leighton again, "Far more comfort shalt thou have on thy deathbed to remember that at such a time, instead of putting lace on my own clothes, I helped a naked back to clothing, I abated somewhat of my former superfluities to supply the poor man"s necessities; far sweeter will this be than to remember that I could needlessly cast away many pounds to serve my pride, rather than give a penny to relieve the poor.
1. The true adorning. The soul is far more precious than the body. It is of far greater importance to adorn the soul than to decorate the body. The soul is unseen, so is its garniture; it is hidden from the eye of man, but seen of God. The proper ornament of Christian women is "the hidden man of the heart the hidden life of the regenerate soul. It is hidden; it will not always be asserting itself; it is retiring in its modest beauty. But that inner man is very fair and lovely, for it is renewed after the image of the Savior; its beauty lieth in the incorruptibleness of a meek and quiet spirit. The beauty of the Christian life consists in these softer graces rather than in self-assertion and denunciation of the faults of others. Christian women should be meek and calm, not angry, not fretful; they should bear their daily cross quietly and submissively; they should not allow the unkind words or deeds of others to excite them to wrath. This true adorning of the soul is incorruptible; it is not lost by death, it will follow the holy dead into the paradise of God; and it is of great price in the sight of God. The world admires rich dress and costly jewels; God prizes the meek and quiet spirit. Which of the two should Christians seek to please God or the world? 4. The example of holy women. They hoped in God. They who have that high and holy hope cannot care for the pomps and vanities of this sinful world. They adorned themselves with the more precious ornaments, meekness and humility and wifely obedience. Such a one was Sarah, the wife of the father of the faithful. Christian women are her daughters in the faith, while they persevere in the way of holiness, and preserve a calm unruffled spirit, not easily excited, not terrified by every sudden scare, but resting in the Lord.
II THE DUTIES OF HUSBANDS.
1. Arising from the greater weakness of the wife. Husband and wife are both vessels: they should be "vessels unto honor, sanctified and meet for the Master"s use, and prepared unto every good work." But both are weak; the woman, as a rule, is the weaker. The weaker the vessel the more tenderly it should be treated. The husband must dwell with his wife according to knowledge; he must treat her with thoughtful consideration. True love (and marriage without love is a profanation of God"s holy ordinance), especially if refined by religion, will give him tact and discernment; he will care for his wife, nourish and cherish her, "even as the Lord the Church". (Eph_5:29)
2. Arising from their mutual hope of heaven. Husband and wife are fellow-heirs of the grace of life; each must honor the other. There is no true love which is not founded in mutual respect, and that respect will be truest and deepest when each regards the other as a Christian soul, living in the faith of Christ, looking for the blessed hope of eternal life with God. Then husbands and wives love one another best when they love God first of all. "That love which is cemented by youth and beauty, when these moulder and decay, as soon they do, fades too. That is somewhat purer, and so more lasting, which holds in a natural or moral harmony of minds; yet these likewise may alter and change by some great accident. But the most refined, most spiritual, and most indissoluble, is that which is knit with the highest and purest spirit. And the ignorance or disregard of this is the great cause of so much bitterness, or so little true sweetness, in the life of most married persons; because God is left out, because they meet not as one in him" (Leighton).
3. Danger of neglecting these duties. Their prayers would be hindered. The apostle takes it for granted that the Christian man and wife live in constant prayer. The heirs of the grace of life must pray; they must hold frequent converse with him who gives that life, on whom all their hopes depend. He takes it for granted that they know something of the sweetness and blessedness of prayer. Knowing this, as they do, they must be very jealous of anything that can make their prayers less acceptable, less earnest. Then let them live together in holy love. Jars and bickerings disquiet the soul, disturb its communion with God, put it out of harmony with the spirit of prayer. They cannot pray aright who sin against the law of love. God hath made husband and wife one by holy matrimony. They must not allow misunderstandings and jealousies to put them asunder even for a season, lest they sin not only against one another, but also against God, and so their prayers should be hindered, and be unable to reach the throne of grace.
LESSONS.
1. Let Christian wives remember their promise of obedience. If their husbands are not living in the faith of Christ, let them try to win them by holy example and the quiet strength of gentleness.
2. Let them study simplicity in dress and ornament, seeking to adorn their souls rather than their bodies.
3. Let them be followers of holy matrons, not of the gay and thoughtless.
4. Let Christian husbands be tender and loving.
5. Let husband and wife live together in the fear of God and in constant prayer.
HOMILIES BY C. NEW Vers. 1-6.
The Christian wife called to heart-culture as the means of winning the unconverted husband.
The subject of this section is the necessity for a life becoming the Christian name; this is applied to Christian citizens and to Christian servants, and, here, to Christian wives. The reason for the conspicuous place here assigned to wives is obvious. The writer is addressing Churches in pagan countries, many of whose members were wives of heathen husbands. What were these to do? were they to continue in that relationship, or did their Christianity sever the marriage bond? That question occurred more than once; it was brought before Paul by the Church at Corinth, and he deals with it in 1Co 7. There was probably another reason for this. Dr. John Brown says, "When we reflect on the character of the conjugal relation among heathens, how much there was of the harshness of the tyrant in the husband, and of the baseness of the slave in the wife, and how much pollution and cruelty prevailed in the home, few things were more calculated to strike heathen observers favorably than the power of Christianity in introducing an order and purity and enjoyment into the domestic circle beyond what heathen philosophy had ever dreamt of." Peter"s words are often applicable still. Two hearts, two lives, are often bound together by the closest human tics, one devoted to Christianity, the other not. The case here, however, is not of those who had been united after one had become a Christian; the nature of spiritual life and the direct Word of God forbid union of that kind, and there is no consolation here for the trouble that comes from disobedience in this respect. Here the wife is supposed to have become a Christian since she gave herself to the ungodly husband. The Divine finger is laid on the secret of many a troubled life, when husbands are here spoken of that "obey not the Word;" but the hand that pains is that which heals, for there is hope and strength and comfort for the wounded spirit in "Ye wives, be in subjection," etc.
I THE CHRISTIAN WIFE IS HERE CALLED TO CONSISTENT CHRISTIAN CHARACTER.
1. And the first point included is faithful fulfillment of the duties of her relationship. "Be in subjection to your husbands;" equivalent to a summary of the various duties of the position. The expression is harsh at first, but the harshness wears off as we think of it, for love is always in subjection, He whose life was the embodiment of love came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. Love cannot help serving. This word lays no burden on love but what she lays on herself. Nor is this a one-sided requirement; for the same Word says, "Husbands, love your wives so that the subjection is mutual" submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God." Yet, though the harshness be removed, the command remains and means something, and it is remarkable that in the three instances in the Epistles where the duties of wives are referred to, the same idea of subjection occurs. (Eph_5:22; Col_3:18; and here) Woman was made for a "helpmeet for man;" Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee;" Man was not created for the woman, but the woman for the man." The subjection, therefore, was to be real, yet not that of a servant, but of a companion; man"s other self, yet still subject.
2. Possession of that pure character which springs /rein the fear of God.
conversation;" equivalent to pure manner of life, a character unsullied, and this arising from the fear of God in the heart. The godly wife of an ungodly man is exposed to great difficulty; the husband, troubled by no scruples, will often expect of her what her conscience condemns; and that position is as perilous as it is painful. Now, this word requires no swerving a hair-breadth from righteousness, not even under pressure of the husband"s love and plans. "Whoso loveth husband more than," etc.
3. Manifestation of the graces of spirituality. "Whose adorning," etc. This does not necessarily condemn what is simply ornamental. Did we only use what is necessary for bare existence, many of our fellow-creatures could not live. God"s works also are marked by beauty, needless but for gratification, and we may well copy him within his own lines. But do not let these be your adornment, do not let these be what men think of first when they see you, nor find in them your attraction; but let your adornment be the graces of the inner life. Let Christian women set themselves against the dress curse, one of the greatest curses of the day, and put character first, as God does.
II THIS IS SET FORTH AS THE MEANS OF WINNING THE UNCONVERTED HUSBAND. These heathen husbands did not frequent the sanctuary, nor listen to the Word, and thus their case seemed hopeless. But the Divine Word may be carried to heart and mind as much by a Divine life as by a Divine book. Feeding on this book, we become its embodiment, living Epistles of Christ, read of all; and the promise is as true of the Word lived as of the Word spoken, "My Word shall not return unto me void." Vers. 5 and 6: not simply the hope to win the husband should lead to living thus, but not otherwise could the wife prove herself a daughter of Abraham, a member of the true Israel. The membership of the Christian wife in God"s family is of itself the ground of her doing what is here required; all this is owed to God as your blaster; but there is an additional motive for this in its effect on the husband. See how this operates.
1. A true Christian life is a standing proof of the Divinity of Christianity.
How can the doubting husband be undeceived? By the life of the wife.
2. An exemplification of the beauties of holiness is a constant persuasion.
Acts of forgiveness, endurance, sacrifice, adherence to right, etc., gradually tell even on the hardened, and often loudly plead for Christ.
3. Conquest by the passive virtues is Gods own method. Men dislike direct assaults on their moral nature, but often open their hearts spontaneously to what seems to make no onset. God recognizes that in his dealings with us. The meaning of his cross is, in fact, that he expects to subdue us by suffering for us and bearing with us. We may expect to win by the same means.
III THIS IS ONLY ACCOMPLISHED BY PERSONAL HEARTCULTURE. How can we gain this becoming character? The passage answers, "By heart-work." Christian character grows from within.
1. Life is a reflex of faith. "What a man believes, that is he." Love, peace, purity, power, etc., are the proper fruits of trust in God; therefore strengthen your faith.
2. Character is according to companionship. We become like those with whom we associate. They take knowledge of those who have been with Jesus. God impresses his image on the soul that is much with him. C.N.
HOMILIES BY R. FINLAYSON
Vers. 1-7.
Subjection of wives to their husbands, with subjoined injunction to husbands.
I SUBJECTION OF WIVES TO THEIR HUSBANDS.
1. Duty stated. "In like manner, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands." The space which is here given to wives, especially in comparison with what is given to husbands, points to the great influence of women in the early Christian Church. The injunction to wives comes under the being subject to every ordinance of man. (1Pe_2:13) Christianity was to be advanced by the subjection of Christians to magistrates placed over them. It was also to be advanced by the subjection of Christian slaves (who were comparatively numerous) to their masters. In like manner it was to be advanced by the subjection of Christian wives (who were comparatively numerous) to their husbands. The duty of subjection is here stated without limitation (which is only introduced in the following verse). It is, however, to be borne in mind that all the subjection enjoined is for the Lords sake, (1Pe_2:13) so that we have virtually here Paul"s injunction in Eph_5:22, "Wives, be in subjection unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. " The subjection of wives is founded on an appointed superiority of husbands to their wives. It is not that wives belong to their husbands; for husbands also belong to their wives. (Eph_5:28) There is a very great amount of equality between wives and their husbands; there is the closest of companionships in married life. But in the interest of order in family life, rule must be placed somewhere; and so it has been placed by God in the hands of those whose duty it is to provide for the maintenance and comfort of their wives. Where, then, there is a difference of judgment in connection with the joint management of a household (which ought not very often to occur), it is the duty of the wife to subject her will to the will of her husband.
2. Wives in a special situation. That, even if any obey not the Word, they may without the Word be gained by the behavior of their wives." Subjection is due in every case, even in so unfavorable a case as that which is now to be dealt with. This was the not infrequent case (all the more, therefore, calling for apostolic legislation) of Christian wives having heathen husbands. We are not to understand that it was open for Christian women to take heathen husbands; but after marriage it might happen (more than the converse) that the wives were converted to Christianity, while their husbands remained in heathenism. The principle of the apostolic legislation is that, even in an unfavorable position, subjection is due. It is implied that wives, when converted, would seek to gain their husbands by the Word. That would be the prompting both of natural affection and of Christian compassion. They could not keep Christ and their new-found joys to themselves. They must tell, in the first place, those in whom they had the deepest interest the gospel of Christ, viz. that as manifesting the Father"s love, and impelled by love himself, the Son of God did not eschew human nature, but in it lived a perfect human life and died a death of atonement for sin, to ring men out of their sins to a glorious life with himself which is never to know an end. This had been a source of unparalleled joy to them; and they told their husbands about Christ, because they wished them to be sharers with themselves in their joy. The result might be the gaining of their husbands, i.e. first to Christ and the advancement of his kingdom, and then to themselves (to their deep and lasting satisfaction). It is one of Leighton"s rich sayings, "A soul converted is gained to itself, gained to the pastor, or friend, or wife, or husband who sought it, and gained to Jesus Christ; added to his treasury and, we may add, to his instrumentality, who thought not his own precious blood too dear to lay out for this gain." But the word of the gospel is not always obeyed. What if, with the telling and retelling of the Word (blessed and authoritative as it is), husbands do not obey the Word? What if the continued telling of the Word is only to be the occasion of domestic dispeace? Does the duty of subjection then cease? No; the duty of telling the Word then ceases, but not the duty of subjection. Another method is to be tried by them, which may result in the gaining of their husbands. This is behavior without the Word; i.e. acting the gospel, or the silent influence of the life, especially the earnest endeavor to show what gospel subjection is. The hope is held out that this method may succeed where the other fails. If, then, a wife finds herself yoked to a husband who is not converted (whether she has been to blame for her position or not), her duty is with all earnestness to press the Word on him, but not to force it to no purpose but only to produce dispeace; her duty is to cease mentioning the disagreeable subject, and to try the method of the utmost excellence of Christian behavior without the Word. The trial may be prolonged; but length will be forgotten if the Divine answer comes at last in the conversion of the husband.
3. Rules of behavior.
(1) Rule of purity. "Beholding your chaste behavior coupled with fear." The feeling from which good wifely behavior proceeds is fear. Wives are to have fear in the sense of reverence towards their husbands as placed over them in the Lord. They are also to have fear in the sense of shrinking from the not doing of all that is required in the relation. This limits the subjection in forbidding bad compliance, i.e. doing a wrong thing because the husband requires it. If a wife were required to give up her religion, it would be her duty not to obey out of regard to him to whom her husband is subject, and apart from whom he has no authority. But if wives feel that they are thus limited, they will be all the more anxious within the lawful sphere to do their duty. The quality of behavior here fixed upon is chastity, which is to be understood in a certain wide sense. It is a word which is appropriate to wifely behavior. Women are especially endowed with feelings of modesty. In the married relation, while they bestow all love and attention on their husbands, there will be nothing in word, in look, in dress, in act, inconsistent with what modesty requires. "Shamefacedness" is the word used by Paul. To this, then, Christian wives are directed in dealing with their heathen husbands after the Word has been ineffectual. Let their husbands behold, see with their own eyes from day to day, their modest behavior, springing out of the feeling which belongs to subjection; and when the Word-method has failed, this (especially when contrasted with the behavior of heathen wives) may succeed.
(2) Rule of a meek and quiet Spirit. "Whose adorning let it not be the outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing jewels of gold, or of putting on apparel; but let it be the hidden man of the heart, in the incorruptible apparel of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price." The rule is expressed positively in figurative language. The negative may seem to be too literal. What has religion to do with the style of putting up the hair, or with what is put on the person? It is a fallacy to suppose that there is any sphere from which religion is excluded. At the same time, religion does not do violence to any natural feeling. It is implied here that it is natural for women to love to adorn themselves. A wife who has not some regard for ornament in her house or person, who is plainness, if not a slattern, who has not a flower to delight the eye, is not likely to have much influence with her husband even for Christianity. We must, therefore, understand the apostle as forbidding the things mentioned without proper subordination, or as ministering to womanly vanity. Especially are we to think of them as forbidden in this aspect, that as immodest, or as encroaching on time, or as heaping up expense, they form a temptation to a wife to be undutiful to her husband. If she would gain him for what is good, she must, without disregard of the lower ornamentation, show proper regard to the higher ornamentation. Let her adorning be not a conspicuous style of the hair, or conspicuous jewels, or conspicuous apparel; but let it be the hidden man of the heart not that alone apart from moral characterization, but, while it has its seat in the heart, and is not attractive to the outward eye, let it be in and with the incorruptible. Plaited hair, jewels of gold, apparel, are subordinate as belonging to the category of the corruptible. The incorruptible in adorning that is singled out is a meek and quiet spirit. The first word points to not being easily provoked; the second word points to being in love with a quiet life. A Christian wife might have much to bear from her unenlightened husband, from his imperious temper, from his bad behavior, from his neglect; she might have to bear from him on account of her religion; he might resent her choosing her own religion and (by implication) condemning his; but let her be meek under his wronging of her, and let her say or do nothing to cause dispeace. This in the sight of men may be a very poor ornament; she may seem to be regarding herself as no better than his slave. But God is also looking on the spirit which she is manifesting, and in his sight (which is its highest recommendation) it is of great price. The way God takes to overcome evil in us is, under our provocations, to heap goodness on us. If a Christian wife would conquer her unbelieving husband for Christ, she must in this imitate the Divine procedure.
4. Models of behaviour.
(1) The holy women of old time. "For after this manner aforetime the holy women also, who hoped in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection to their own husbands." In heathen mythology, Penelope, Andromache, Alccstis, are regarded as models of wifely excellence. But Peter, saturated with Old Testament ideas, does not fall back on Greek aforetime, but only on Old Testament aforetime. He sets up as models to those whom he is addressing the holy women, i.e. those who were in covenant with God, and whose conduct was conditioned by the holiness of God. This implied their being believers, and as believers they are further described as those who bolted in God, i.e. raised their expectation from what they believed God to be, and from what they believed God to promise. They looked forward to the coming of the Messiah, and to a future beyond death to be made glorious through his mission to earth. We have not much information as to the facts upon which Peter proceeds; but he plainly certifies it of the holy women as a class, that they adorned themselves after this manner, i.e. with a meek and quiet spirit. They were kept from thinking about mere outward ornamentation, because they looked for something substantial from God. They did this as what was proper to them as subjected to their husbands. Instead of being self-assertive, they were compliant, under the impelling and also restraining of fear. The rule for the holy women of the New Testament time extending down to our day is not different from what was the rule for the holy women of the Old Testament time, resting as it does on a Divine appointment in the earthly constitution. To the models set up by Peter we must add Christian models women who, saturated with gospel ideas, have been adorned with that which in the sight of God is of great price.
(2) Sarah. "As Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose children ye now are, if ye do well, and are not put in fear by any terror." The words founded on are to be found in, Gen_18:12. Sarah"s calling Abraham her lord was not confined to the one occasion; it was characteristic of her, showed the habit of her mind toward her husband, and on that ground it is entitled to the weight which is here attached to it. The occasion was also closely connected with the history of redemption, bearing on the birth of Isaac. The apostle could not have found a better model; for Sarah was specially significant, even as Abraham was. If the one was father "of all them that believe though they be not circumcised," the other was mother. What constitutes daughterhood is here not faith, but the evidencing of faith. It is, on the one hand, doing well. Sarah did well in obeying Abraham, and also remarkably in that through faith "she received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised." It is, on the other hand, not doing evil, or, as it is here put in the way of consequence, not being nut in fear by any terror. This was what was to be avoided in Sarah as a model. On the occasion referred to she was made afraid by her evildoing (laughing at the first mention of a child) and by her fear was led into more sin (in denying that she laughed), thus bringing shame not only on herself, but on her husband. Holy women will not thus compromise their husbands, but, mindful of what is due to them, will concur with them, where the blessing promised to faith is to be obtained.
II SUBJOINED INJUNCTION TO HUSBANDS.
1. Duty. "Ye husbands, in like manner, dwell with your wives according to knowledge, giving honor unto the woman, as unto the weaker vessel, as being also joint-heirs of the grace of life." Having dwelt at length (in the interest of Christianity) on the subjection of wives, he feels it necessary to
2. subjoin an injunction to husbands, which he did not feel it to be necessary in the case of magistrates and of masters (few of those being connected with the Christian Church). It is not said that husbands are in like manner to be subject; the likeness can only, therefore, refer to what lies over against the subjection. As subject, the woman is weak the weaker vessel, not so strong as the man. In this lies a danger to the woman the danger of being trampled upon. Hence the need of husbands being enlightened in their treatment of their wives. "Dwell with according to knowledge as with the weaker vessel the womanly," is the literal translation and the proper connection. Weakness in the woman calls for knowledge in the man. He is to love, says the Apostle Paul; and the idea is similar here. He is to act according to knowledge, i.e. of the Divine intention or order. He is to put his strength at the service of love, with his strength shielding her weakness and (generally) promoting her good. It is under this enlightenedness that honor comes. Honor is to be paid by husbands to their wives (both being regarded as Christians) on the ground that they are also joint-heirs of the grace of life. They are even, as we would seem to be taught here, to be honored on the ground of nature. "God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honor to that part which lacked." But they are also to be honored as heirs together of the grace of life, i.e. as honored participators (for inheriting here points to honor) with their husbands in the grace that is needed for life or that makes life a blessing, both here and hereafter. It is only in the earthly sphere of things (which is also temporary)that there is not perfect equality; in the heavenly sphere there is no difference. Women stand in the same relation to God, have the same unction on their life, look forward to the same eternal home as their husbands, and by this consideration the honor otherwise due to them and to be apportioned to them must be regarded as greatly heightened.
3. Motive. "To the end that your prayers he not hindered." The duty enjoined must be attended to by husbands, that the prayers offered by them with their wives, and as heads of the household, be not hindered. There is a pointing to this that "the prayers of families are as often defeated by the want of any such concert in the aims, plans, tempers, works, and aspirations of the house, as are necessary to a common suit before God. The prayers should agree with as many other prayers and as many other circles of causes as possible; for God is working always towards the largest harmony, and will not favor, therefore, the prayer of words when everything else in the life is demanding something else, but will rather have respect to what has the widest reach of things and persons making suit with it. At this latter point it is that prayers most commonly fail, viz. that they are solitary and contrary, having nothing put in agreement with them; as if some one person should be praying for fair weather, when everybody else wants rain, and the gaping earth and thirsty animals and withering trees are all asking for it together. What is prayed for in the house by the father is how commonly! not prayed for by the mother in her family tastes and tempers, and is even prayed against, in fact, by all the instigations of appearance and pride and show which are raised by her motherly studies and cares. The father prays in the morning that his children may grow up in the Lord, and calls it even the principal good of their life that they are to be Christians, living to God and for the world to come. Then he goes out into the field, or the shop, or the house of trade, and his plans and works pull exactly contrary to the pull of his prayers and all his teaching in religion. What is wanted, therefore, is to put all the causes, all the prayers, into a common strain of endeavor, reaching after a common good in God and his friendship" (Bushnell). R. F.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On v1 Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection
1Pe_3:1-7
Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection
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Wifely subjection
Here is required of wives subjection towards their husbands; though God made them in many things equal, yet in wisdom He thought meet to make some little inequality, and appointed the husband to be the superior and head, and so to rule, and the wife to be subject to him; yet not so but that he hath his rules to bound his rule, that it exceed not (1Co_11:8-9; 1Ti_2:13).
Neither is this without reason; for if all were equals in the commonwealth there would be confusion; and if all bells were of a bigness, and all the strings of an instrument of one size, there would be a harsh sound, and no melody: so, were there not some small inequality between husbands and wives, there could not but be contention. It is Gods order that wives be subject, as it is His order the sun should shine, the earth bear fruit, the heavens cover us. Accordingly, God hath provided to make man the stronger, woman the weaker vessel, that he might be the fitter to rule, and she (feeling her own weakness) the more willing to be ruled. (John Rogers.)
A quarrelsome wife
There were times when the Rev. Andrew Fuller could be exceedingly severe. He was once spending a few days in a family where the husband and wife were not very happy together, chiefly, I believe, owing to her tyrannical spirit, fostered by perverted views of Divine truth, making her by no means remarkable for kindness to her husband. One evening, having heard Mr. Fuller preach, according to the fashion of the school to which she belonged she remarked: Ah, sir, we are poor creatures and can do nothing. You are quite mistaken, madam, replied Mr. Fuller, you can do a great deal. Why, what can I do? asked the lady, somewhat excited. Why, madam, replied he, with a tone and manner which can only be imagined by those who knew him, you can quarrel with your husband. The lady said no more. (Baptist Messenger.)
If any obey not … they also may … be won.-
Wives must be subject even unto bad husbands
Not only must wives be subject that have good husbands, but even they which hath infidel husbands, unkind, irreligious; for they are their husbands, whom they have chosen, and are now in covenant to God withal, and which God hath laid out for them as a blessing or cross. If any shall say, This is very hard, let such know, that Christians must do difficult things. Every bungler can make good work of good, straight timber, but he that can make good work of that which is crooked and knotty is worthy commendation. (John Rogers.)
Unconscious influence
The case supposed is one that would occur again and again while Christianity was making its way among the pagan nations. A Christian woman would find it very difficult to win over her pagan husband by direct efforts; she would be thrown back upon the silent influence of her chaste, holy, unselfish conduct and conversation; and the apostle intimates that she should expect this to be a sanctified energy which God would use to accomplish the desire of her heart. A fable is told of a mountain island of lodestone that stood up in mid-ocean, and attracted on every side the ships that sailed over the seas. As soon as ever they came within the line of its influence they were insensibly seized, gradually at first, then ever more swiftly they were drawn, until at last they dashed to destruction on the rocky coast. The Christian should be an influence for Christ on every side of his nature, seizing every barque that sails by on the ocean of life; seizing it by the power of Christian character and Christian consistency, and drawing it into the harbour of Gods love and service.
I. It may be well to illustrate what is meant by our unconscious influence, and to exhibit its importance and value. As we meet together in society, how distinctly tone is recognised and felt! Beyond the influence we can exert on each other by our actions, there is the power of our very presence, an atmosphere around us which we carry with us wherever we may be. You can be a growing power, more decidedly and wholly influencing others for good, as by watchfulness and earnest culture you grow in personal religious worth.
II. Consider the sphere in which the power of this our unconscious influence will be most felt. It will be felt everywhere. It is a necessity of our being that we should exert it. It belongs to us, and flows forth from us as freely as the fragrance of the violet wherever the violet is found. Yet such influence is most felt at home. Much ought to be done by the young Christians direct efforts for the happiness and salvation of the household; but the very freeness of life in the home makes such labour difficult, and often there are circumstances which make it impossible to speak the word. So, in your first religious Sphere, you may be thrown back upon the importance of the influence silently exerted by your character. In a home some will be dependent on you, whatever your place may be; the children, younger children, or the servants. These will be very easily affected by the tone and spirit of your life; and they will be very keen to watch for the spirit they know is in harmony with the professions you make. In another way those on whom you depend in the home will be reached by you. On the side of your submissions and obediences you will win power over them. Holy, loving children have been honoured as the means of winning their parents for Christ. And home life includes a circle of friendships; you are not called by your Christian profession to separate yourselves from such circles; but you should carry into such society a fragrance of Christian purities and charities that may ever flow out to bless those with whom you meet.
III. On what the efficiency of this influence will depend.
1. It will depend on our cultivation of Christian graces, and that work includes the repression of all our constitutional infirmities, whether of temper or spirit, and the mastery of all habits that are relics of our sinful states.
2. It will depend on the consistency of our Christian conduct.
3. It will depend on constancy in religious duties. (R. Tuck, B. A.)
The attractive power of Christian character
We adopt the opinion that the Word is used in two distinct senses, and we read the passage thus: If any obey not the gospel, they also may without preaching be won by the character and conduct of the wives. The subject before us is this: The gospel reproduced in character and conduct, a means of saving sinners from the error of their ways. In discussing this subject, however, let me guard against even the appearance of underrating the written and the preached Word. Without the Word, what revolutions would this void create! The Word withdrawn from Christendom would rend the finest pictures, and pull down the most splendid buildings, and take the salt from the best literature, and bury in oblivion the highest science, and darken the brightest homes, and devastate the fairest countries, and undermine all righteous thrones, and send back some civilised nations to barbarism, and bring a huge shadow of death over the whole world. Without the Word mankind are without gospel, without light and life.
I. The Word received produces a distinctive character in him who accepts it. This is alike its object and tendency. The Word reveals the one living and true God-the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost-as the redeeming God, and shows that God is reconciling the world unto Himself. Now, the man who receives the Word is translated from darkness to light, he is transplanted from an ungenial to a friendly soil, and he admits to his nature elements which, combining with whatever is Divine within him, will produce a new man and effect a new creation.
II. The character which the Word produces is of a nature to attract and win. The character begotten by the Word is-
1. Strong. It has in it all the constituents of complete spiritual power, intelligence touching the highest subjects, faith in God, hope of the greatest and most enduring good, love of the purest and most fervent flame, immutable and everlasting principles of action.
2. The character formed by the Word is also genial. There is in it the attractiveness of beauty and of pleasantness, as well as of power. The basis of that which is genial in the Christian character is love.
3. This strong and loving character is also reasonable, it is conformed in all points, to rational principles. It has within it none of the elements which constitute the fanatic or visionary. Imagination creates not this character, but faith in a Divine revelation; and that revelation presents nothing contrary to reason.
III. The influence of this gospel-formed character is felt most where association is most frequent and contact most close. The text points to a home as the sphere of Christian influence, but it also directs our attention to woman as influential there, and it leads our thoughts to the presence of unbelief in the family. This suggests two things: firstly, that there is often evangelistic work to be done in families of which Christians are part; and secondly, that this work may be extensively wrought by Christian women. Christian men and women, whatever your hands may find to do beyond, neglect not the home.
IV. Believers of the Word may accomplish the end of preaching by being doers of the Word in the face of unbelievers. The great want of the world at the present time, is the Christianity of the New Testament translated into action. The demand for Christians is more urgent than the demand for churches. Men would see works that they may believe our words. (S. Martin.)
Won by behaviour
A high-born, cultured lady was converted during one of the London missions, and it was a genuine conversion. Immediately she separated herself from the world, revolutionised her household, altered her gay attire; and instead of the theatre or concert or ballroom night after night she was found at the mission service, the prayer meeting, or Bible reading. At first it embittered and angered her worldly husband, but eventually he yielded to what he termed a new caprice. When he found out that his beautiful wife was really in earnest, he persecuted her, and stung her with bitter reproaches, which, unfortunately, too frequently aroused her passionate temper, or occasioned an angry retort. One day God used her husbands bitter words to teach her a great lesson. When your Christ can do something more for you, Isabel, he said, I may let Him try to do something for me-not before. Wherein do I fail most? she asked. In your temper and tongue, which are sourer than when I first knew you. Is this really so? she asked herself when alone. If so, O God, forgive me was the sob which burst from her lips. What! is it possible that my hastiness may perhaps be keeping my husband from God? Away with it, Lord I Give me, I pray Thee, victory over all sin. God answered her prayer, but the testing time had yet to come. When her husband found persecution no longer irritated her, he let jealousy get the better of him-jealousy of the little delicate lad, their only child, who monopolised so much of his mothers time, and filled a large place in her loving heart, One evening when Mr. N-returned home irritable and morose-perhaps the worse for wine-she was singing softly, Theres a beautiful land on high, and the patient little sufferer had just said, Id like to be there, mother, if I could take you with me, when Mr. N-entered the nursery, and said, irritably, Put that child down, Isabel; Norton has come home with me to dine. Our little laddie is worse, Edgar, she said. May I not stay with him? No, and taking him roughly from her knee he handed the child to the nurse. All nonsense about his being worse. But, as he spoke, a loud moan escaped the little lads lips. His father had caught his head accidentally against the corner of the table, and he cried out to go back to his mother again, The child is not hurt much, Isabel; leave him at once, and come and attend to my guest. With an aching heart, Mrs. N-obeyed, trembling lest the blow might prove serious. Before dinner, however, was over, she was summoned to the nursery. The child was worse. Both the doctor and physician had been sent for, and they shook their heads at his condition. In the midst of the confusion and excitement, Mr. N-went out with his friend, heedless of the message which had been sent to him from the nursery, lie did not return until long after midnight. But about midnight his little child died. Isabel N-was childless. There she knelt alone by the bedside of her little darlings lifeless form. Would it be possible to describe her feelings or to understand the conflict through which she was passing? The Refiner was looking on-watching intently to see the effect of the fire through which He was causing His child to pass. Would it burn up the dross? Would it subdue the will? A few minutes later her husbands step was heard in the hall, and Mrs. N-knew the butler would tell his master all that had happened. The grief-stricken woman listened for him to come to her at once, but she heard him enter the library and shut the door; and, in the stillness which followed, she cried unto the Lord for guidance and strength. Pride said, Let him come to you-he has wronged both you and the child; but love said, Go to him-be the first to forgive. Love conquered, thanks be to God. Mr. N-was sitting by the table, his head buried in his hands, when he heard the library door open, and in another moment felt his wifes soft warm arms encircling his neck, and her lips pressed to his heated brow, while a voice of gentle sweetness said, Jesus has taken our darling to be with Him, Edgar; but I will love you more, dear. No stinging reproaches-no hard hasty words-not even a tender rebuke. The man could hardly believe he heard aright. What a miracle! What wonderful love! Yes, and the love broke his heart. Come upstairs and see our boy, Edgar. Without speaking he followed her; and while the two knelt alone in that still room and her tremulous voice pleaded that the sorrow might be sanctified, and that one day they too might join their little one in the Better Land, the proud, stubborn man yielded his heart to his God. When he arose he said, calmly, Isabel, Christ has done so much for you, dear, that I mean to ask Him to do as much for me. There is something in Christianity after all. (Mrs. Walter Searle.)
Chaste conversation coupled with fear.-
Christian womanhood
The chaste conversation coupled with fear seems to signify purity in an atmosphere of fear, the tremulous grace which is afraid of the very shadow of wrong. The beholding is in the original a remarkable word. It seems to point at initiation into a world of goodness before unknown to the husband. The selfish rhetorician Libanius, who had some Christian acquaintances, is said to have exclaimed: What wives those Christians have! A missionary to China has heard Christian women say: Until we became Christians we never really knew that we were women. (Bp. Wm. Alexander.)
The Christian woman
Let our thoughts be guided by this twofold proposition:-
1. For the unfolding of womans character, and the balancing of her spirit, Christianity supplies the only sufficient impulse and guide.
2. Christianity exhibits no more perfect illustration or achievement than in the completed proportions of her spiritual life. The first epoch of trial in womans life begins when the period of education ceases. It is a period of dependence, in the first place, with most women-dependence on parents-but still not the less irksome for that, if the woman, with a consciousness of strength, sees the parent worn and anxious with excess of labour; or if, with willingness for effort which her position or social prejudice forbids, she sees her every want met only by reluctant and grudged supplies. It is a period of uncertainty; for it looks straight out upon all those contingencies that determine her future lot-a lot for which she is not so much to lead or choose as to wait and weigh the perils of being chosen, or to learn the calm fortitude that conquers neglect with dignity. It is a period of highly wrought sensibility. The emotions have swelled, from the babbling brook that kept its quiet way within the banks of youth, into the rushing river of impetuous passion. It is a period of comparative irresponsibleness; and who shall say that irresponsibleness is a blessing, when we know so well how occupation dispels morbid introspections, and how daily strain upon the muscles fortifies timid and tremulous nerves? It is not true, I think, of any other condition of human discipline, more than this one, that nothing short of a personal acquaintance with Christian trust can satisfy its wants. Two other and different resources, indeed, the young woman has: and we need not wander far to search for proofs how often She tries their value. They are her womanly pride, and the excitements of society. What will Christianity do? It concentrates the aimless and restless purposes of woman on the one grand object of a personal acceptance with God. It takes off the load, which no human spirit can bear and be cheerful, by its promise of forgiveness for what is lacking, and by its encouraging assurance that when once the life is consecrated to God no single act or thought of good can fail of fruit in the spiritual harvests of eternity. It offers her what the mind of youth more than anything else craves-a friendship at once unchangeable and trustworthy as the heavens; and so it opens the gates of the city of God straight into her closet of prayer, and, when the world looks most inhospitable, shows her friendly angels ascending with her supplications, and descending with counsel and compassion, between her Bethel and her Father. It not only quickens her to a new fidelity in all the homely ministrations of the house where she lives, towards brothers and sisters, parents and servants; it opens to her the lowly door of poverty; it draws her, by cords stronger than steel, to the unclad orphan and the bedside of sick wretchedness; it stimulates her invention, it exhausts her economy, it plies her fingers, it inspires her intercessions for the instruction of poor childrens ignorance, and the redemption of their despair. Another task still Christianity solemnly charges upon woman in her youth. It bids her by every separate obligation of her discipleship be true to immaculate virtue in her intercourse with companions, and in the bestowment of her favour. Would to God that some angel from His own right hand would reveal to her the power she controls for the redemption of those horrible vices that defile and intoxicate the land! for then she might take up her benignant ministry as an apostle of holiness, persuading the tempted by her unbending principle, as well as bearing her own profession incorruptibly. It is time to advance to a later stage of the Christian womans experience. If her moral power is so decisive at the time when life has devolved upon her the fewest responsibilities, and neither age nor station has vested in her any adventitious authority, it is only more commanding yet when she has taken up the complicated relations of marriage, and assumed the spiritual governance of that lesser church, that sacred seminary-the family. The chief enemies to her Christian simplicity-and thus to the symmetry of her own character, as well as the integrity of her influence-are social ambition, an appetite for admiration, the passion for indiscriminate excitement, and, in other constitutions, a dull servitude to the routine of mechanical tasks.
1. By social ambition I mean the vulgar appetite for those external distinctions which are even more dangerous to woman than to man, because of the inherent natural aristocracy of her nature. A wife or mother who suffers it to be her supreme exertion to rise in the public consideration has already parted with that artless sincerity which is the chief grace of her womanhood.
2. Appetite for admiration. Could some searching census register the number of those who are kept aloof from the love of God by this foolish vanity alone, should we dare to look into the swelling catalogue? Could some magic reflection be added to mirrors, so that, while they show back the adjustment of garments, they should also reveal the emptiness of soul, what dismal disclosures would startle the sleeping conscience!
3. Passion for indiscriminate excitement. What hold has religion taken of that mind which never rests in its insatiable craving for some public spectacle-is never satisfied except when it is preparing for some scene of social display, or exulting over its conquests? There is no noble type of womanhood that does not wear serenity upon its forehead.
4. On the other hand, in constitutions of an opposite inclination, female life is apt to degenerate, if not inspired by religion, into a tame routine of narrow domestic cares, dwarfing the spirit to its own contracted limitations. The very nature of woman requires animation for its health. Religion, with its infinite mysteries, its deep and stirring experience, its boundless duties, offers that needed stimulus-offers it to the obscurest and the lowliest. The Christian wife and mother is a Christian in the spirit by which she orders her household and nurtures her offspring. Too many mothers make their first request for their sons that of the mother of Zebedees children-that they may sit on thrones of wealth and power. What wonder if those sons are worldlings, are hypocrites, are criminals? Too many train up their daughters with no loftier aim than to be beautiful brides, or the centres of meretricious observation at summer watering places, or to value a husband by his income, or not to be over nice in their judgment of men, because they are not expected to be virtuous like women. Infamous effrontery towards God! And thus I have come, finally, to what may be briefly established-that Christianity exhibits no more perfect achievement than in the completed character of a spiritual womanhood; for, passing on one stage later yet, we find the united result of a lifes discipline and a heavenly faith in the Christian womans old age. Providence has not withheld that confirmation of the power and beauty of religion from our eyes. We feel new confidence and truth, new love for goodness, new zeal for duty, new trust in God, new gratitude to Christ, when we look on her ripened holiness; and, as her strength faints before the power of decay, behold the crown of immortality descending almost visibly upon her head! I cannot so well finish this account of a Christian woman as by repeating the following touching, simple memorial of his wife written by one of the statesmen of England-Sir James Mackintosh-in a private letter to a friend: She was a woman, he writes, who, by the tender management of my weaknesses, gradually corrected the most pernicious of them. She became prudent from affection; and, though of the most generous nature, she was taught frugality and economy by her love for me. During the most critical period of my life she preserved order in my affairs, from the care of which she relieved me. She gently reclaimed me from dissipation, she propped my weak and irresolute nature, she urged my indolence to all the exertions that have been useful or creditable to me, and she was perpetually at hand to admonish my heedlessness and improvidence. To her I owe whatever I am-to her whatever I shall be. In her solicitude for my interest, she never for a moment forgot my character. Her feelings were warm and impetuous; but she was placable, tender, and constant. Such was she whom I have lost; and I have lost her when a knowledge of her worth had refined my youthful love into friendship, before age had deprived it of much of its original ardour. I seek relief, and I find it in the consolatory opinion that a benevolent Wisdom inflicts the chastisement as well as bestows the enjoyment of human life; that superintending goodness will one day enliven the darkness which surrounds our nature, and hangs over our prospects; that this dreary and wretched life is not the whole of man; that a being capable of such proficiency in science and virtue is not like the beasts that perish; that there is a dwelling place prepared for the spirits of the just; that the ways of God will yet be vindicated to man. (Bp. Huntington.)
Let it not be that outward adorning.-
The influence of Christianity on dress
To lay down rules for the regulation of dress, applicable to all circumstances, all ranks, all ages, is impossible. To fix the cut of the coat, the shape of the bonnet, were a hopeless and, indeed, ridiculous task. All that we can do is to lay down certain principles, distinctly asserted in, or clearly deducible from, the gospel.
I. Christian principles forbid all dress which is not honestly procured. That dress is dishonestly procured for which you know you cannot pay, or the payment of which is effected by dishonourable means, by falsehood, by embezzlement, or fraud. It is not in the higher circles only that temptations to obtain dress by dishonest methods occur. The servant maid must ape her mistress; but the wages she receives are not equal to the demands of her pride. But even if every tradesmans bill is punctually paid, still you are guilty of dishonesty if the money thus expended be drawn from other channels in which, in justice to yourselves, or to your families, it ought to flow. You are unjust to yourself if you starve either the body or the mind to decorate the person.
II. Christian principles forbid that dress which is immodest. The author of my text, in another Epistle, charges the women that they adorn themselves in modest apparel. A prudent woman, says Mr. Jay, will avoid whatever would appear light and wanton. The apparel of a woman professing godliness should not be the attire of a woman of the world, much less the attire of a harlot. Females sometimes wear a label on which indecency and indelicacy are written, and then appear to be offended because observers can read. I would not always infer too much from these outward hints; but, in the name of a blush, on what principle can we explain the invention and adoption of certain modes? I describe nothing. Intimately connected with modesty in dress is health; and when it is considered how many thoughtless females have fallen the untimely victims of disease introduced into the frame by the general scantiness, or the partial distribution of their attire, I am persuaded the allusion will not be deemed improper.
III. Christian principles forbid that dress which is unbecoming your station. It is obvious, by a comparison of the text and parallel passages with the general scope of Scripture, that costly attire is not forbidden where the ability of the person is fully equal to its purchase, without injury to any other claims. The virtuous woman is highly commended in the Proverbs, who, through her industry, clothed all her household in scarlet, and herself with silk and purple. Moreover, the good of society requires persons to dress, in some degree, according to their rank and station. But it is excess that the apostle censures.
IV. Christian principles forbid that dress which requires an undue consumption of time. I will not recount the days and years of valuable time which some females spend in cutting, adjusting, adorning, altering, and improving the articles of their dress, till the world of novelties is ransacked and the invention at a stand: I will not number up the hours, or tell the years the aggregate would make, devoted to the toilette, with peevishness and impatience, till every ringlet is properly adjusted, every plait suitably apportioned, and every gem placed to the best advantage at the expense of religion and humanity, and to the ruin of both body and soul!
V. Christian principles forbid that dress which, by its singularity or extravagance attracts peculiar attention. The desire to court observation-the ambition to be singular-the hope of being admired, is the essence of pride, and in this vice both the extremes of finery and of plainness will be found to meet. Keep thy foot when thou goest into the house of God. Surely, look well to thy attire is included in this injunction.
VI. That dress is forbidden by Christian principles which seriously occupies and absorbs the powers of the mind. And yet how many females are there the range of whose information is bounded by these limits-the topics of whose discourse are derived from this subject-who understand no science but that of shapes and colours-are acquainted with no art but that of decoration and display-and are conversant in no history but that of modes and fashions. It yet remains that I should produce some considerations by which the observance of them may be enforced.
VII. These principles should be enforced-
1. By a consideration of the sources whence your dress proceeds. As clothes cannot impart moral qualities or mental endowments to the wearer, so they are little to be gloried in on another account: they are derived from the lowest sources, and composed of the meanest materials. Nay, more than this, is not the dress on which you pride yourself the memorial of your shame? But for sin it had never encumbered the limbs, nor occupied for a moments space the care of the unspotted mind.
2. By a comparative view of its intrinsic worth. In a time of universal famine how many jewels would you give for a single loaf of bread? In a raging fever how many diamonds would you sacrifice for a moments ease? In a parched desert how many embroidered robes would you exchange for a cooling draught? Why, then, should such enormous sums be expended in glimmering pebbles and sparkling dust? Compare them with your books-your Bibles-your souls-all neglected for their sake! Arise to correcter sentiments and nobler aims. Make the Bible your looking glass, the graces of the Spirit your jewels, the temper of Jesus your attire.
3. Consider the estimation in which dress is held by the wise and good. With them it always occupies its proper place, which is an inferior one; and wherever it rises to excess and glare, indicating the vanity and pride of its possessor, it excites their pity and contempt.
4. The estimation in which you will hold dress in the hour of death and in an eternal world. (T. Raffles, D. D.)
Dress
St. Peter does not prohibit absolutely the plaiting of the hair, the wearing of gold, and the putting on of apparel; but he desires that the precedence be given to higher and better things.
I. Let us not hesitate to say that there is nothing in Christianity, rightly understood, which prohibits a woman from endeavouring to dress well and to look well. There is no religion in a mean, unattractive garb. Years ago there lived two Greek philosophers, Diogenes and Plato. Plato, who was a man of wealth and taste, had handsome carpets. Diogenes preferred living in a tub, and saying disagreeable things, under the impression that he was faithful. One day he came, in an ill temper, into his brother philosophers drawing room; and stamping on the carpets, cried out, I trample on the pride of Plato! Yes, said Plato, quietly,-and with greater pride. Is there not something of this pride in unworldly. dressing? Cannot a woman show her Christianity without making herself conspicuous by singularity? But we will take a step farther. We have said that Christianity does not prohibit attention to dress. We wilt now say that Christianity requires of a Christian woman to make the best of herself. God the Creator delights in beauty-beauty of form and hue and outline and arrangement; and surely He would have us, His creatures, delight in beauty also; and surely anyone who shows a marked inattention to the comeliness of outward things, shows himself, so far, out of harmony with the Divine mind.
II. The Christian woman will always subordinate the outward to the inward. But she will want rules to guide herself by. She will not be extravagant in the money she spends upon her dress. If her personal appearance be a talent, so also is her money: and both have to be considered. Another talent, which a Christian woman will think much of, is her time. The highest praise as to dress, which a right-minded woman would desire, would be to have it said of her by the passers-by, I did not notice her dress; but I noticed herself; and she seemed an unaffected, modest, genuine Christian lady. (G. Calthrop, M. A.)
Female adornment
I. The capacity of woman for adornment.
1. We say that the female form is adapted for adornment.
2. We say that the female nature is adapted for adornment. Can kindness, gentleness, meekness sit with so good a grace on a man as on a woman? Is not sweetness of temper reflected in every look, and does it not beautify and glorify every feature?
II. The directions for womens adornment. (J. J. S. Bird, B. A.)
Female adorning
Here, in the Word of life, we have fallen upon a text that deals with female attire, condemning one style of adorning, and commending another. God loves beauty of every kind, both the beauty of nature and the beauty of holiness. How do we know that? Because everything that He makes is beautiful. The works of nature are beautiful on all sides, and on all sides alike beautiful. It is not a bright exterior, and a rough ungainly interior; it is not a polished side to the public road, and a slovenly rubble wall on the shaded side. Nor is the most elaborate design or the most exquisite colour reserved for the most enduring objects. The snow crystals, and the frosted tracery on the windows, are as perfect in design and execution as the monarchs of the forest that outlast fifty human generations. Man is the chief of Gods works, and enjoys most of His care. He was made most beautiful, but has disfigured himself by sin. When His best work was damaged, the Creator did not give it up, and give it over. He framed a plan to restore. He desires to have His own image renewed. A man of feeble intellect, in the north of Scotland, was wont, like most of his class, to be very slovenly in his appearance. To this weakling the gospel of Christ came in power. He accepted Gods covenant love, and found himself a child of the family. Soon after this change the minister met him on a Sabbath morning, and was struck with his unwonted cleanness, and the efforts he had made in his own fashion to ornament his person. Accosting him kindly, the minister said, You are braw today, Sandy. He was braw Himsel the day, replied Sandy reverently; meaning that Jesus, when He rose from the grave on the first day of the week, was arrayed in the Divine glory and the beauty of holiness. The Lord on high, who rejoices to receive the little ones, would, methinks, be pleased to see Sandys Sunday clothes, and to hear Sandys simple answer. Peter in this text undertakes to tell how the uncomely may be rendered beautiful. Here is the true adorning; and it is for us, for all. Still deeper goes the apostles thought when he arrives at the details of the recommended ornaments. Not that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel;-what then? Let it be the hidden man of the heart. There is a whole Christ in every disciple who lives up to his privileges, as there is a whole sun in the cup of every flower that opens to his shining. When this ornament is worn in the heart within, its beauty is seen on the outward life. In general, a likeness of Christ is in the life of a Christian; and, in particular, a meek and quiet spirit. When, in the processes of art, a new and beautiful colour is about to be transferred to a fabric, the hardest portion of the task sometimes is to discharge the dyes that are already there. A terrible process of scalding must be applied to take out the old ere you can successfully impart the new. In like manner, the anger and pride and selfishness that have first possession present the greatest obstacle to the infusion of a meek and gentle spirit into a man. If there be a royal, there is certainly no easy, road to this consummation. It is a striking, bold, and original conception, to propose that an ornament should be hidden in the heart. Ordinarily, we understand that an ornament, from its very nature, must be worn in a conspicuous position. When it is hidden, how useful and valuable soever it may be, it ceases to be an adorning. But in the spiritual sphere the law is reversed. Meekness is spoiled when it is set up for show. This ornament, moreover, is incorruptible. This epithet is peculiarly relevant. With the exception of the metals and minerals, ornaments are, for the most part, perishable commodities. Rain soils them; the sun burns their beauty out, In the accidents of life they are worn or torn, or stolen or lost. The rose and lily that bloom on the cheek are not perennial; the wrinkles of age are creeping on to drive them off and take their place. All these adornings are corruptible. This text recommends one that will never fade. Age makes it mellower, but not less sweet. As it is not a colour of the decaying body, but a grace of the immortal spirit, it will pass unharmed through the dark valley, and bloom in greater beauty on the other side. It will make the ransomed from among men very comely in the eyes of angels, when they stand together round the throne, and serve their common Lord. One grand concern with buyers is to obtain garments that will last-garments whose fabric will not waste, and whose colours will not fade. Yet another quality is noticed of the recommended adorning-it is costly. In the sight of God, and of the godly, it is of great price. In the market of the world, alas! we, like inexperienced children, are often cheated. We pay a great price for that which is of no value. We are often caught by the glitter, and accept a base metal for gold. He who counts this ornament precious knows its worth. The righteousness of the saints is dear to God in a double sense. It is both beloved and costly. (W. Arnot.)
Womens dress
Common sense, sustained by Christian principle, will ever reveal what your dress ought to be. The coarse dress is not necessarily the fulfilment of the admonition of the apostle Peter. A young woman is not to affect the repulsive robe of the nun, as if that were religion; nor to dress in the drab of the Society of Friends, as if that were humility; she is to dress as becomes her station, and her rank, and her position. We may depend upon it, it is far more conducive to the universal welfare that the highest classes should dress as becomes them, than that they should lay it all aside, and dress like the Society of Friends. What would become of all the lace, silks, and warehouses in the City of London, and in Manchester, and Nottingham, and Glasgow, and other places; what would become of all the mills that are employed; if men were to try to form, what cannot be formed in character, in wealth, or in industry-a universal dead level? All that Peter insists upon, and all that we require is, that the young woman shall dress as becomes her position in life; good taste, which is always a quiet, never a gaudy thing; and Christian principle regulating her in this: and that the aged woman shall be sober, autumn never trying to deck itself in the flowers of summer, nor cold and dreary winter putting on what is not natural-all the splendours and the glories of June; and young and old recollecting this beautiful thought, Behold the lilies of the field; they toil not, neither do they spin; yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. (J. Cumming.)
The hidden man of the heart.-
Soul clothing
To clothe the foot in costly apparel, and the upper part with rags, were absurd; so to bestow cost in clothing the body, but none on the soul. The soul is immortal, must live forever; it was created according to Gods image, and now the soul is most deformed with sin, and so hath need of clothing, especially seeing God, who is of pure eyes, cannot behold it but with detestation. The Church is all glorious within, and such as would be indeed members of Christ, and heirs of heaven, must look for inward sanctity. This is the most costly apparel that can be, of Gods own making, and which none but His children wear. This is apparel for all sexes, ages, degrees, and callings, whatsoever, and which doth well become and fit each of them. This is never out of season, never out of fashion; it fits in youth, in age, in life, in death, and is to be worn by night as well as by day, in sickness as in health, yea, is then in great account, when other apparel is laid aside, and not regarded; yea, this apparel we carry with us out of this world, when we leave our gay robes behind us; and this apparel lasts ever, being the better for the wearing. (John Rogers.)
Latent goodness and latent evil
If we translate this into modern language, we might say, The latent good and evil in man. The heart stands for the source, back of all else, from which our life flows. What we love most, that we are. Wherever our deepest longing goes, there we are going. But this profound tendency of the soul is often a hidden tendency. It is the hidden man of the heart. There is in every man a great deal more of good and of evil than we see. Inside of the visible man, whose face and form we see, there is an invisible man of veins and arteries, and another invisible man of nerves, and a third invisible man of bones; and from the co operation of these proceed the actions of the visible man. What we see in nature is only the visible outcome of what we do not see. So, in the processes of the human soul, what we know proceeds from hidden sources which we do not know. What do I mean by the formation of Christian character? I mean that a man may deliberately choose to be pure, honest, truthful, generous, religious, and that he can turn this choice at last into a habit, so that it shall be natural to him to do right, rather than to do wrong. What he did at first by an effort, and with difficulty, he now does without any conscious effort, and easily. Now, all these instincts, whether original or acquired, are wholly hidden from our knowledge. They are latent until they are called out by some occasion; then they show themselves spontaneously. Some are near the surface, and appear on all occasions; others are deep down, and appear only on special occasions. The moral cowardice in the apostle Peter, which could make him deny his Master, was latent, and Peter could not believe it possible that he should act thus. Circumstances develop latent goodness as well as evil. You are living among neighbours whom you do not know very well. But they seem to you commonplace, or perhaps worldly. But some calamity befalls you. This event brings out the goodness which was lying latent in your neighbours hearts; latent because nothing appealed to it. How kind they are now! how self-sacrificing! But the sickness of your child was not the cause of this sympathy, but merely the occasion of its manifesting itself and becoming developed. It did not make, it only revealed, these kindly thoughts of many hearts. Just so the great calamities and dangers of a nation arouse as by an electric touch the heroism and self-sacrifice that there may be in the people. Cincinnatus steps from behind his plough; William Tell from his mountain home; Washington from his comforts; to serve his country in council or battle. But the times which try mens souls do not make Washingtons and Tells-they only test them and call out their latent virtue. Woe to the nation, woe to the man who is not equal to the test when it comes! If the test does not cause them to rise, it makes them fall. How many examples there are to prove the existence of this latent evil! We have seen a young man go from the pure home of his childhood, from the holy influences of a Christian community. He leaves his home and comes to the city to engage in business. He trusts in his own heart, in his own virtuous habits. But there is latent evil in his heart, there is a secret selfishness, a hidden and undeveloped sensualism, which is ready to break out under the influences which will now surround him. He becomes a lover of pleasure; he acquires a taste for play, wine and excitement. In a year or two, how far has he gone from the innocent hopes and tastes of his childhood! The latent evil that was in him has come out under the test of these new circumstances. Meantime, another young man, apparently no better than he, has, under the same circumstances, developed the seeds of virtuous and holy purposes, and has become a man of unshaken integrity and virtue. Why this difference? You cannot trace it to education, for their education was similar, you cannot account for it by the influence of circumstances, example and outward temptations; for these were the same in both cases. The difference was in the latent character of the two boys. One in the depths of his soul was then a sensualist; was then a worldly and selfish boy. The other, with no better outward habits, had in reality an inward principle of goodness. And circumstances merely developed the latent good and evil of the two. The fact of latent goodness is as true and important as that of latent evil. If our inmost purposes are right; if we have kept our heart with all diligence; if we have habitually trusted our souls to God, then we have a stock of latent goodness, ready and equal for any occasion which may come to call for it. We need not fear, then, that we shall not be able to meet any emergencies. An unsuspected strength will then manifest itself, a courage and faith for which we dared not hope will triumphantly reveal itself. What, then, is the practical conclusion from these facts? It is that we should both distrust ourselves and trust ourselves; that we should pray. Lead us not into temptation, yet count it all joy when we fall into temptation. If we are already conscious of our weakness, we may not need the trial which is sent to show us our weakness. But if, nevertheless, God sends the trial, then it was necessary that we should be tried, and let us count it all joy that it has come. If it brings out an amount of latent evil of which we were not aware, then it is well that we should become thus acquainted with our own depths of sinfulness. The disease must be brought out before it can be cured. But if the temptation, on the other hand, reveals and quickens powers of inward virtue and resolution, then let us bless God for this latent goodness which He shows us. (James Freeman Clarke.)
The hidden man
The point is, that one should not expend the whole of life on making the outside beautiful, but that one should see to it that the inside is adorned also. You are not to cheat the soul of all its gems and virtues for the sake of making yourself attractive exteriorly by adornments of that kind. It is not for that general subject, however, that I have selected She passage, but for this phrase, the hidden man. You will have been struck in reading, how much this dual life is insisted upon in the New Testament, especially how much use the apostle Paul makes of it. There are two elements running side by side in his philosophy; one the outward, another the inward. The outward man perishes day by day, the inward man is renewed day by day, says the apostle; and he dwells in various phrase on that duality, the inward life, and the outward or physical life. Everywhere there is this reciprocal action, the world on the mind, and the mind on the world. The sense, the physical body, is the instrument by which the world acts upon our hidden man, and by which the hidden man acts back again upon the world. Through the exterior world the soul is thus the recipient of treasures. The soul is like a prince who receives embassies from all the provinces round about; presents and tribute come to him from the uttermost parts of the earth. The air, the storms, all human occupations, all governments, individual men and combinations of men, pleasures-all bring influence to this potentate, the hidden man of the soul. Then, in turn, the soul sends forth energy, speech, will; and as the tide that swells and fills the harbour, then reflows and seeks again the great ocean, so the flux and reflux of force between mind and the physical world is a greater though an invisible and silent tide. The laws of the physical world are almost sterile until they are touched by the human will. Natural laws could give us metals in their foaming, bubbling states, but they never made a knife or a sword. Nature made trees, but never made a house. Nature has made germs, man has made the harvest. All the great laws that make summer and winter and the intermediate seasons, all the laws that are called natural, all the laws that spring from political economy, all those laws which are said, in one respect, to be natural laws, are not natural laws until some human spirit sits astride upon them and directs them. Now, the relative proportion between this receiving and the outgoing power determines character. It is the critical line both as respects quantity and quality. Those who live by their senses, controlled by objects to be seen or heard or felt from without, live animal lives. They are savages. Then come those who, receiving much, only give forth the energy of their passions-not intellectual energy, not moral, not aesthetic. They give forth simply the energy of selfishness, of pride, of vanity, of ambition, of avarice, combativeness, or destructiveness. It is the lower tier of the human, and the upper tier of the animal that is affected in them, and that gives forth some voice or fruit. Then come those who give action, the men who have industries, that dig, that hew, that build, converting impressions and the result of knowledge from without into energies by which they give the fruit of physical combinations and constructions. This includes the vast mass of the respectable people of the globe today. They are constructors and workers. Then there are those who are over and above all this activity, for the upper always owns the lower. He who gives thoughts can also give construction, though he who gives only construction cannot give thought. The upper always carries within it the privileges and the fruit of the inferior, or of all that is below it. So that the next rank are those who give forth thought and emotion, that have it in their power to thrill their time, or to augment it, to build it up, to defend it; men who live in the higher range of their faculties, and give the fruit reaped from these higher fields, higher and richer. Then come those who, over and above all activities, in physics and even in intellect, have a reserved life which has never had expression except through hymns and psalms, the voice of the teacher and the inspirations of the poet-the utterances of those who have given to knowledge a higher character and a winged form. They are sensitive, open to the subtle inspirations that move in the higher realms, and are men who live by faith or by the higher forms of imagination, not by sight nor by the physical fruitfulness of the human body. In regard to this relative activity of different classes, what they receive and what they give forth, it may be said that it determines, not simply individual rank or life, but it determines also the philosophy or the character of different religions. Take, for instance, the contrast between Judaism and Christianity. Judaism was a recipient religion; Christianity is a projecting religion. The Oriental mind generally receives; the Occidental mind gives forth. A word as to the relative productiveness of these two elements. The productiveness of the mind is generally in increasing ratio from the lowest to the highest; the effectiveness of its outgo is generally in the inverse relation or ratio. Man can more easily turn that which is inspired in his animal range and nature into an external influence and substance, than he can that which belongs to his highest nature. How much of thought there is in cultivated men! How much of thought that goes forth in language! But how much more thought that never rides in the chariot of language! How much men think day by day that is only thinking! In my orchards today there are, I think, on single cherry trees more than a million blossoms; and probably all but about a hundred thousand of those will drop without a cherry having formed under them. Men are like such trees. They breed thoughts by the millions, that result in action only in the scores and the hundreds. Waves of feeling rise, roll through the mind, and leave no more effect behind them than the waves of unknown seas that have rolled solitary for centuries by day and by night. How much there is of purpose that is blighted and barren! How much there is in goodness, how much in sweetness, how much in love, that runs the circuits and touches all the shores of human possibility, but never comes out nor shows itself! How many there are doomed by necessity, like fragrant trees in the great tropical wildernesses-fragrant for ages, but neither brute, beast, nor man ever smells their sweetness! How many there are that live in society who are capable of issuing sweetness that should be of influence, and that should make a very summer round about them, but there is no channel, and they die without opportunity! The great hidden soul had no tongue, nor possibility of using it if it had one. This hidden man, then, may be called in respect to those things that are the highest and the best in this life, the silent man; for we can say least of the things most worthy to be expressed; and this great silence may be said to determine character and condition very largely. They that know how to repress the lower and the evil that is generated within, are on the platform of morality ascending towards spirituality; and those that ascend to the highest forms can express but little. Yet they have, as it were, a palace within themselves, out of which in days of trouble or trial come forth inexhaustible stores of strength and of consolation. It is the hidden man which is at once the glory and the shame of mankind-the rich of thought and pure of purpose whose life perhaps can bring forth but little outward fruit, but who store up for the eternities grand knowledges, impulses, and actions; and, on the other side, the men who maintain an external decorum, but are full of all uncleanliness. This hidden man is more beautiful than any of you think, and more horrible. The saint dwells in many a bosom, not far removed from the very angels of the throne itself. Devils inhabit the heart of many and many a respectable man. Oh! bring out your silent man, make him speak, unroll what is written in his thought. How many men could hold up their faces then? And how many men who have produced nothing for the market, not much for the neighbourhood, little for the uses that are common on earth; that have neither the pen of the ready writer, nor the tongue of the orator, nor the wings of the poet, are rich unto God! They dwell in their meditations, and their imaginations remain untranslated into human language or into human conditions, but they are rich rewards God. This is a subject that is full of practical meaning; we ought so to coordinate the receiving to the giving-the income to the outgo that we shall strengthen and make better both of them. So ought men to organise their lives that they shall be fertile without, and fruitful and rich and abundant also within. (H. W. Beecher.)
The hidden man
I. It reminds us that it is the inward life that makes the man. The hidden man is not what first meets the eye that constitutes a persons individuality. It is what his will-led, taught yet ignorant, prejudiced yet biassed, free yet trammelled, great yet little-determines.
II. We are reminded that this inward man far exceeds that which is outward and visible.
1. It exceeds it in value. A man would not take the kingdom for his body. Youth or age, beauty or vileness, do not alter the intrinsic nature of the man. Often indeed do we see the noblest spirits inhabit the most unseemly bodies, while those who possess outward beauty are infamous in their lives. As to the stupendous contrast, in value, of the soul over the body, it is impossible to define any just description. A priceless jewel wrapped in a worthless piece of paper is only a faint representation of the contrast which exists between them.
2. The inner man again is the responsible part of our human nature. The body is but the agent.
3. Compare again for one moment the elements of which they are severally composed. The outward, visible man is dust. The soul or living essence is the breath of the living God. Its influence at once exalts the body to the highest step of material creation.
III. We may consider that this inward life is as the text describes it-a hidden life. No human eyes can penetrate the veil which hides it from view. It is in our own hearts we live, in our souls we exist, and in our own hearts we must die. It would be mockery to bring the outside world into our inside existence. It would be bad for us, and bad for the world, if we did not live in a hidden world. Thank God that even our sins are hid.
IV. We would warn you that this hidden life is no secret from God.
V. That this inner man deserves and demands more careful cultivation than it generally receives. Now, in order to effectually cultivate the heart, there must be-
1. A continuous course of introspection.
2. There must be self-communion.
3. There must be the admission of Christ as a guest. It is in the heart that Christ must dwell. (Homilist.)
Religion an inward principle
When religion is styled the hidden man of the heart this language cannot imply that it is totally concealed from the observation of the world. Effects may be visible, while the principle whence they proceed is removed from our view. A beautiful river, which highly adorns the country through which it flows, will not fail to engage the eyes of every beholder. Yet the source of it may not be the object of our sight. In like manner the fruits of pious dispositions can be witnessed by all. But the dispositions themselves fall not within our notice. The words convey this idea, that genuine religion consists in the inward temper. From this view of it some instructive lessons may be deduced.
1. Religion does not so essentially depend upon any particular mode of faith or worship as some may suppose.
2. This subject teaches us that it is highly unbecoming and presumptuous in men to decide with rashness on the religious character and state of their neighbours. Fallible as we are we cannot read the motives of individuals; and much goodness may exist, which, from various causes, has few or no opportunities of being witnessed by the eye of man.
3. If religion be the hidden man of the heart it cannot exist, and still less can it flourish without the agency of God accompanying our diligence, watchfulness, and self-denial.
4. Religion, being the hidden man of the heart, cannot easily be in danger from causes altogether external; nor is it amenable to human laws, nor dependent on human patronage.
5. Since religion is a principle, the inseparable alliance between the possession of its spirit and our happiness, both present and future, is placed in a new and striking light. The happiness of man cannot be independent on the mind. The purest happiness of the mind will be the happiness of heaven, and the degree of it will be greatest in the cases of those whose religion is most eminently the hidden man of the heart. (J. Kentish.)
The best clothing
It is Tertullians counsel to young women: Clothe yourselves with the silk of piety, with the satin of sanctity, with the purple of modesty; so shall you have God Himself to be your suitor. (J. Trapp.)
Meekness
A garment that will never be the worse for wearing, but the better. (J. Trapp.)
Beauty beneath ugliness
A woman, famous as one of the most kindly among leaders of the best American society, once said: If I have been able to accomplish anything in life it is due to the words spoken to me in the right season when I was a child by an old teacher. I was the only homely, awkward girl in a class of exceptionally pretty ones, and being also dull at my books, became the butt of the school. I fell into a morose, despairing state, gave up study, withdrew into myself, and grew daily more bitter and vindictive. One day the French teacher, a grey-haired old woman, with keen eyes and a kind smile, found me crying. Qu as-tu, ma fille? she asked. Oh, madame, I am so ugly! I sobbed out. She soothed me, but did not contradict me. Presently, she took me to her room, and after amusing me for some time, said, I have a present for you, handing me a scaly, coarse lump, covered with earth. It is round and brown as you. Ugly, did you say? Very well, we will call it by your name, then. It is you! Now, you shall plant it, and water it, and give it sun for a week or two. I planted it and watched it carefully; the green leaves came first, and at last the golden Japanese lily, the first I had ever seen. Madame came to share my delight. Ah, she said, significantly, who would believe so much beauty and fragrance were shut up in that little, rough, ugly thing? But it took heart and came into the sun. It was the first time that it ever occurred to me that, in spite of my ugly face, I, too, might be able to win friends, and to make myself beloved in the world. (Great Thoughts.)
The hidden man
Why do you not wear richer apparel? once asked a familiar friend of Edward I. Because, said the sensible king, I cannot be more estimable in fine than I am in simple clothing.
Exterior adornment insufficient
Those who adorn only the exterior, but neglect the inner man, are like the Egyptian temples, which present every kind of decoration upon the outside, but contain within, in place of a deity, a cat, a crocodile, or some other vile animal. (Clement of Alexandria.)
Inner attractiveness the most desirable
Plain women, far from underrating beauty, are apt to place too high a value upon it. Their own lack of comeliness is their lifelong sorrow. They do not realise that the women who are most ardently and lastingly loved by men are seldom very beautiful. Prettiness wins admiration; something much deeper and more subtle inspires and retains affection. No woman need be ugly. If there is a soul in her body it has but to begin betimes to show through, From her earliest girlhood the thought she thinks, the feelings to which she gives way, the tones she utters, the wishes she indulges, are sculpturing lines in her face that are capable of making a beauty all her own-lines whose writing will remain when bloom fades and sparkle falls. It is in the beginning of manhood and in the beginning of old age that a man is captivated simply by a pretty woman, and is in breathless haste to make her charms his own possession. The maturer man is far less subject to a mistaken infatuation. He looks for something less ephemeral than a glowing cheek and melting eye. As a rule I prefer plain women to pretty ones, said one of these discriminating persons. They are less self-conscious and have more regard for the rights of others. When my wife sends me shopping, as sometimes happens, I always select a plain girl to serve me. You see she knows her lack of personal attractions, and that she has nothing to depend on but the excellency of her services. Therefore she takes infinite pains with her customers. She pays strict attention to her business. There is nothing surer in the world than if you go into a store and select a plain girl to wait on you, you will be well served. The pretty girl, on the other hand, knows that she is pretty. It is usually very apparent that she knows it. She trades upon her prettiness. She uses the time and thought she ought to devote to serving you in trying to make you understand and appreciate that she is pretty. And this principle underlies beautys conduct in other walks of life. I admire lovely women most men do-but unless they possess more solid attractions than charms of person they are soon outrivalled by their plain and tasteful sisters. (Daily Paper.)
A reminder or heaven
To look upon her face, says Walworth of his mother, was to feel heaven near. It was within her.
A meek and quiet spirit.-
Quietude
I. Some characteristics of the grace.
1. Its leading characteristic is the beautiful. Not so much the true, the good, is in his mind as the beautiful. First-rate Christian excellence assumes lovely forms. Let the beauty of the Lord our God.
2. The grace is distinctively feminine. The apostle is speaking to women, commending to them their distinctive glory. Here we come on a mystery of nature. All things are set over against each other in pairs, complemental.
3. But may, ought, to be assumed by all. There is a modification of the principle just laid down as to complemental beings and to complemental excellences. The one side may and must appropriate some characteristics of the other, e.g., a pillar all strength would be ugly; all garlands of flowers must fall. So a man all power would be dreadful; a woman all amiability could not carry the structure of life.
4. It is a grace of the interior life. A meek and quiet spirit.
II. The grace itself. The grace commended is that of quietness of soul; but on its two sides, not disturbing, not disturbed.
1. The soul-quietness that is not disturbed. The soul is like a ship on storm-beaten ocean-ever liable to tempest.
(1) Causes and occasions of disturbance. It may spring from conditions of body, mind, estate, in the church, in the world.
(2) Means of quietude. Quietude a decoration, but also a need. How?
(a) Some hints, along the common level of things.
(i) Live so as to have a cool brain and a clear mind.
(ii) Guard against ones special temperament.
(iii) Face facts, and be not content without evidence.
(iv) Guard against demoniac might of the imagination.
(v) Do not morbidly underrate the kindness of fellow men, or overrate their antagonism.
(b) But rise higher. We need-
(i) Strong and growing dependence on God.
(ii) To be filled with the Spirit, i.e., to be filled with such thoughts and feelings, that storm shall break in regions below the serenities in which we dwell.
(iii) Keep ever in view the quietude of Christ. See if there be any sorrow, etc., if there be any patience like to His.
2. The soul quietness that is not disturbing. It is the restless that disturb the peace of others. Ourselves quiet, we shall not till others with wild alarm.
III. Other characteristics of the grace. Some characteristics were mentioned to prepare us to look upon the grace itself; these now are separately and finally pointed out to induce in us the cultivation of this grace also.
1. The soul-decoration is most valuable. One knows its worth. In the sight of God it is of great price.
2. Imperishable. (Henry T. Robjohns, B. A.)
Of meekness and quietness of spirit
I. What is implied in a meek and quiet spirit.
1. A calm submission under the merely natural evils and calamities which we meet with in the world.
2. A moderation of our anger and resentment upon occasion of moral wrongs or injuries.
3. A sincere desire of the harmony and happiness of society, and a disposition to cultivate peace and friendship with all about us.
II. Why we should acquire and cultivate this temper.
1. The intrinsic dignity and value of meek and quiet temper, which is of great price in the sight of God.
2. The importance of a meek and peaceable spirit in religion, and its necessity for our obtaining the mercy and forgiveness of God.
3. Another argument may be brought from the great examples of Gods clemency and patience, and our Saviours meek, gentle, and peaceable behaviour while He was in this world.
4. We should cultivate a meek and quiet spirit from a regard to the peace of mankind and the happiness of the particular persons with whom we have any intercourse.
5. We should cultivate a meek and peaceable spirit for our own interest and satisfaction. There is hardly anything that can be more prejudicial to a man than a wrathful and turbulent temper.
III. The methods of forming and raising a spirit of meekness and quietness is us.
1. For attaining to that part of it, which consists in a patient submission to the purely natural evils which befall us in the world, the great rule is to impress our minds with a deep conviction of the wisdom, equity, and goodness of Providence, by the direction or permission of which all such evils come upon us.
2. As the most difficult part of meekness and quietness of spirit consists in the due government of our resentment with respect to the authors of moral injuries, we must take care to represent such persons in the most favourable light that we justly can to ourselves.
3. When we feel our angry passions beginning to move in us let us carefully guard against their rising to any criminal or unbecoming height in us.
4. Let us observe the direction which our Lord has given us, to express a meek and peaceable spirit when we exercise our devotion and offer up our prayers to Almighty God. From what has been said we may see that the notions which so commonly prevail in the world, concerning the honour, courage, and magnanimity of men are extremely ill-founded. (J. Orr.)
Hidden ornaments
Who is not fond of ornaments? Even those people who pretend to care only for the useful are not really quite indifferent to the ornamental. We not only have some things simply for ornament, but things which are made for use we like to look as nice as possible. We do not bind books, nor make furniture, nor build houses and churches for the sake of ornament, yet we all admire a pretty book, handsome furniture, a fine house, and beautiful churches. You may remember, in reading your Histories of England, how the early Britons, in their savage state, like many of the heathen still, used to paint their bodies, thinking it improved them. Now, this desire for ornament is laid deep down in our nature, like one of the foundation stones of a house, and, therefore, it is quite right, so long as it is guided properly. St. Peter is certainly not speaking against all ornament. How could it be wrong, when our earth is full of it? But, certainly, St. Peter does not mean we are not to think at all of our appearance. It is not right to be untidy and slovenly in dress. What, then, you ask, is wrong? To make ones outward appearance the chief thing. Some people give you the impression that they are always thinking of what they have on; they seem to have just come away from the looking glass, for they are so got up, as we say, and look more like dressed dolls than like real men and women. But there are other persons who always look nice without seeming to be conscious what they have on, and who never strike you as having spent much time over their toilet, or as if it had cost them much trouble. These are the truest gentlemen and ladies. Now St. Peter tells us what part of ourselves we should be most anxious to make beautiful, and what ornament we should seek for it. And what is the part to be adorned? He calls it the hidden man of the heart. It reminds me of the Psalm which says, The kings daughter is all glorious within. But, you say, who ever heard of wearing ornaments inside, where no one can see them? It must, surely, be silly to adorn something that is hidden. But no! it is not. For anyone can see the difference between a heart that is adorned and one that is not, though you cannot see either the heart or the ornament itself. For look at the adornment which St. Peter recommends. It is the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit. Let us try to think of some persons mentioned in the Bible who wore this ornament. Did not Isaac, when he took that long and tiring journey with his father Abraham, carrying the wood for the sacrifice, quietly obeying and meekly submitting without any explanation from his father? Did not Samuel, when he got up that night three times and went to Eli, thinking Eli wanted him, and saying meekly, Here am I? Did not David, when he bore meekly his elder brothers taunts, reproaching him for neglecting the sheep to come and see the battle; and afterwards in bearing so patiently with Sauls fickleness and bad temper? Above all, did not Jesus wear this inner ornament all through His earthly life? And how can you tell if you have this ornament of a meek and quiet spirit? Answer some questions to yourselves, and you will know. Are you rude and rough, or gentle and polite? Are you wayward and wilful, as if you knew better than those who are older and wiser than you are; or do you at once and cheerfully obey your parents and your teachers? Now, people generally keep their best things for Sundays and special occasions, when there are strangers or visitors to see them. At other times some persons do not seem to care how they look or what they have; but this ornament of a meek and quiet spirit is meant to be worn always, out-of-doors and indoors, at work and at play, at church, at school, and at home. And I think you will agree with me that we ought to seek first that kind of adorning which will best commend us to those with whom we live. Whenever you have on the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit they cannot fail to notice it, for, like a lustrous jewel, it will glance out at every turn through a pure, transparent life, and it will make you very dear to all your friends. Yes, this ornament is the most beautiful of all. But again, this ornament of a meek and quiet spirit is most precious. The apostle Peter says it is of great price. It is precious, truly, in the sense of being scarce, like rare flowers and ferns and precious stones; for one person who possesses it, you may find a thousand without it, yet who have plenty of the commoner and cheaper kinds of ornament. But this one is so precious chiefly because it is an ornament of Gods own making. There is yet another reason why it is so precious. Do you not think the more of a thing if it has cost your parents much money and trouble to get? Well, God made a real and very great sacrifice that we might have this ornament, giving up His Son to show it us in all its loveliness, and to enable us to get it. Then, too, this adorning is most lasting. (C. S. Slater, M. A.)
Meekness
I. To show what this meekness and quietness of spirit is.
1. There is meekness toward God, and it is the easy and quiet submission of the soul to His whole will, according as He is pleased to make it known, whether by His word or by His providence.
(1) It is the silent submission of the soul to the Word of God: the understanding bowed to every Divine truth, and the will to every Divine precept; and both without murmuring and disputing.
(2) It is the silent submission of the soul to the providence of God, for that also is the will of God concerning us.
(a) When the events of Providence are grievous and afflictive.
(b) When the methods of Providence are dark and intricate, and we are quite at a loss what God is about to do with us.
2. There is meekness toward our brethren, toward all men (Tit_3:2), and so we take it here.
(1) Meekness teaches us prudently to govern our own anger, whenever anything occurs that is provoking.
(a) The work of meekness is to cairn the spirit, so as that the inward peace may not be disturbed by any outward provocation.
(b) Meekness will curb the tongue, and keep the mouth as with a bridle when the heart is hot (Psa_39:1-3).
(c) Meekness will cool the heat of passion quickly, and not suffer it to continue. As it keeps us from being soon angry, so it teaches us, when we are angry, to be soon pacified.
(2) Meekness teaches and enables us patiently to bear the anger of others, which property of meekness we have especially occasion for, in reference to our superiors and equals. And here meekness is of use, either to enjoin silence, or indite a soft answer. We must be of a quiet spirit. Quietness is the evenness, the composure, and the rest of the soul, which speaks both the nature and the excellency of the grace of meekness. The greatest comfort and happiness of man is sometimes set forth by quietness (Isa_32:17-18). In a word, quietness of spirit is the souls stillness, and silence, from intending provocation to, or resenting provocation from, any with whom we have to do. The word has something in it of a metaphor, which we would not choose but fairly prosecute, for the illustration of the grace of meekness.
1. We must be quiet as the air is quiet from winds. Disorderly passions are like stormy winds in the soul; they toss and hurry it, and often overset it (Isa_7:2), and is an apt emblem of a man in passion. Now meekness restrains these winds, says to them, Peace, be still, and so preserves a calm in the soul. It is not well to lie wind bound in dulness and indifferency; but tempests are perilous. What manner of grace is this, that even the winds and the sea obey it? If we will but use the authority God has given us over our own hearts, we may keep the winds of passion under the command of religion and reason, and then the soul is quiet, the sun shines, all is pleasant, serene, and smiling, and the man sleeps sweetly and safely on the lee side. We make our voyage among rocks and quicksands, but if the weather be calm, we can the better steer so as to avoid them:
2. We must be quiet as the sea is quiet from waves. Now meekness is the grace of the Spirit, that moves upon the face of the waters, and quiets them. It casts forth none of the mire and dirt of passion. This calmness and evenness of spirit makes our passage over the sea of this world safe and pleasant, and speedy towards the desired, harbour, and is exemplary in the eyes of others.
3. We must be quiet as the land is quiet from war. It was the observable felicity of Asas reign, that in his days the land was quiet (2Ch_14:15). Such a quietness there should be in the soul, and such a quietness there will be where meekness sways the sceptre. A soul inflamed with wrath and passion upon all occasions, is like a kingdom embroiled in war.
4. We must be quiet as the child is quiet after the weaning. How easy its days! How quiet its nights! If put into a little pet now and then, how soon it is over!
II. The excellency of meekness and quietness of spirit.
1. Consider how creditable a meek and quiet spirit is.
(1) There is in it the credit of a victory. Meekness is a victory over ourselves and the rebellious lusts in our own bosoms; it is a quieting of intestine broils, the stilling of an insurrection at home which is oftentimes more hard to do than to resist a foreign invasion. It is an effectual victory over those that injure us.
2. There is in it the credit of beauty. The beauty of a thing consists in the symmetry, harmony, and agreeableness of all the parts: now what is meekness, but the souls agreement with itself? Exorbitant passion is a discord in the soul; it is like a turnout in the face, which spoils the beauty of it.
3. There is in it the credit of an ornament. The text speaks of it as an adorning much more excellent and valuable than gold or pearls.
4. There is in it the credit of true courage. Meekness is commonly despised and run down by the grandees of the age as a piece of cowardice. He that can deny the brutal lust of anger and revenge, rather than violate the royal law of love and charity (however contrary the sentiments of the world may be), is truly resolute and courageous; the Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valour. Fretting and vexing is the fruit of the weakness of women and children, but much below the strength of a man, especially of the new man, that is born from above.
5. The credit of a conformity to the best patterns. The resemblance of those that are confessedly excellent and glorious, has in it an excellence and glory. To be meek, is to be like the greatest saints. Let the true honour that attends this grace of meekness recommend it to us: it is one of those things that are honest, and pure, and lovely, and of good report; a virtue that has a praise attending it (Php_4:8). A praise, not, perhaps, of men, but of God (Rom_2:29). Consider how comfortable a meek and quiet spirit is. Inward comfort is a desirable good, which has more in it of reality. What is true comfort and pleasure but a quietness in our own bosom? Those are most easy to themselves who are so to all about them.
A meek and quiet Christian must needs live very comfortably, for-
1. He enjoys himself. Meekness is very nearly allied to that patience which our Lord Jesus prescribes to us as necessary to the keeping possession of our own souls (Luk_21:19). How calm are the thoughts, how serene are the affections, how rational the prospects, and how even and composed are all the resolves of the meek and quiet soul! It is spoken of as the happiness of the meek that they delight themselves in the abundance of peace (Psa_37:11). Others may delight themselves in the abundance of wealth.
2. He enjoys his friends: and that is a thing in which lies much of the comfort of human life. Man was intended to be a sociable creature, and a Christian much more so. But the angry man is unfit to be so that takes fire at every provocation.
3. He enjoys his God; and that is most comfortable of all. It is the quintessence of all happiness.
4. It is not in the power of his enemies to disturb and interrupt him in these enjoyments. His peace is not only sweet, but safe; as far as he acts under the law of meekness, it is above the assaults of those that wish ill to it.
Consider how profitable a meek and quiet spirit is. Meekness is gainful and profitable.
1. As it is the condition of the promise. The meek are therefore blessed, for they shall inherit the earth (Psa_37:11).
2. As it has in its own nature a direct tendency to our present benefit and advantage. He that is thus wise is wise for himself, even in this world, and effectually consults his own interest.
(1) Meekness has a good influence upon our health. If envy be the rottenness of the bones (Pro_14:30), meekness is the preservation of them.
(2) It has a good influence upon our wealth, the preservation and increase of it. As in kingdoms, so in families and neighbourhoods, war begets poverty.
(3) It has a good influence upon our safety. Consider what a preparative it is for something further.
1. It makes us fit for duty. It puts the soul in frame, and keeps it so, for all religious exercises.
2. It makes us fit for any relation which God in His providence may call us into. Those who are quiet themselves cannot but be easy to all that are about them; and the nearer any are to us in relation and converse, the more desirable it is that we should be easy to them.
3. It makes us fit for any condition, according as the wise God shall please to dispose of us. Those that through grace are enabled to quiet themselves are fit to live in this world where we meet with so much every day to disquiet us. In general, whether the outward condition be prosperous or adverse, a meek and quiet spirit is neither lifted up with the one, nor cast down with the other, but still in the same poise; in prosperity humble, the estate rising but the mind not rising with it; in adversity encouraged and cheered up; in both even, like a dye, throw in which way you will, it lights on a square side.
4. It makes us fit for a day of persecution.
5. It makes us fit for death and eternity. The meek and quiet soul is at death let into that rest which it has been so much labouring after; and how welcome must that needs be!
III. The application.
I. And now, have we not reason to lament the want of the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit among those that profess religion, and especially in our own bosoms? It is the manifest design of our holy religion to soften and sweeten our tempers, and to work off the ruggedness of them.
1. Superiors are commonly very apt to chide, and that is for want of meekness.
2. Inferiors are commonly very apt to complain. If everything be not just to their mind, they are fretting and vexing.
3. Equals are commonly very apt to clash and contend. It is for want of meekness that there are in the Church so many pulpit and paper quarrels.
II. Have we not reason to endeavour, since there is such a virtue, to attain these things? For your direction in this endeavour I shall briefly lay before you-
1. Some Scripture precepts concerning meekness.
(1) That we must seek meekness (Zep_2:3).
(2) We must put on meekness (Col_3:12).
(3) We must follow after meekness (1Ti_6:11).
(4) We must show all meekness unto all men (Tit_3:2).
2. Some Scripture patterns of meekness and quietness of spirit.
(1) Abraham was a pattern of meekness, and he was the father of the faithful (Gen_13:8).
(2) Moses was a pattern of meek ness (Num_12:3).
(3) David was a pattern of meekness, and it is promised (Zec_12:8). When his enemies reproached him, he was not at all disturbed at it (Psa_38:13).
(4) St. Paul was a pattern of meekness. He became all things to all men.
(5) Our Lord Jesus was the great pattern of meekness and quietness of spirit: all the rest had their spots, the fairest marbles had their flaws, but here is a copy without a blot.
(a) He was very meek towards God His Father, cheerfully submitting to His whole will, and standing complete in it.
(b) He was very meek towards His friends that loved and followed Him. First, in His bearing with their weaknesses and infirmities. Secondly, in His forgiving and passing by their unkindnesses and disrespects to Himself.
(c) He was very meek toward His enemies that hated and persecuted Him.
3. Some particular instances wherein the exercise of meekness is in a special manner required. The rule is general; we must show all meekness: it will be of use to observe some special cases to which the Scripture applies this general rule.
(1) We must give reproofs with meekness. It is the apostles direction (Gal_6:1).
(2) We must receive reproofs with meekness.
(3) We must instruct gainsayers with meekness (2Ti_2:24-25).
(4) We must make profession of the hope that is in us with meekness (1Pe_3:15).
(5) We must bear reproaches with meekness.
4. Some good principles or considerations which tend to make us meek and quiet.
(1) That he has the sweetest and surest peace who is the most master of his own passions.
(2) That in many things we all offend.
(3) That there is no provocation given us at any time but, if it be skilfully and graciously improved, there is good to be gotten by it.
(4) That what is said and done in haste is likely to be a matter for deliberate repentance.
(5) That that is truly best for us which is most pleasing and acceptable to God, and that a meek and quiet spirit is so.
5. Some rules of direction.
(1) Sit loose to the world, and to everything in it. The more the world is crucified to us, the more our corrupt passions will be crucified in us.
(2) Be often repenting of your sinful passion, and renewing your covenants against it.
(3) Keep out of the way of provocation, and stand upon your guard against it.
(4) Learn to pause. It is a good rule, as in our communion with God, so in our converse with men (Ecc_5:2).
(5) Pray to God by His Spirit to work in you this excellent grace of meekness and quietness of spirit. It is a part of that comeliness which He puts upon the soul, and He must be sought unto for it.
(6) Be often examining your growth and proficiency in this grace. Inquire what ground you have got of your passion, and what improvements you have made in meekness.
(7) Delight in the company of meek and quiet persons (Pro_22:24-25).
(8) Study the Cross of our Lord Jesus.
(9) Converse much in your thoughts with the dark and silent grave. (Matthew Henry.)
In the sight of God of great price.-
In Gods sight
Everything, you know, is in Gods sight. Not the tiniest atom in the heart of the earth, not the faintest twinkle of the farthest star, not a passing smile or frown on your face, or a secret thought in your mind, can be hidden from God. But more than this is meant when a thing is said to be precious in Gods sight. It means that He takes notice of it, is pleased with it, and wishes us to count it precious. Things often look very different to us from what they really are. Coloured glass may look like precious stones. Gilded wood may look like a bar of gold. But God sees things as they really are. This, you see, is beauty of mind, or, as we sometimes say, beauty of character. A statesman had once been a poor lad, but had raised himself by his talents and industry. A rich but vulgar man said to him very rudely, I remember when you blacked my fathers boots! Instead of losing his temper, he simply said, And did I not black them well? This was a beautiful reply-it was the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit. (British Weekly Pulpit.)
The holy women.
Holiness the best commendation
Note that he saith not wealthy women, fair women, but holy women; here is the ground of his commendation. A little holiness is better than a great deal of riches and beauty. Beauty fades with sickness, wealth hath many ways to take it away, but grace holds ever to life eternal, and commends before God, angels, and good men. (John Rogers.)
Whose daughters ye are.-
Sarah and her daughters
1. To begin with, note what a happy circumstance it is when a godly, gracious man has an equally godly and gracious wife.
2. We notice next, as we look to Sarah, that God does not forget the lesser lights.
3. Next notice that it would be well for us to imitate God in this: in not forgetting the lesser lights. I do not know that great men are often good examples. Learn not from the great but from the good: be not dazzled by success, but follow the safer light of truth and right.
4. Further more, another reflection arises, namely, that faith reveals itself in various ways. Faith makes one person this, and another that. Sarah does not become Abraham, nor does Abraham become Sarah.
5. We are led by our text to look at the fruit of faith in Sarah.
I. It is said of her that she did well, whose daughters ye are as long as ye do well.
1. She did well as a wife. All the duties that were incumbent upon her as the queen of that travelling company were performed admirably.
2. She did well as a hostess. Though she was truly a princess, yet she kneaded the dough and prepared the bread for her husbands guests.
3. She did well also as a mother. We are sure she did, because we find that her son Isaac was so excellent a man; and you may say what you will, but in the hand of God the mother forms the boys character.
4. She did well, also, as a believer, and that is no mean point. As a believer when Abraham was called to separate himself from his kindred, Sarah went with him. She continued with him, believing in God with perseverance.
II. She proved her faith by a second evidence-she was not afraid with any amazement. She was calm, and was not put in fear by any terror. There were several occasions in which she might have been much disquieted. The first was in the breaking up of her house life. An unbelieving woman would have said, A call from God? Nonsense! Fanaticism! I do not believe in it, and when she saw that her husband would go she would have been afraid with great amazement. Then, though we do not hear much about her, we know that all those years she had to live in a tent. It is a very trying life for a housewife. Sarah travelled from day to day, and what with the constant moving of the tent, as the cattle had to be taken to fresh pastures, it must have been a life of terrible discomfort; yet Sarah never said a word about it. Remember, they were dwelling in tents as pilgrims and strangers, not for one day, or two, nor for a few days in a year, but for scores of years at a stretch. It was bravely done by this good woman that she was not afraid with any amazement. Now, this is a point in which Christian women, and, for the matter of that, Christian men also, should seek to imitate Sarah: we should not let our hearts be troubled, but rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him.
1. What is this virtue? It is a calm, quiet trusting in God.
2. When is this virtue to be exercised by us? Well, it should be exercised at all times. If we are not self-composed when we are happy we are not likely to be calm when we are sad.
3. You inquire, Who are to exercise this virtue? We are all to do so; but the text is specially directed to the sisterhood. I suppose women are exhorted to it, because some of them are rather excitable, a little hysterical, and apt to be fearfully depressed and utterly carried away.
4. But this virtue especially serves in time of trouble, when a very serious trial threatens us. Then the Christian is not to say, What shall I do now? I can never endure it. I shall die of a broken heart. No. Do not talk so. Try in patience to lift up your head, and remember Sarah, whose daughters ye are if ye are not afraid with any amazement.
5. And so must it be in times of personal sickness. A Christian woman should not be afraid with any amazement either in adversity or in sickness, but her holy patience should prove her to be a true daughter of Sarah and Abraham.
6. Christian women in Peters day were subject to persecution as much as their husbands.
7. And so if you should be called to some stern duty, if you should be bound to do what you feel you cannot do, recollect that anybody can do what he can do. Be not afraid, then, of any duty, but believe that you will be able to do it, for grace will be sufficient for you.
8. At last, in the prospect of death, may you not be afraid with any amazement! Where others show their fear, and sometimes their terror, there should the believer show his peacefulness and his happy expectancy, not afraid with any amazement, whatever the form of death may be. Now, what is the excellence of this virtue? I answer by saying it is due to God that we should not be afraid with any amazement. Such a God as we have ought to be trusted. He worships best who is most calm in evil times. Moreover, the excellence of this virtue is that it is most impressive to men. Nor is the usefulness confined to others. It is most useful to ourselves; for he who can be calm in time of trouble will be most likely to make his way through it. Calmness of mind is the mother of prudence and discretion; it gives the firm foothold which is needful for the warrior when he is about to deal a victorious blow. Those who cannot be amazed by fear shall live to be amazed with mercy. How, says one, can we obtain it? Recollect, it is an outgrowth of faith, and you will have it in proportion as you have faith. Have faith in God and you will not be afraid with any amazement. This holy calm comes, also, from walking with God. No spot is so serene as the secret place of the tabernacles of the Most High. When you accept every affliction as a love token, then will your fear be ended. Next, remember the faithfulness of God to His promise, and the fact that there is a promise for your particular position. Search it out, and then grasp it, and say, He must keep it; He cannot break His word. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Likewise ye husbands.-
The duties of husbands
I. The foundation of domestic life. Dwell with your wives according to knowledge-in accord with the light of reason, sense, humanity, and especially revelation. The very attitude and demeanour of life require to be matters of study and thought.
II. The courtesy of domestic life. Giving honour to the wife as being the weaker vessel. This consists in a nameless deference, an unfailing regard, a constant forbearance, a remembrance of her bodily weakness, as well as of her subordinate position.
III. The sanctification of domestic life. As being heirs together of the grace that is given unto you. (J. J. S. Bird, B. A.)
The weaker vessel.-
The weaker vessel
Women are weaker in body than men, weaker also in mind, timorous, soon discouraged, soon provoked, quickly take hurt. Yet are not wives so weak but God hath given them competent ability of body and mind to go through with their duties, and as they be the weaker, so they have the weaker works than men, theirs being for the most part within doors.
1. Hereupon let wives submit them selves the more willingly, and the weaker they find themselves, let them trust the more on God, that they may be strong in Him.
2. For husbands, let them use their wives kindly. They must not grieve them, nor disquiet them to their undoing. They be good, costly, and very profitable vessels, for excellent use, but easily cracked; therefore had we more need have the more care of them, as we have of some choice glass.
3. This rebukes those that use their wives ruggedly, sometimes railing at them. A Venice glass well used and looked to may last long, so may a good wife, but some vex and grieve their wives, that they pine away with sorrow. What an account have these to make! (John Rogers.)
Heirs together of the grace of life.-
The blessedness of Christian connections
I. The view here given of future blessedness. The grace of life.
1. He calls it life in an eminent sense. Now, it is limited. Then the great ends of life will be supremely answered. Its duration will justify the appellation life.
2. He calls it the grace of life because it is the gift of grace, bestowed in a very gracious way.
II. The endearing and delightful way in which Christians are put in possession of this blessedness in connection with one another. As being heirs together.
1. It gratifies our generosity and benevolence.
2. It adds meekness to the intercourse of friendship.
3. Providence has so ordered it that Christians should be not only fellow heirs but fellow helpers to eternal life.
4. It provides such a cordial when friends come to part.
Lessons:
1. How richly and graciously has God ordered it, that the salvation of Christians should be linked together.
2. How anxious should those who are united by natural affection be, to become heirs together of such a life.
3. How important it is that those who are heirs together of such a life should cultivate the dispositions most suited to it,
4. How desirable it is to have reference to these views in time of need.
5. How terrible is the sentiment of the text reversed. (T. N. Toller.)
Duties of husbands and wives
1. The first duty which he enjoins is subjection (1Pe_3:1).
2. The second duty enjoined on Christian wives is chaste conversation; in other words, a deportment governed by principles of modest decorum and unblemished purity.
3. The apostles third direction respects fear, A chaste conversion, coupled with fear, by which I understand, with Dr. Doddridge, the fear of God, a holy principle of reverence for the Supreme Being, consistent with love and springing greatly from it.
4. The fourth direction to Christian females respects indifference to external ornaments of dress (1Pe_3:3).
5. The fifth advice is on the cultivation of the mind (1Pe_3:4). Whose adorning, etc.
6. A sixth precept, and the last which he urges on his female friends, is the union of decision and cheerfulness (1Pe_3:6). Doing well is practical decision. The absence of fear with amazement, or of a perturbed dissatisfaction of mind, implies cheerfulness.
The apostle suggests three motives to enforce these directions,
1. The first is the probable influence of the deport-meet of the pious female in affecting the conversion of an unbelieving husband (1Pe_3:1-2).
2. The second motive urged by the apostle is the approbation of God (1Pe_3:4).
3. The third motive arises from example (1Pe_3:5-6). But let me request attention to the exhortation which is given to Christian husbands (1Pe_3:7).
The duty of Christian men united in marriage is here represented to consist chiefly in three articles.
1. The first is domestic attachment-Dwell with them.
2. The second duty enjoined on Christian husbands is conduct governed by knowledge. Dwell with them according to knowledge.
3. The third duty which is here inculcated on believing husbands, in reference to their wives, is that of respectful as well as affectionate attention, which the apostle calls giving them honour. Dr. Doddridge supposes this to intend a suitable and, as far as may be, a liberal maintenance. Certainly this is included; but the precept appears to go much further. It is a guard against the abuse of that domestic authority which Providence has lodged in the hands of the husband. For how can despotic power reign in his breast, who honours the wife of his bosom? Various considerations to enforce these duties arise out of the apostles statement of the wife as the weaker vessel. (The Evangelist.)
Heirs of the grace of life
I. Let us attend to their joint privilege. They are heirs together of the grace of life. The happiness of the marriage relation is generally dependent on the resemblance of the persons entering into it. The significant expression used by the sacred writer implies-
1. That both are partakers of grace; in other words, that they are real Christians. It is not always so.
2. That they are not in present possession of all the happiness designed for them-the grace of life. This inheritance, in its largest extent, they do not possess; they are the heirs. They have many toilsome steps to take in the journey of their present existence before they reach their heavenly inheritance. Uncertainty hangs over every event.
3. They have glorious prospects in futurity. The heirs of God are joint heirs with Christ.
II. The influence of this privilege on the general deportment of Christians united in marriage.
1. In the promotion of personal religion. Marriage should be improved to form and refine the individual character, but the duties of the individual character can never be annihilated by the social bond. Being heirs together of the grace of life, each of you is bound to be uniformly, decidedly, eminently devoted to God and the Redeemer. The same consideration should operate.
2. On the mutual advancement of piety in each others hearts. The converted wife or the converted husband is never to be regarded by the other party as one standing in need of no helps to the advancement of the highest interests of the soul.
3. In the engagements of domestic worship and discipline. Wherever Christians pitch their tents, they should without delay erect an altar.
4. On resolutions made before God with regard to relations not yet in existence. Such relations, young people entering into the bonds of marriage ought to anticipate. We may hereafter be parents is consideration which forces itself on their minds.
5. On the general conduct. Married people, feeling reciprocally the influence of religion, will practically recommend it to the approbation of all who behold them.
III. The connection of the performance or the neglect of the duties of the marriage relation, with the acceptance and usefulness, or with the hindrance, of prayer, That your prayers be not hindered.
1. To a deep sense of the necessity of prayer, which will be encouraged in the one case, and wretchedly hindered in the other.
2. To the constant exercise of the external duty of prayer.
3. To the cultivation or the neglect of the spirit of prayer.
4. To the experience, and to the diminution of the advantages of prayer. Prayer, if an acceptable, is an operative service. (The Evangelist.)
Marriage
I. Marriage is a divine institution, and ought to be accompanied by a religious ceremony.
1. The original institution might alone suffice to satisfy our minds of this. It is an honourable estate, instituted of God in the time of mans innocency.
2. Nor can it have escaped your notice that marriage was at all times treated as a religious ceremony.
3. Moreover, I cannot conceive of anyone possessed of godly feeling within him who can contemplate a rite so instituted of God as otherwise than religious.
4. And next I ask, How can that be a mere civil contract which we are so plainly taught in the Bible is distinctly figurative of Christs love for His spouse the Church.
II. Marriage was intended to be indissoluble, and the reversal of this is a proof of our degradation by sin.
1. The original appointment implies nothing less than this.
2. Christ distinctly said that marriage was intended to be indissoluble (Mat_19:3-9).
3. The figure of the spiritual union betwixt Christ and His Church wholly fails if marriage was not intended to be indissoluble.
4. But if so, the question arises, How conies a law of divorce in Gods Word, or in our own laws? To the former question the answer is simply in the words of Christ, It was not so from the beginning, but Moses, for the hardness of your hearts, suffered this law to be given. And this, says the Fulfiller of all righteous law, is the one only cause of divorce being ever permitted among you: it was not so from the beginning.
III. Attention to the text would do much to render marriage what it was originally intended to be.
1. St. Peter tells you to regard yourselves as heirs together of the grace of life. Marriage is for this life, and in heaven they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God. And yet St. Peter introduces this reference to eternal life in connection with it; and it would be hard to say why he does so, unless it be that a right fulfilment of that condition is a great help in Christianity between man and wife. But this becomes quite certain, if only you will observe one word in the text. St. Peter does not call you heirs of the grace of life, but heirs together of the grace of life. This plainly asserts that in religious matters husband and wife are intended to be helps-meet for one another-but who will think of this that recognises marriage as a legal ceremony?-that they are not to live a life through with, perhaps, much confiding love and esteem in other matters, but without any care and interest whatsoever in each others future state.
2. One other remark here must suffice; it is on the importance of praying together. How many unhappy wives and miserable husbands would be rendered blessed if only they prayed together as heirs together of the grace of life! Who could rise to quarrel that knelt to pray? (G. Venables.)
Matrimonial affinity
There are some husbands and wives whose conduct to each other depends entirely upon surrounding circumstances. When there is plenty of money at the bank, and prosperity is shining upon the homestead, their affinity and love for each other is intense. But in the gloom of adversity, and under sombre influences, they have no mutual attraction whatsoever, and their affections are kept in isolation. This type of the matrimonial life may be called the chlorine-hydrogen type. Chlorine and hydrogen are gases having a powerful affinity for each other-that is to say, they will unite when brought together in the daylight; but if we change the conditions, if we bring them together in the dark, their affinity is never manifested; and thus, while in the sunlight they rush together with even explosive force, they will remain quiescent in the darkness, and there for all eternity would form no combination whatever. (Scientific Illustrations.)
That your prayers be not hindered.-
Unfit for prayer
The breach of conjugal love, the contentions of husband and wife, do, out of doubt, so embitter their spirits, that they are exceedingly unfit for prayer, which is the sweet harmony of the soul in Gods ears; and when the soul is so far out of tune as those distempers make it, He cannot but perceive it whose ear is the most exact of all, for He made and tuned the ear, and is the fountain of harmony. It cuts the sinews and strength of prayer, makes breaches and gaps, as wounds at which the spirits fly out. When the soul is calm and composed it may behold the face of God shining on it. And those who pray together should not only have hearts in tune within themselves, in their own frame, but tuned together; especially husband and wife, who are one, they should have hearts consorted and sweetly tuned to each other for prayer. (Abp. Leighton.)
Hindrances to prayer
I. First, there is such a thing as being hindered from prayer.
1. That may be done by falling into a generally lax, lukewarm condition in reference to the things of God. When a sick man is in a decline his lungs suffer and his voice; and so when a Christian is in a spiritual decline the breath of prayer is affected, and the cry of supplication becomes weak.
2. Prayers may be hindered by having too much to do. In this age this is a very common occurrence. We may have too much business for ourselves. The rich man in the parable had no time for prayer, for he was busy in planning new barns, but he had to find time for dying when the Lord said, This night shall thy soul be required of thee. We may even have too much to do in Gods house, and so hinder our prayers, by being like Martha, cumbered with much serving. I never heard of anyone who was cumbered with much praying.
3. There can be no doubt, also, that prayer is hindered by having too little to do.
4. very large proportion of Christians do too little. God has given them enough wealth to be able to retire from business; they have time upon their hands, and they have even to invent ways of spending that time. I wish that all could say with one of the Lords saints, Prayer is my business and praise is my pleasure; but I am sure they never will till the zeal of the Lords house shall more fully consume them.
5. Some people hinder their prayers, again, by a want of order. They get up a little too late, and they have to chase their work all the day and never overtake it, but are always in a flurry, one duty tripping up the heels of another.
II. Secondly, we must watch that we be not hindered in prayer, when we are really engaged in that holy work.
1. Let us note that some are hindered in prayer by selecting an unfit time and place. There are times when you may expect a knock at your own door, do not just then knock at Gods door. There are times that are demanded of you by the necessities of the household and your lawful calling; these are already the Lords in another way, let them be used for their own purpose. Give to God and prayer those suitable times in which you can reasonably expect to be alone. A pious lad who had no place at home to pray in, went to the stable and climbed up into the hayloft; but very soon some one came up the ladder and interrupted him: the next time he took care to pull the ladder up after him, a very useful hint for us. Select the fittest time and place, that your prayers be not hindered.
2. Worldly cares are frequent and most mischievous hindrances to prayer. A Christian man should be the most careful man in the world, and yet without carefulness. Oh, for more grace and less worry! More praying and less hoarding! More intercession and less speculating! As it is, prayers are sadly hindered.
3. Earthly pleasures, especially of a dubious kind, are the worst of hindrances. How can you come home from frivolity and sin and then look into the face of Jesus? How can the fashions of the world be followed, and communion with God be maintained?
4. Further, prayers may be hindered equally much by worldly sorrow. It is right to be sorrowful, for God intends that affliction should be grievous, and not joyous; but when sorrow is right it will drive us to prayer, and not drive us from it; and when we find our grief at the loss of some dear child, or at the decay of our property, hinders our prayers, I think we should say to ourselves, Now I must pray; for it must be wrong for me to be so rebellious against my Father as to refuse to ask anything at His hands.
5. There are cases in which prayer is very greatly hindered by bad temper. We cannot pray for forgiveness unless we forgive the trespasses of others against us. Prayer can be very terribly hindered in three ways: if we dishonour the Father to whom we pray, or the Son through whom we pray, or the Holy Ghost by whom we pray.
III. We may be hindered in the speeding of our prayers. We may pray, but yet the prayer may not be heard.
1. First, there must be holy living in a believer if his prayers are greatly to succeed with God. If you do not do Christs will He will not do your will.
2. In addition to obedience there must be faith. The prayer which avails most with God is the prayer of one who believes that God will hear him, and who therefore asks with confidence.
3. Thirdly, there must be holy desires, or else prayer will be a failure; and those desires must be founded on a promise. There is no use in asking money of a banker without a cheque: at the counter they do not know you; they know the promise to pay, and if you present that you will get the amount, but not else.
4. Furthermore; if prayer is to speed, there must be fervour and importunity. The arrow must be put on the bowstring, and the bow must be drawn with all our might.
5. There must be, next, a desire for Gods glory-for that is the white of the target-and if we do not shoot towards that, the arrow will avail nothing.
6. We must also have holy expectancy, or we shall hinder prayer. The man who shoots must look to see where his arrow goes. We must direct our prayer unto God, and look up. Presumption in prayer shoots with the bow of self-confidence, not for Gods glory, but for the gratification of itself, and therefore it fails. Some have the idea that, ask what they like of God, they are sure to have it: but I would ask them, first, Who are you? secondly, What is it you are going to ask? and, thirdly, What right have you to expect it? These inquiries must be clearly answered, otherwise prayer may be an insult to God. Straightforward transactions you may pray about, but do not mix up the Lord with your financing. I am requested to pray for a young man who has lost his situation, through a defalcation, that he may get another place, but instead of doing so I suggest that he should himself pray to be made honest. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v1 Chapter 9
Chapter 9
CHRISTIAN WIVES AND HUSBANDS
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1Pe_3:1-7
THE Apostle gave at first {1Pe_2:13} the rule of Christian submission generally; then proceeded to apply it to the cases of citizens and of servants. In the same way he now gives injunctions concerning the behavior of wives and husbands. The precept with which he began holds good for them also. "In like manner, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands." The life and teaching of Jesus had wrought a great change in the position of women, a change, which can be observed from the earliest days of Christianity. We can gather in what estimation women were generally held among the Jews at that time from the expression used in the account of our Lords interview with the woman of Samaria. There it is {Joh_4:27} that the disciples marveled that Jesus was talking with a woman. Such a feeling must afterwards have been entirely dispelled, for all through the earthly life of Christ we find Him attended by women who ministered unto Him; we read of His close friendship with Mary and Martha, and are told, at the time of His death, {Mat_27:55} that many women beheld the Crucifixion afar off, having followed Him from Galilee. Women were the earliest visitors to the tomb on the great Easter morning, and to them, among the first, {Luk_24:22} was the Lords resurrection made known.
We are not surprised therefore, in the history of the infant Church, to read {Act_1:14} that women were present among the disciples who waited at Jerusalem for the promise of the Father, nor to learn how the daughters of Philip the evangelist {Act_21:9} took a share in the labors of their father for the cause of Christ, or that Priscilla, {Act_18:26} equally with her husband, was active in Christian good offices. Other examples occur in the Acts of the Apostles: Dorcas, Lydia, and the mother of Timothy; and the constant mention of women which we find in the salutations with which St. Paul concludes his letters make it clear how large a part they played in the early propagation of the faith. "Fellowworkers," "servants of the Church," "laborers in the Lord," are among the terms which the Apostle applies to them; and we know from the Pastoral Epistles what help the primitive Church derived from the labors of its deaconesses and widows.
To be occupied in such duties was sure to give to women an influence which they had never possessed before; and the women converts, in countries such as these Asiatic provinces, were exposed to the same sort of danger which beset the slave population at their acceptance of the Christian faith. They might begin to think meanly of others, even of their own husbands, if they were still content to abide in heathenism. Such women might incline at times to take counsel for their lifes guidance with Christian men among the various congregations to which they belonged and to set a value on their advice above any which they could obtain from their own husbands. They might come to entertain doubts also whether they ought to maintain the relations of married life with their heathen partners. With the knowledge that such cases might occur, St. Peter gives this lesson, and as in the case of slaves, so here, he gives no countenance to the idea that to become a Christian breaks off previous relations. Wives, though they have accepted the faith, have wifely duties still. Like Christian citizens living in a heathen commonwealth, they are not by religion released from their previously contracted obligations; they are to abide in their estate, and use it, if it may be done, for the furtherance of the cause of Christ. Be in subjection to your own husbands; they have still their claim on your duty.
There is much gentleness in the Apostles next words. He knows that there may arise cases where believing wives have husbands who are heathen. But he speaks hopefully, as thinking they would not be of frequent occurrence: "even if any obey not the word." Wives, especially if they be of such a character as the Apostle would have them be, could not have been won to the faith of Christ without much converse with their husbands on so deep a subject; and the word which was working effectually in the one would often have its influence with the other. It might not always be so. But husbands, though not obeying the word as yet, are not to be despaired of.
And here we may turn aside to dwell on the tone of hope in which St. Peter speaks of these husbands who obey not. For the word (απειθουντες) by which they are described, is the same that is used in 1Pe_2:18 of those who stumble at the word, being disobedient. The lessons here given to Christian wives, not to despair of winning their husbands for Christ, gives warrant for what was said on the former passage: that the disobedience which causes men to stumble need not last for ever, nor imply final obduracy and rejection from Gods grace. But this by the way. The Apostle adds the strongest motive to confirm wives in holding to their married state: "That the husbands may without the word be gained by the behavior of their wives: beholding your chaste behavior coupled with fear." "Without the word" here means that there is to be no discussion. They are so to live as to make their lives a sermon without words, to work conviction without debate; then, when the victory is won, there will remain no trace of combat: all will tell of gain, and nothing of loss.
And once again St. Peter uses his special word (εποπτευειν) as he describes how the husbands shall be affected by the behavior of their wives. They shall gaze on it as a mystery, the key to which they do not possess. The wives in heathen homes must have been obliged to hear and see many things, which were grievous and distasteful. The husbands could hardly fail to know that it was so. If, then, they still found wifely regard and respect, wifely submission, with no assertion of a law of their own, no comparison of the lives of Christian men with those of their own husbands, if a silent, consistent walk were all the protest which the Christian wives offered against their heathen environments, such a life could hardly fail of its effect. There must be a powerful motive, a mighty, strengthening power that enabled women to abide uncomplainingly in their estate. For this the husbands would surely search, and in their search would learn secrets to which they were strangers, would learn how their tongue was restrained where remonstrance might seem more natural, how pure life was maintained in spite of temptations to laxity, and the marriage bond exalted with religious observance even when reverence for the husband was meeting with no equal return. Such lives would be more powerful than oratory, have a charm beyond resistance, would win the husbands first to wonder, then to praise, and in the end to imitation. And from describing the grace of such a life the Apostle turns to contrast it with other adornments of which the world thinks highly. "Whose adorning," he says, "let it not be the outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing jewels of gold, and of putting on apparel."
We can see from the catalogue in Isaiah {Isa_3:18-23} that the daughters of Zion in old days had gone to great lengths in this outside bravery, and provoked the Lord to smite them. These had forgotten the simplicity of Sarah. But that in the house of Abraham there were found no such ornaments is hardly to be believed. The patriarch, who sent {Gen_24:53} to Rebekah jewels of silver and jewels of gold, did not leave his own wife unadorned. Nor does the language of St. Peter condemn Rebekahs bracelets, if they be worn with Rebekahs modesty. The New Testament does not teach us to neglect or despise the body. A misrendering in the Authorized Version, "Who Shall change our vile body," {Php_3:21} has long seemed to lend countenance to such a notion. It. is one of the gains of the Revised Version that we now read in that place, "Who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation." Sin has robbed the body of its primal dignity, but it is to be restored and made like unto the body of Christs glory. And He did not despise the body when He deigned to wear it that He might draw nearer unto us. If these things be present to our thoughts we shall seek to bestow on the body whatever may make it comely. The mischief arises when the adornment of the outer brings neglect of the inner man, when fine apparel has for its companions the haughtiness, the stretched-forth necks, and wanton eyes which Isaiah rebukes. Then it is that it rightly comes under condemnation. When the jewel is (as Rebekahs was) the gift of some dear one-a parent, a husband, a near kinsman-it rouses grateful reminiscences, and may fitly be prized, and holily worn, and ranked near to the rings of betrothal and of marriage.
Let these be the feelings which regulate womanly adornment, and it may be made a part of the culture of the heart, the inner man, which St. Peter urges the Christian wives to be careful to adorn: "Let your adorning be the hidden man of the heart, in the incorruptible apparel of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price." All Scripture regards man as of twofold nature, the outward and the inward, of which the latter is the more precious. He is a Jew who is one inwardly; {Rom_2:29} the inward man delighteth in the law of God; {Rom_7:22} while the outward man perishes the inward man may be renewed day by day, {2Co_4:16} being strengthened with power through Gods Spirit. This hidden man is the center from which all the strength of Christian life comes. Let this be rightly adorned, and the outward life will need no strict rules; there will be no fear of excess, least of all when the inner life is cared for because it is precious before God. Its pure array passeth gold and gems, be they ever so beautiful. This is a grace which never fades, but will flourish through eternity.
The Apostle proceeds to commend it by a noble example. The Old Testament Scriptures do not dwell largely on the lives of women, but a study of what is said will oftentimes reveal deeper meaning in the record and put force into a solitary word. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews couples Sarah with Abraham in the list of heroes and heroines of faith, and St. Peter from a single word finds a text to extol the submission which she showed to her husband. He probably refers to Gen_18:12, where she gives the title of "lord" to Abraham, as Rachel in another place {Gen_31:35} does to her father Laban: "For after this manner aforetime the holy women also, who hoped in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection to their own husbands: as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord." A Scripture example which has more in common with the experience of the Asian women is the life of Hannah. Her lot, for a time at least, was as full of grief and disappointment as theirs could be, but her trust in God was unshaken. Her patience under provocation was exemplary, while the picture of her home life is one full of touching affection on the part of both husband and wife; and the mothers gratitude, when her prayer was granted, is set forth in her noble hymn of thanksgiving and in the devotion of her child to the service of the God who had bestowed him. Ruth is another of those holy women who must have been in St. Peters thoughts, who, though not of the house of Israel, manifested virtues in her life which made her fit to be the ancestress of King David. The Apostle, however, seems to have had a purpose in his special mention of Sarah. As the sons of Israel looked back to Abraham and to the covenant sealed with him, yea, not seldom prided themselves on being his children, so the daughters of Israel counted themselves as Sarahs daughters after the flesh. St. Peter now gives them another ground for that claim. Gods promises to Abraham have been fulfilled in Christ, and so Christian Jewesses are more truly than ever daughters of Sarah. "Whose children ye now are." But to the heathen converts the same door was opened. They by their faith were now made partakers of the ancient covenant. They too were become Sarahs daughters. Let them, one and all, continue in the well-doing which has been commended; let it be seen in the daily round (αναστροφη) of their lives, led in quietness and humility. The excessive love of adornment against which they are warned marks a condition of boldness and unrest. But unrest may enter into the other actions of their life. Their behavior is to be coupled with fear and reverence, but it should eschew everything which partakes of flighty irregularity. It should be steady and consistent, running into no extremes, either of humiliation or the contrary. "Do well, and be not put in fear by any terror."
The Apostle now addresses Christian husbands. In his counsel to subjects and slaves he has not dwelt on the duties of rulers and masters. Perhaps he judged it unlikely that his letter would come to the hands of many such, or it may be he thought the lessons which he had to give were more needed by the subject people, if Christs cause were to be furthered. But with husbands and wives life has of necessity a great deal in common, and the one partner can hardly receive counsel which is not of interest to the other. To the wives the Apostle spake as though examples of unbelieving husbands might be rare. Christian husbands with unbelieving wives he hardly seems to contemplate. We know from St. Paul {1Co_7:16} that there were such. But doubtless heathen wives hearkened to Christian husbands more readily than heathen husbands to their Christian wives. The husbands are to use their position as heads of their wives with judgment and discretion: "Dwell with your wives according to knowledge." The knowledge of which St. Peter speaks is not religious, godly, Christian knowledge, but that foresight and thoughtfulness which the responsibility of the husband calls for. He will understand what things for his wifes sake he should do or leave undone. This knowledge, which results in considerate conduct towards her, will manifest itself in Christian chivalry. The woman is physically the feebler of the two. No burden beyond her powers will be laid upon her; and by reason of her weaker nature regard and honor will be felt to be her due. For the woman is the glory of the man. {1Co_11:7} Such observance will not degenerate into undue adulation nor foolish fondness, apt to foster pride and conceit, but will be inspired by the sense that in Gods creation neither is the man without the woman, nor the woman without the man.
But beyond and above these daily graces of domestic and social intercourse, the Apostle would have husband and wife knit together by a higher bond. They are "joint heirs" of the grace of life. Both are meant to be partakers of the heavenly inheritance, and such participation makes their chief duty here to be preparation for the life to come. Those who are bound together not by wedlock only, but by the hope of a common salvation, will find a motive in that thought to help each other in lifes pilgrimage, each to shun all that might cause the other to stumble: "That your prayers be not hindered." They are fellow-travelers with the same needs. Together they can bring their requests before God, and where the two join in heart and soul Christ has promised to be present as the Third. And in praying they will know one anothers necessities. This is the grandest knowledge the husband can attain to for the honoring of his wife; and using it, he will speed their united supplications to the throne of grace, and the union of hearts will not fail of its blessing.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv1–7 1–6. Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection, etc. See…
1–6. Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection, etc. See notes Eph. 5:21–24. Paul teaches the duty of submission, and in 1 Cor. 7:13–15 shows that it was not the duty of the believing wife to abandon her unbelieving husband. Peter goes farther here and teaches that the wife show her obedience in order to win her husband. They also may without the word be won. That even those who have steeled themselves against the gospel and who refuse to listen to it may be quietly won by the sweet, Christian lives of their wives.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv1, 7 THE main contention of St. Peter is that the…
THE CHRISTIAN SPIRIT IN SOCIAL RELATIONS
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
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THE main contention of St. Peter is that the Christian life and obligations are not intended to be, and never should be, made a disturbing force in social and family relations. Our Lord warned His disciples that Christianity would become such a disturber, by reason of the opposition which it would excite; but the disturbing force must never be in the Christian. As much as “lieth in him” he must “follow peace with all men.” Relations to masters and rulers have already been dealt with: the apostle now applies the Christian principles to the more limited, but oftentimes more difficult, spheres and relations of the home.
1Pe_3:1. In subjection.—The apostle is not dealing in a general way with the relations in which wives should stand to husbands. That must always depend on the sentiments and customs of particular ages and nations. St. Peter is giving precise advice to certain persons who were placed in difficult circumstances, and needed apostolic direction. The wives addressed had become Christians, but, in many cases, their husbands had not. The question naturally arose: Was becoming Christian to break, or to spoil, the marriage relation? And the apostle replies, Certainly not. Keep the old relations—of subjection or of equality, whichever they might be—only take care to put the new Christian tone upon them all, and get your power out of the better doing of all marital duties. The same advice is given to husbands. The subjection required is that which, in a natural way, belongs to woman’s dependent, receptive nature. It should never be thought of as a subjection of inferiority. Without the Word.—Direct efforts to teach and influence will often only irritate and provoke resistance. The silent persuasion of a dutiful and gracious behaviour is well-nigh irresistible. “The wife, without setting up for a preacher, ought, by the discreet charm of her piety, to be the great missionary of the faith” (M. Renan).
1Pe_3:2. Behold.—Keep their eyes on. Chaste.—In general sense pure and beautiful, but with a hint of the fear husbands would then have concerning the attendance of wives at the private Christian meetings. About this scandals were very freely raised. Fear.—Of being misunderstood, or of giving the faintest cause for suspicion. Perhaps there is also a hint of woman’s weakness, trepidation from the apprehension of real or imaginary dangers.
1Pe_3:3. Adorning.—Characteristic adorning, as a wife possessing the new spiritual life in Christ. The limitation of the advice to Christian women needs to be constantly kept before us, or the sharp points of the counsels will be missed. Outward adorning.—Care for merely personal appearance. Characteristic of the worldly mind is supreme interest in appearance. A proper concern about dress and manners is quite consistent with supreme concern for the inward things of character. The terms “plaiting,” “wearing,” “putting on,” suggest elaborate processes by which time is wasted.
1Pe_3:4. Hidden man of the heart.—As if there were a spiritual counterpart of the body, and that really called for appropriate dress and decoration. The invisible person. The inner self, which is the true self. Compare St. Paul’s “inward man.” Not corruptible.—Contrast with material things, “which moth and rust doth corrupt.” Meek.—Not self-assertive. Quiet.—Self-controlled. That does not readily give way under provocation.
1Pe_3:5. The holy women.—This appeal would be specially forcible to Jewesses, who regarded Scripture women as models of womanhood, and wifehood, and motherhood. Trusted.—Lit. “hoped”; with special reference to Sarah, who hoped and waited quietly for the fulfilment of the promise made to her.
1Pe_3:6. Daughters.—Compare “children of Abraham,” as those who have Abraham’s faith. “Daughters of Sarah;” those who have Sarah’s spirit of submission and hope. Not afraid.—This clearly has reference to particular conditions of the time; probably to the slanders and persecutions to which the Christians were exposed. Special efforts would be made to frighten the wives into giving up their profession. “Menaces of evil may assail the Christian wife, but let her be calm and confident, and let her pursue the pathway of obedience to the will of God, and the holy courage of Sarah will sustain her amid whatever terrors may arise.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—1Pe_3:1-6
The Message of Christianity to Wives.—To understand what Christianity has done for woman, and especially for woman in marriage relations, it would be necessary to present, with much and careful elaboration, the customs and sentiments, in apostolic times, of different classes of society, in the different nations to which Christianity found entrance. It must, however, suffice to present the distinction between the Eastern and the Western modes of treating woman. In the East woman is almost everywhere an inferior being, a slave and a drudge, kept shut up in private apartments, allowed no freedom, no society, no education. The only exception given in ancient history is that of the Egyptians, whose respect for woman, and recognition of some approach to wifely equality, help to explain the steadiness and the high tone of their civilisation. The Pagans—especially of the Western world—in a way honoured woman, and the Romans secured at once nobility and stability, by cultivating the family virtues. There was indeed a sad side to the Pagan interest in woman, and it has to be kept in view when the apostolic counsels are considered. St. Peter, however, has chiefly in his mind the Jewish Christians who were living among Pagan populations, and might be badly influenced by the tone of Society, and the family customs with which they were surrounded. That woman was honoured and trusted in the Mosaic system is evident from the references and teachings of the Old Testament; and if the relations of a Jew with his wife were such as they should be, Christianity needed to do no more, and it could do no more, than put a new tone upon those relations. Indeed, Christianity needs to be understood as the power that relieves everything good of the pressure of surrounding evil, and puts a new tone and a new force into everything that is right, and wise, and worthy, and beautiful. The point which appears to be before St. Peter’s mind at this time is this: Christianity, as an actual fact, has been found very seriously to disturb existing social relations. Rightly enough; necessarily enough; but still anxiously, and oftentimes as occasioning serious distress. It did actually disturb the marriage relations, more especially in those cases in which the wife became a Christian, and had to find fitting expression for the new Christian spirit in the old Pagan home. St. Peter presents some practical principles.
I. Christianity does not break up home relations.—It is a fixed apostolic principle that wherein a man is called, therein he is to abide with God; that is, whatever may be his class relation, and whatever his occupation or business (provided it is honest), when he is converted, he is to remain in it, and find expression for his new Christian life in connection with it. And this principle can be applied to wives. If they are called, being wives, they are to remain in that marital relation, whatever difficulties may gather round them, and find expression for the new Christian life in the associations of their home life. And it would not be difficult for them to do this, if they properly apprehended Christianity as a new life, sanctifying their daily life, and not a more creed to believe, or ritual to observe, or relation to sustain. The difficulty which was felt when Christianity entered the old Pagan homes is felt to-day when Christianity enters the Hindoo home, and becomes a converting and saving power to the women of the homes. For them to be baptized would be for them to be turned out of their homes, and exposed to a life of misery and even shame. For them to remain and force Christian practices upon their households would mean constant conflict and distress for everybody. And it is necessary to see clearly that Christianity never proposes the breaking up of home relations. It would be a new spirit in the heart of a wife, and do its gracious work through the moral influence of a sanctified life. Under no conceivable circumstances is any woman justified in breaking away from her home relations on the ground of her Christianity. Her new life must find its sphere in the old relations.
II. Christianity perfects the harmony of the home relations.—It does this in two ways.
1. It is the most efficient power to enable a wife to bear the disabilities and difficulties of her home life. It nourishes just those passive, gentle graces which enable her to bear, and suffer, and endure. And
2. It guides her in the moulding and training of the character of the inmates, so that efficiently, but very unconsciously, she gets them all into harmony. And in her harmonising work she has not only the power of her own cultured character and influence, she has also the Divine power, which she draws down for her help, by her soul-openness and dependence, and by her daily prayer. It must be added that her harmonising work, being moral, cannot be sudden, and is not likely to be apparent to any one. It is the ministry of a life, and it often takes a life.
III. Christianity triumphs over the difficulties that arise in the home relations.—We need not think of contentions. Where these are happily unknown, home life has its anxieties. The men are harassed and worried; the members are afflicted. Business cares, bodily diseases, frailties in children’s characters, failure in plans for the children’s well-being, all make varied difficulties. Sincere and earnest Christian feeling in the wife is the great secret of triumph in and over all such things. The ruffled find her at peace; the troubled are sure of her sympathy; the disappointed are cheered by her hopefulness. Her piety helps her to see a bright light in every cloud; her faith enables her to see God ever near, just behind the cloud.
IV. Christianity works in homes through its power in personal character.—“The hidden man of the heart:” “the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit:” “so long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement.” It may be true that the supreme power of Christianity in everybody, male and female, is its power in character; but the public activities of men seem to overshadow this truth. We see it quite clearly in woman. Her mission for Christ in the world lies mainly in that influence she can win just by being beautiful in character, through the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
1Pe_3:1. The Wife’s Sphere in the Home.—The philosophy of marriage, as our Lord unfolds it, is this: a man and a woman made one all around the circle of their being; married in heart and thought and life; joined in desires and purposes and aims; in affections and interests one. Here is the starting point for the interpretation of the wife’s sphere and duty in the model home. Matthew Henry’s exposition must be quoted once more: “In creating woman”—for she was a new and fresh creation, and the last thing God did create, and hence His masterpiece—“God did not take her out of the head of man to be over him, nor from his feet to be under him, but out of his side to be equal with him, from under his arm to be sheltered and protected by him, and from near his heart to walk in sympathy and helpfulness by his side.” God made for Adam but one Eve, not two, nor ten. Mormonism has no authority from God. What God has joined together, let not man put asunder. The union made by ordinance of God cannot be broken by ordinance of man, save by the one exception which Jesus Christ instituted. Hence the part of the wife in the happy home is equal in position and influence to that of the husband, but not the same. Woman is not merely a copy of man—a faded, second impression from the same plate—but another creation, enlarging and enriching life. It brought new and higher elements into the circle of being, adding to life’s joys and possibilities, and making man himself more, through her. The husband and wife are the two halves of one whole, and the whole is designed by God to be greater and better than the sum of the parts. Let her, then, not assume headship, much less lordship, putting on airs as if the Millennium would come when she got her fancied rights. “The wife must see that she reverence her husband.” Neither let her be fretted and chafed by an overbearing man, making her feel that she is an inferior by some jumping-jack of a husband. The Scotch have a proverb, “You may ding the devil into a wife, but you can never ding him out.” The husband and wife are in a true sense one. Whatever is good for him is good for her. Whatever is due from him to her is also equally duo from her to him. They move together. He owes no duty to her that she does not owe to him a counterpart. It is an even thing. What the wife requires of her husband, that let her give to him. She is married “for better or for worse”; let her resolve that it shall be for better. Matches are not made in heaven, and will be for the worse if there be no watchful, patient care to work them out on earth for heaven. It is the duty of the wife to cultivate the practical home-making, God-given gift, keeping her house bright and genial. In a churchyard in England I found this eulogy on a wife’s tablet: “She always made home happy.” Blessed is the home that shelters mutual love: but the ideals must be reduced to reality. Work for the husband is better than worship of him, if the buttons are not sewed on. The word “wife” means a weaver, and “lady” a loaf-giver. She can be no idle dreamer. If, before marriage, the maiden weaves cobwebs of fancy, after marriage she must weave the solid “cloth of gold.” That is an ornament which adorns. She is never so amiable or beautiful as when useful. Spurgeon, a prime minister of England, says: “I have no faith in that woman who talks of grace and glory abroad and uses no soap and water at home.” The wife’s sphere has home for its centre, and its circumference cuts, in its curves, all that is true and beautiful and good. It is not money that makes a happy home. Rich as Vanderbilt, the wife must seek to be an intelligent mistress of the house, with a smile that brightens and a touch that beautifies. Rich or poor, she must know how to guide affairs, and strive for the tact and taste that makes homely duties handsome. “She layeth her hands to the spindle, she clotheth her husband in scarlet.” In the home she may say she rules in queenly fashion: “I am sovereign by the grace of God. My home to me a kingdom is, and to all that enter this realm I will hold out the golden sceptre of blessing.” Marriage, to a woman, is more than a king’s coronation. The wedding ring is as much a symbol of power and influence in the home as the monarch’s signet. “There is great force hidden in a sweet command.” No life can be tame or limited when high aims are followed. The strength of a wife to lift up others in trouble, and hold them to worthy aims, is very great. Let the wife accept that mission cheerfully, if it be assigned to her, and work under pressure and without recognition, long and painfully, if it is called for. The reward is sure. God sees and remembers all. He that seeth in secret shall reward her openly. The pleasant home-making talent of the wife will curb bad temper and evil propensity. Thus, to suppress a moment’s anger may save a week of sorrow. She will strive to preserve all amenities of dress and manner, keeping the home orderly and inviting. Carefulness and courtesy in the home are never lost. Roughness and indifference are never safe, and coarseness breeds contempt. The wise wife will continue to do those things which first won her husband’s love. Treat your husband’s return from business cares with a joyous and smiling welcome, and make the home bright and winsome while he stays. He will stay the longer and be back the sooner. If you pout out, “Oh, you have come at last, have you? You care nothing for me, that is plain! I have no charm, I see, for you any longer,” you are in danger of throwing away the key to his heart. Never do it. He can’t be harassed in business all day and harassed by his wife at night. He will want to go out “to see a man,” or to go to “the post office and just step into the club house.” Peevishness and fault-finding will never do. Study to be a real help-meet to your husband, and never a drag on him—to be one meet to help such a one as he is. Contact with a noble-minded woman is good for any man. There has been a good wife, as a rule, close beside every eminent man. Seldom will a man become any greater than his wife will let him. She must strive to fit herself for his growing fortunes and to rise with him, and be a true helper in all the spheres to which he is called. That is the wife’s sphere, and if she does not keep even with him she will pull him down. A wife that is her husband’s help-meet, growing as he grows, is his best fortune. “Whoso findeth such a wife findeth good. He will not say, ‘I fell in love’; he will say, ‘I rose.’ ” But he will be thoughtfully tender of such a wife, and very careful to put no hindrance in her way. He will lend her every aid in family cares, that they may ascend the hill together. He is the sturdy oak, and she the ivy entwining. He will throw out his strong, protecting arms that she may reach the topmost bough in grace and beauty. Pity for the ivy that will not climb! In order to do this, there must be a life-long assimilation. When husband and wife first come together, they are alike at only a few points, and know really little about each other. They must study each other, and see the faults and virtues of each other, mutually helping and strengthening each other. So will they conform to one another, and grow more and more together, avoiding stirring up the bad in each, and developing the good. We all have our faults. Expect faults, and be not surprised at finding them. It is a great thing to kindly help one to get rid of them and beyond them. Very likely here is where the young wife will have her first cry. She has been such a darling in the home, and such a pet in society; and so long has she had her own way that when her husband gets tired of her egotism and selfishness, and brings her up with a square turn to consider that there are two to be consulted in that firm instead of one, it will overwhelm her. Hasn’t her husband always said that they are one?—“Two hearts with but a single thought!” and has she not been given to think that she is the one! And now, she thinks, he is a monster, and that life is not worth the living. But she is good and true at heart, and will find her head soon, and be a wiser and better wife. She will be married to her husband, after that, at a higher point in her soul. In this way, by self-denial and forbearance, they will, step by step, become truly joined in the nobler ranges, and secure a happy marriage union.—C. L. Goodell, D.D.
1Pe_3:3-4.—The Higher Life for Woman.—There are two passages, and this is one of them, from which there has been derived by the Puritan and so-called Christian teachers the doctrine that it was wicked for women to wear jewellery and precious stones. They have not been so particular about plaiting the hair that, I know of, although that comes in under condemnation in the same way. Now, the whole point is lost where it is fixed on these things. The point is, that one should not expend the whole of life on making the outside beautiful, but that one should see to it that the inside is adorned also. You are not to cheat the soul of all its gems and virtues for the sake of making yourself attractive exteriorly by adornments of that kind. That is the point, but it has been commuted into a general declaration against ornaments of beauty—whether of the hair, or of the apparel, or of precious stones. Nothing could be farther from the spirit of the text than that. This, we are to bear in mind, is addressed in its original form to Oriental women. They were in the condition mainly that multitudes of men think they ought to be in now. They were stayers at home; they were managers of the household; they received no gifts of education whatever. It was not necessary that a woman should be expensively educated for the sake of making bread or mending stockings, and so they were but little better than slaves of the harem. Even in the very highest point of its splendour there was not in all Athens a single woman who was permitted to be educated, if she wished to have the reputation of virtue. Knowledge with women in Grecian days was a token of impudicity. If a woman meant to live as a courtesan, no pains were spared to educate her in taste, in knowledge, in philosophy, even in statesmanship. Here is the root of the explanation in regard to those dissuasions in the writings of the New Testament, that women should not speak in public. In the corrupt and degraded sentiment of those Oriental ages, for a woman to be able to speak in meeting and to rise to do it, would have fixed upon her the stigma of being common and corrupt. Therefore it was a wise decree of the apostle that, in such an age, and under such public ideas of what was feminine and pure, and what was unfeminine and impure, must be silent. They must conform in the churches to the public sentiment of their time, until Christianity should have changed the times, and rendered possible a larger liberty, felicitous and beneficial. Now, in such a case as that of women, whose desire to please and love of pleasure is strong—not perhaps stronger than in men, but under circumstances in which there were fewer ways of pleasing than men possess—what could they do but make their persons attractive? They were forbidden to make themselves beautiful within, and so they made themselves as beautiful as they could without, with braided hair, with all manner of pearls and precious stones, with all fancifulness and beauty of dress. But St. Peter and St. Paul alike said: “Do not spend yourself on external garnishing; look inward, and cultivate the inward life,” or, as St. Peter here calls it, “the hidden man of the soul.” In short, St. Peter and St. Paul were both in favour of higher education for women. They did not believe that the line of her life should not rise above the bread-trough, or the handling of the instruments by which she was to obtain victory in the industries of life. They believed that a woman should have a higher life, a higher inward development; and should not therefore turn to frivolous pleasures and external beauty.—H. Ward Beecher.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 3
1Pe_3:1. A Wife’s Power to Win.—“As I was conversing,” says a writer in the New York Observer, “with a pious old man, I inquired what were the means of his conversion. For a moment he paused—I perceived I had touched a tender string. Tears gushed from his eyes, while, with deep emotion, he replied: ‘My wife was brought to God some years before myself. I persecuted and abused her because of her religion. She, however, returned nothing but kindness—constantly manifesting an anxiety to promote my comfort and happiness; and it was her amiable conduct when suffering ill-treatment from me that first sent the arrows of conviction to my soul.’ ”
1Pe_3:3. Pride in Dress.—Goldsmith tells of a mandarin who took much pride in appearing with a number of jewels on every part of his robe. He was once accosted by a sly old fellow, who, following him through several streets, bowed often to the ground, and thanked him for his jewels. “What does the man mean? “cried the mandarin. “I never gave you any of my jewels.” “No,” replied the other; “but you have let me look at them, and that is all the use you can make of them yourself. So the only difference between us is, that you have the trouble of watching them; and that is an employment I don’t much desire.”
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 7 1, 2. “Likewise ye wives, being submissive to your…
ARGUMENT 13
THE TRULY SANCTIFIED WIFE AND HER UNSANCTIFIED HUSBAND
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1, 2. “Likewise ye wives, being submissive to your own husbands, in order that if any obey not the Word they shall be gained through the deportment of their wives without the Word, seeing your holy deportment which is with fear.” The infidel is the hardest soul to save this side the pit, from the simple fact that he utterly rejects the Word of God, the normal medium of salvation. The extremes include all intervening cases. Hence, if this wife can save her infidel husband without the Word, she can certainly save her husband unconditionally. Though in his infidelity he may utterly reject the Bible, yet he reads in the holy character of his wife an incarnation of the living Word, is convicted and brought to repentance, when his infidelity takes wings and flies away, leaving him in the arms of Jesus, gloriously saved, along with his wife, rejoicing in God, delighted with His Word.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 1Pe 3:7
1Pe 3:7
Our Social Relationships.
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I. Marriage is a relationship of mutual sympathy. That comprehensive word "sympathy" is to be understood here in its largest sense. Those who enter into this binding fellowship ought to be one in the completest measure possible of their entire nature; for the supreme end of marriage is not simply the continuance of the human race, but the culture and development of all the noblest faculties of the intellect and the spirit.
II. It is a relationship of mutual sacredness. The Roman Catholic Church includes matrimony among the sacraments, though in this, as in so many other matters, it goes beyond the direct warrant of God’s word. Yet there is no question that it is regarded as one of the most solemn acts of human life. "Until death us do part" is the solemn vow, and it must remain unbroken to the end. All revelation and the distinct words of Christ imply the sacredness of this bond, and it will be a sign of coming downfall in any country when the inviolability of this relationship is disregarded.
III. The relationship is one of mutual honour. Christ ruled the Church, yet served it; then it is possible to rule and to serve at the same time. If it be for womanhood to submit, it is for manhood to serve; and perhaps that is a task difficult to both, but that might become much more pleasant and full of joy if the endeavour were mutual.
IV. The relationship is one of mutual responsibility.
W. Braden, Christian World Pulpit, vol. vi., p. 353.
1Pe 3:7
I. One specialty to be observed in this phrase is this: it treats prayer not as a duty to be enforced, but as a habit to be taken for granted. The Apostle seems to consider prayer as inseparable from spiritual life, just as the air we breathe is inseparable from material life; and therefore, instead of advocating prayer, he presupposes it. He does not enforce prayer as a duty, but he urges the avoidance of everything that can obstruct it.
II. Since prayer is an exercise of the spirit, of the heart, as well as of the lips, it follows that whatever clogs that heart with a consciousness of alienation from God, and whatever charges and loads that ethereal spirit with elements earthly, material, and gross, must press down that spirit, must encumber that heart with the great hindrance of its heavenward aspirations. If we have been allowing ourselves in anything irreconcilable with the principles of Christ, it is impossible, impossible with the stain of that misconduct still upon it, that the spirit of a man should naturally and cheerfully and spontaneously seek to consort and hold communion with that Spirit which is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.
III. This, then, is the main notion to fix upon our minds, namely, that in any temptation, however trivial, to depart from the dictates of conscience, we should remember that yielding to that inclination hinders prayer, discourages all heavenward aspirations, shuts out what would raise us above the gross atmosphere of the world, obstructs the breath of spiritual life, and so puts spiritual life in jeopardy.
W. H. Brookfield, Sermons, p. 87.
References: 1Pe 3:7.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xx., No. 1192; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. ii., p. 271.
1Pe 3:8
I. This is one of those texts which are too apt to confuse persons who do not read their Bibles carefully enough. They cannot see what the latter part of these verses has to do with the former. St. Peter writes that we Christians are to inherit a blessing, and hence people would say, speaking commonly, that he means the blessing of future salvation. But then St. Peter goes on to quote Ps. 34, "He that will love life and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile," and then, in order to make this harmonise with their view of the former verse, they say that this must be taken spiritually! Now, what people mean when they talk like this, I do not know. That which brings a blessing here is the same thing that will make us blessed there; that which belonged to the old Jews belongs also to us Christians, and if we avoid evil and seek after peace in this life, then shall we inherit a blessing in this and in any possible life or lives to come.
II. And why? Because then only are we living the one and everlasting life, the life that alone brings with it a blessing or good days, and the only life that is worth living or loving. Very necessary is it to bear this in mind just now. People are too apt to say that the Old Testament saints got their reward in this life. But where do they find that? If they read the Old Testament carefully, they will find that the Old Testament saints were men whom God trained by long suffering, like Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Job, and all the Old Testament prophets. They were not even made perfect; for in the Epistle to the Hebrews it says that they died in faith, not having received their reward. If, then, God rewarded in this life, their reward must have been spiritual.
III. God’s world is good; the evil is not in nature, it is not in the world around us, but it is in our own foolish hearts. We shall find the world an unpleasant place, as the Jews did, if we break God’s laws, for they must punish us; but if we obey His laws, we shall find the world a pleasant place, and His laws a comfort to us. This is God’s promise, for He made all things for good, and His word cannot alter.
C. Kingsley, Christian World Pulpit, vol. vi., p. 229.
Reference: 1Pe 3:10.—H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, The Life of Duty, vol. ii., p. 44.
1Pe 3:11
The character of the man to whom these words are addressed is a very singular one. "He that will love life," or, more accurately, "He that wishes to love life, let him seek peace, and ensue it." Does not every one "love life"? What "life" is it of which St. Peter is speaking, the present life or the life to come? Certainly the present life. It may not exclude the life to come, for it is life generally, but specially the present life. But all life is one. This life is only one chapter in your immortality.
I. Is it a duty to "love life"? Unquestionably. "Life" is a talent committed to us. It is a great gift of God; it is an opportunity of service; it is a thing to be consecrated; it is the germ of heaven. I have no sympathy with those who depreciate this present life, and run down this world as if it were all nothing or all bad. Heaven may be, as much as you like, an attractive, but this world should never be a repulsive, thing. It is a beautiful world! And it may be a very happy world. God is everywhere; the elements of good are always near us, and always within our reach, if only we could see them and use them. We are responsible for having a happy life. And even if we are afflicted and unhappy, remember it is the only stage of a Christian’s being in which he can glorify God by patience and submission.
II. "Peace," then, is the climax of the conditions of a "life" that can be "loved." We must examine "peace." "Peace" is an empire with three provinces, and the provinces cannot really be divided, for there is one King of all; all belong to Him, and He is "peace"; He is "the God of peace." First, there is the "peace" which a man has with God as soon as he is reconciled to God by an act of faith in the blood of Jesus Christ, and his sins are all forgiven. Then there is the "peace" which every forgiven man carries in his own bosom: "peace" with his conscience. And then there is the "peace" with man, with all our fellow-creatures. And these grow the one out of the other; and they must come, and can only come, in that order. If you are not comfortable and on good terms with other people, it is mainly because you are not quite comfortable with yourself; and if you are not quite comfortable with yourself, it is because you are not right, and you know that you are not right, with God. "Peace" with God makes "peace" with the soul; and "peace" with the soul makes "peace" with the whole world: so the three provinces are one.
III. How, then, is this difficult quest of "peace"—more difficult as education and refinement make the feelings more sensitive, and the subjects of thought grow larger and deeper, and the divergence of mind becomes wider and wider, as it will do more and more every day—how, how is it to be carried out? (1) First, recognise it as an act of Omnipotence, an attribute of God only. "He maketh men to be of one mind in a house." You will fail if you do not at once bring in the great power of God to a work which is far too high for you. (2) Then travel to it by the right and only road; adjust your own relations to God. Be at peace yourselves. This done, you will be able to understand and remember at what pains, how patiently, how persistently, how stoopingly, and at what a cost, God made your "peace." And then you can go and copy "God’s peace"—that great Peacemaker with us all. Lay yourself out to see, and show, and learn, and copy the excellency in every one. Go about with a veil to throw over follies and mistakes, and a microscopic glance to see what is good in everybody and everything. Let it be your characteristic: a man of charity, a healer of breaches, one who has something kind and good to say of everybody, a lover of all men, and a suitor of "peace."
J. Vaughan, Sermons, 12th series, p. 37.
References: 1Pe 3:12.—J. Keble, Sermons for Sundays after Trinity, Part I., p. 166. 1Pe 3:14, 1Pe 3:15.—Ibid., p. 176.
1Pe 3:15
I. It is the simplest of truisms that God can receive no increase of holiness, least of all from those who must beg Him to forgive their sins; but to sanctify Him, or to hallow His name, is to acknowledge Him, not merely in word, but habitually and practically—in thought, in feeling, in aim, in conduct—as being what He is: the one supreme object of obedience, reverence, and devotion. They sanctify Him who give Him His due, who treat His claims as real and absolute, who look away from all other powers, from all imagined resources or grounds of confidence, to Him as the origin and centre of their existence, the One most high, most holy, and most lovable, and, at the same time, most awful in His purity, with a reverential awe which leaves no room for lower fear, because it involves an adoring and loving trust.
II. See how the precept can be obeyed, and the consequent blessing secured, under three different forms of trial, taken as examples of the rest. (1) St. Peter was thinking immediately of apprehended suffering. Why not simply take the Lord at His own word, and put aside faithless anxiety about the morrow? If we fret ourselves, we shall be moved to do evil; if we place ourselves confidingly in the hands of our mighty and loving Saviour, we sanctify Him in our hearts as Lord. (2) Remember, further, that the drama of spiritual life and death can be performed on a humble stage, under conditions devoid of any impressive brilliancy. "The eyes of the Lord," open alike for scrutiny and for sympathy, are in every place, are scanning impartially every career. (3) When we are depressed and anxious as to the prospects of the Church and of the faith, we should be able to fulfil the duty of relying absolutely on Christ. It is treason to be fearful for the kingdom of the risen One; our business is simply to hold our post, be faithful in our day, and leave results to Him.
W. Bright, Morality in Doctrine, p. 302.
References: 1Pe 3:15.—Expositor, 1st series, vol. vii., p. 208; R. D. B. Rawnsley, Village Sermons, 3rd series, p. 277: W. J. Knox-Little, Church of England Pulpit, vol. iv., p. 32; J. W. Burgon, Ibid., vol. v., p. 236.
1Pe 3:16
The Conscience of a Christian.
The more consistent a Christian is with his Lord’s example, or, which is really the same thing practically, the loftier his ideal of duty, the more he must expect to be treated as Christ was treated. Nominal Christians and the world keep an easy truce of mutual toleration, which the interests of society keep them from grossly infringing. On the one hand, the nominal Christian finds his profession sit easily upon him. Principles which are not pressed to their consequences offend no one. On the other hand, the purely worldly man makes the easy pursuit or easy enjoyment of things immediately agreeable to his ruling principle. He accepts the condition of not shocking the prejudices of others, though he may not share them, and so finds easy room for the nominal Christian in his system.
I. But when St. Peter wrote, things were very different. There was then no possibility of blending principles which were inconsistent in a neutral solution of indifference. The world and the Church were sharply defined and contrasted. They were mutually repulsive, mutually exclusive of one another.
II. True Christians must excite prejudice. They break that comfortable truce with the worldling which the nominal Christian is content to accept, and keeps without acknowledging by a tacit understanding. They must have reverses; they go too far for their friends in God’s service, and their friends break from them. They intrude their principles where they are unwelcome, and others around them are offended in them, even as the Pharisees and Sadducees were offended in Christ. Against this power of prejudice, deepening often into ill-nature and malice, the power of a Christian’s conscience, informed by faith and enlightened by the Holy Spirit, is his great safeguard. Let us see how it operates. (1) By making him feel directly the presence of God, the conscience of the Christian becomes an organ of the Holy Spirit. (2) A good conscience sets a man free from all unworthy motives. (3) As a consequence of this, a directness of aim and simplicity of character distinguishes the man.
H. Hayman, Rugby Sermons, p. 165.
1Pe 3:18
Christ Suffering for Sins.
I. Observe that St. Peter says, "Christ suffered for sins"—not merely suffered, but suffered for us—that is, clearly for our sins, for the sins of mankind. These were, in some way, the cause of His sufferings. If the sins had not been, His sufferings had not been. However strange the connection may seem, a connection undoubtedly there is between the sins which have been committed from the time of Adam until now and the death of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross under Pontius Pilate. Perhaps the connection between the sins of mankind and the sufferings of Christ is made more striking by the word "once." Christ hath once suffered for sins. Sins may be committed often, nay, are being committed continually, but Christ died once and for all; that one event stands by itself; it is unique in the world’s history; it can never be repeated; it need never be repeated.
II. A wonderful efficacy is attributed to Christ’s sufferings. We are accounted righteous for the merits of Christ, and not for any merits of our own. Teacher and Example was Christ; but He was something more than this. Our sense of need and infirmity teaches us that, in order to be the Physician of souls, in order to supply a cure for the great universal disease of humanity, Christ must be something different from, and entirely beyond, a Teacher and Example. We want to hear of something concerning pardon of sins, something concerning reconciliation, something concerning being brought back to God. And this the Apostles preached in the name of their Lord; peace through the blood of His cross was their message, a propitiation for sin, a ransom from slavery, salvation for the lost, life for the dead—this was what they had to announce as the Gospel for mankind.
Harvey Goodwin, Parish Sermons, vol. v., p. 305.
References: 1Pe 3:18.—Homilist, 2nd series, vol. ii., p. 416; F. Wagstaff, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiv., p. 179; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. vii., p. 369; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. v., p. 29. 1Pe 3:18-20.—Ibid., vol. vii., p. 114.
1Pe 3:19
The Spirits in Prison.
I. There is one article of the Creed which, strange as it may seem, for some centuries has practically fallen into the background, and lost its hold on the thoughts and affections of mankind. We repeat the words which tell us that Christ descended into hell, but they do not move us. Our thoughts about them are indistinct and dim. They bring no strength or comfort to us. To the taught they probably suggest the dark and monstrous belief that, in order to complete the work of a penalty vicariously borne, the agony of the garden and the passion of the cross were followed by the endurance for a few brief hours of the torments of the lost. We may be quite sure that if the descent into hell had brought no other thoughts to men’s minds than those which we commonly attach to it, it would never have gained a place in the creed of Christendom, or seized, as it did for centuries, on men’s thought and feeling. To those who so received it it spoke of a victory over death which was the completion of the sacrifice of the cross. It told them that He who came to seek and to save the souls He loved on earth had continued that Divine work while the body was lying in the rock-hewn grave. He had passed into the unseen world as a mighty King, the herald of His own conquests; and death and hell had trembled at His coming, and the bands of the prisoners were broken, and the gates of the prison-house were thrown open. There the banner of the King was unfurled, and the cross set up, that there also, even there, the souls of those who were capable of life might turn to it and live. There had He gathered round Him the souls of those righteous ones, from Abel onwards, who had had the faith which from the beginning of the world has justified, and had confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. There He had delivered from the passionate yearning of unsatisfied desire, and had taken them to rest till the Resurrection in the paradise of God, where He had promised to be with one whose lawless life had melted at the last hour into some touch of tenderness, and awe, and pity.
II. Whatever doubt might linger round these words is removed by the reiterated assertion of the same truth a few verses further on. That which was preached to them that were dead is nothing less than a gospel—the good news of the redeeming love of Christ. And it was published to them, not to exempt them from all penalty, but that they, having been judged in all that belonged to the relations of their human life with a true and righteous judgment, should yet, in all that affected their relation to God, "live in the Spirit." Death came upon them, and they accepted their punishment as awarded by the loving and righteous Judge, and so ceased from the sin to which they had before been slaves; and thus it became to them the gate of life.
E. H. Plumptre, The Spirits in Prison, p. 1.
Reference: 1Pe 3:19.—H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Sermonettes for a Year, p. 84.
1Pe 3:20
The Two Baptisms.
I. The salvation of Noah by water. You are familiar with the narrative in Genesis. Peter does not recapitulate the facts, but alludes to them as well known. Eight souls were saved in the Ark and by water. God will have a seed to serve Him while sun and moon endure. For this purpose He chose Noah and his family as vessels to retain and transmit the knowledge of His name. If Divine power had not then interfered, the last remnant of righteousness would soon have been submerged under the ever-rising tide of sin. It concerned the plans and the honour of God that this should be prevented, and therefore Noah was saved—saved by water! The Lord saved Noah as He is wont to save His own in all times: by destroying the enemies who were prepared to devour him. Noah was saved by baptism—a baptism that washed away the filth of the world, and left him standing free.
II. The salvation of Christians by baptism is like the saving of Noah by the waters of the Flood. We draw near now to behold a greater sight. We contemplate now the redemption wrought by Christ and enjoyed by His people. We are saved by baptism; and this salvation is like the deliverance wrought of old for Noah by means of the Flood. (1) It is altogether a narrow and inadequate view that thinks of hell as the danger, and heaven as the deliverance. The danger is sin, and the deliverance is pardon. Your soul, surrounded by its own sins, is like Noah in the midst of the old world. If they are not destroyed by a flood, they will destroy you. (2) The deliverance. It, too, is like Noah’s. We are saved by a flood. We are saved by baptism. What is meant by baptism? "The answer of a good conscience toward God." It is the cleansing of the conscience from its guilt, so that when God makes inquisition for blood He finds no spot or wrinkle there, so that the conscience, when put to the question, answers, "Peace!" to the challenge of the Judge. It is by being in Christ that we may get our sins purged away, and yet be ourselves saved.
W. Arnot, Roots and Fruits, p. 197.
1Pe 3:21
A Good Conscience.
These words are very wide words, too wide to please most people. They preach a very free grace, too free to please most people. Man preaches his own notions of God’s forgiveness, his notions of what he thinks God ought to do; but when God proclaims His own forgiveness, and tells men what He has actually done, and bids His Apostle declare boldly that baptism doth now save us, then man is frightened at the vastness of God’s generosity, and thinks God’s grace too free, His forgiveness too complete.
I. What hinders a little child, from the very moment that it can think or speak, from entering into God’s salvation? I know one hindrance at least, and that is when the parents’ harshness or neglect tempts the child to fancy that God the Father is such a father to him as his parents are, and that to be a child of God is to look up to his heavenly Father with dread and suspicion as to a hard taskmaster whose anger has to be turned away, and not with that perfect love, and trust, and respect, and self-sacrifice with which the Lord Jesus fulfilled His Father’s will and proclaimed His Father’s glory.
II. The catechism of our Church does not begin by telling children they are sinners; they will find that out soon enough for themselves from their own wayward and self-willed hearts. It begins by teaching the child the name of God. It is so careful of God’s honour, so careful that the child should learn from the first to look up to God with love and trust, that it dare not tell the child that God can destroy and punish before it has told him that God is a Father and a Maker, the Father of spirits, who has made him and all the world. It dare not tell him that mankind is fallen before it has told him that all the world is redeemed. It tells him of the name of God, and tells him that God is with him, and he with God, and bids him believe that and be saved from his birth-hour to endless ages. It does not tell him to pray that he may become God’s child, but to pray because he is God’s child already. It tells him that he is safe and saved, even as David, and Isaiah, and all holy men who ever lived have been, as long as he trusts in God, and clings to God, and obeys God; and that only when he forsakes God and follows his own selfishness and pride can any thing or being in earth or hell harm him.
C. Kingsley, Sermons for the Times, p. 29.
References: 1Pe 3:22.—J. Keble, Sermons from Ascension to Trinity, p. 1; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxii., No. 1928. 1Pe 4:1-3.—H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxv., p. 51; A. Rowland, Ibid., vol. xxxvi., p. 225; F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. i., p. 333. 1Pe 4:3.—Homilist, 3rd series, vol. ix., p. 24. 1Pe 4:4.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. vii., p. 82. 1Pe 4:4, 1Pe 4:5.—E. Cooper, Practical Sermons, vol. iii., p. 160. 1Pe 4:6.—F. W. Farrar. Christian World Pulpit, vol. xii., p. 353.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 The Blessedness of Christ's People, Though They Should Suffer…
The Blessedness of Christ's People, Though They Should Suffer Like Christ
B (iii). 1Pe_3:1-6. Another divinely created ordinance of man is marriage. One of the purposes of Christianity was to teach chivalry towards women: this is part of the 'grace' which men can exercise. But to this must correspond the modesty and graciousness of women. The Israelites had already been taught that; and women, when they enter the Christian society, become daughters of Abraham, heirs both of the honour and of the womanliness of the women of the Jewish Church. A quiet and holy married life tends, like all other parts of Christian life, to the salvation of the heathen.
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With this and the next paragraph cp. Eph_5:22-33; Col_3:18.
1. Likewise] cp. 1Pe_3:7, the whole household is to be one family; the subjection of servants to masters has a like excellence with the subjection of wives to husbands. Without the word] 'Perhaps the Spirit of Christ pours itself abroad more widely than our interpretations allow' (Erasmus).
4. The hidden man of the heart] cp. Rom_7:22; 2Co_4:16; Eph_3:16.
In that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit] RV 'in the incorruptible apparel of a meek and quiet spirit.'
5. Trusted] RV 'hoped.' Hope, the Messianic spirit, was characteristic of the OT. saints.
6. Lord] RV 'lord': cp. Gen_18:12.
Ye are] RV 'ye now are'; RM 'ye are become.' They became Abraham's daughters when they became Christians, but, if they are to continue such, perseverance is required, which the coming persecution will make difficult: cp. 2Pe_1:5. Afraid with any amazement] RV 'put in fear by any terror': cp. Pro_3:25.
B (iv). 1Pe_3:7. Husbands, in like manner, must be chivalrous and chaste. Nature itself teaches all men that, but Christians have a deeper insight into the grace and dignity of life, and an eternal hope in their marriage.
7. The weaker vessel] cp. 2Co_4:7; 1Th_4:4. It would appear from 2Est_4:11; Esther 4 :2 Es 7:88 RV, that the human body is meant by 'the vessel.' The grace of life] is the loveliness, partaking of the divine, which God adds to His servants' life. That your prayers be not hindered] RV 'to the end that,' etc. Prayer is access to God, which is the aim of all Christian life. All faults in married life hinder it: cp. 1Co_7:5; Col_3:19.
B (v). 1Pe_3:8-12. The general behaviour of the whole body of Christians is summed up in the love which makes them consider others more than themselves, hold fast together in their brotherhood, and be patient towards those without. By peace-making they inherit the blessing which was promised to them in the Psalm.
With this paragraph cp. Rom_12:14-21 and James 3.
8. Having compassion one of another] RV 'compassionate'; EM 'Gr. sympathetic': cp. Heb_4:15; Heb_10:34, Tenderness towards even the feelings of others is implied.
10-12. Quoted from Psalms 34, in Psa_34:8 of which blessing is promised to the man that trusts in God. The whole Psalm promises salvation in persecution, and describes just the situation in which St. Peter's faith sees his readers placed—in danger, but with the angel of the Lord encamping round about them, and all things working out a blessing for them if they trust in Him.
11. Eschew] RV 'turn away from.' Ensue] RV 'pursue.'
12. Over.. against] RV 'upon.. upon.' God's aspect is the same to each, it is man who turns 'grace' into 'wrath': cp. Exo_14:24.
C (i) 1Pe_3:13-22;, deals chiefly with faith, (ii) 1Pe_4:1-6 with conduct. It brings out deeper and deeper doctrine as it proceeds about the purpose and meaning of suffering. 'Who will harm you if you are zealous for the good? Even if you should suffer for the righteous cause you would be blessed. Take the ancient encouragement of Israel to yourselves. Enter into its fullest meaning by using the interpretation of the old words which Christ's life has given, and sanctify Him in your hearts, though in visible form you cannot see Him, as the Lord of whom the Psalmist spoke. Be ready to give answer to any one that asks you about this hope which is in you, and which seems so strange to him; but answer meekly, and remember that though you need not fear him, you do fear God. Have therefore a good conscience. Your own hope will die away if you have not that, but with it you will find that the very slanders you suffer from will turn out to be the means of doing good to your enemies. Even as Christ did, for He suffered, the just for the unjust, that He might thus bring us who were among the unjust to God. His sufferings were the means of His doing so. Through suffering death in His flesh He entered into a wider life in His spirit, and went a journey that none could go in the flesh, and as a spirit preached to spirits. For us another way of salvation is appointed. The time when those spirits lived on earth prefigured the times of Christ. As then God prepared a place of safety from destruction, by directing Noah to build an ark into which eight persons were brought into safety through the dangerous waters of the flood, so now we have the fellowship of Christ into which we are brought by baptism, that is, through the resurrection of Christ which was the outcome of His painful death. Baptism, itself a painful step for the convert in a heathen land to take, is indeed our sharing in Christ's death and resurrection; not so, however, if we look upon it as a mere form, but truly so, if we receive it with a good conscience, which, as we submit to the symbolic washing, appeals to God to accept it through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has completed His redeeming work by ascending into heaven in the perfection of His human and divine nature, and sits supreme, as the Psalmist prophesied, at the right hand of God.'
14. If ye suffer] RV 'if ye should suffer.' The persecution has not yet begun: cp. 1Pe_3:17.
15. Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts] RV 'sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord': cp. Isa_8:12.
17. If the will of God be so] RV 'if the will of God should so will'—a rugged but emphatic expression.
18. Once] i.e. once for all: cp. Heb_9:26, Heb_9:28. That he might bring us to God] cp. Rom_5:2. Access to God was the end to which all the Levitical sacrifices were directed, but till Christ offered Himself this end was never attained; as the Epistle to the Hebrews teaches. Quickened] i.e. made to live. By the Spirit] RV 'in the spirit.' This fuller life came to Christ through, or in the sphere of, His human spirit: cp. 1Pe_4:6; Luk_23:46.
19. By which] RV 'in which.' In prison] cp. Rev_20:7, i.e. the place where such disembodied spirits were kept waiting for the end of the present order of things: see on 'heaven,'
14. This is the hell, or Sheol, of OT.: cp Psa_16:10; Psa_49:14; (RV) Isa_14:9. Our Lord refers to it, Luk_23:43, and in Luk_16:22., where the blessed dead are described as separated from the 'disobedient.'
20. Sometime] RV 'aforetime.' The whole passage clearly means that Christ, as a spirit, preached to certain spirits, who had been disobedient to the end of their earthly life. This preaching took place between His death and resurrection, and its purpose was that, by hearing the gospel, these men might have an opportunity of repentance. St. Peter does not say that a place of repentance is still left for men after death. That is neither affirmed nor denied in NT; but this passage makes rather against than for such a hope; for the point is that these men did receive such an opportunity, because they had not heard the gospel in their earthly life. St. Peter considered that the Jews, unlike the men of Noah's time, had known something of Christ: cp. 1Pe_1:10. It should, however, be noticed that 'once,' which in AV seems to limit the reference very strictly, is omitted in RV, and perhaps that time is specially mentioned because it affords a type of baptism.
Wherein few.. were saved by water] RM 'into which few.. were brought safely through water.'
21. The like figure, etc.] RV 'which also after a true likeness' (RM 'in the antitype') 'doth now save you, even baptism, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the interrogation,' (RM 'inquiry or appeal') 'of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection.' 'The like figure' = Gk. 'antitype.' The type is the seal, the antitype the impression. Here we think most of the impression as the purpose or reality of the seal, in Heb_9:24 of the seal as the origin of the impression. The interrogation (RV) of a good conscience may refer to the question asked of the convert before baptism: cp. Act_8:37; (AV and EM), Hooker, V. lxiii. 3; but RM makes better sense—the appeal of the convert to God might be expressed in the gospel words, 'I believe, help thou mine unbelief: cp. 1Jn_3:20. By (RV 'through') the resurrection should be taken with the whole v., not with 'the appeal' nor with 'doth save' alone: cp. Rom_6:4. Col_2:12. It corresponds to 'through water,' 1Pe_3:20 in each case that which seemed to be destruction proved the means of safety.
22. On the right hand of God] from Psa_110:1. The words that follow show that St. Peter has Eph_1:20. in his mind. Like St. Paul, he speaks in general terms of the heavenly powers, which the Jews of those days described with unwarrantable detail: cp. Eph_1:21; Col_2:18.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v7 Grace (imparted). 1Pe 4:10; Rom 6:1; 2Pe 3:18.
grace
Grace (imparted). 1Pe 4:10; Rom 6:1; 2Pe 3:18.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v1 Exhortations to the Married.
Exhortations to the Married.
v. 1. Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands, that, if any obey not the Word, they may also without the word be won by the conversation of the wives,
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v. 2. while they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear.
v. 3. Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel;
v. 4. but let it be the hidden man of the he art, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.
v. 5. For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands;
v. 6. even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord; whose daughters ye are, as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement.
v. 7. Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honor unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers be not hindered.
Having spoken of the relation of citizens to their rulers and of servants to their masters, the apostle here addresses himself to those that are living in the holy estate of marriage, giving to both the wives and the husbands certain rules of conduct. Speaking to the wives first, he writes: In like manner you wives, be submissive. to your own husbands, in order that, if some are disobedient to the Word, they may be gained through the behavior of the women without a word, if they observe your chaste behavior in fear. That is the first point that the apostle makes, the necessity for submissiveness, for subordination on the part of the wife. Not, indeed, as if the subjection and obedience of the wife were on the same level as that of the domestic slaves, since it is the result of mutual agreement and therefore is a relative obedience rather than an absolute subjection. But that is God’s order: the headship of the husband should be unquestioned in a Christian home. This point, moreover, was here broached with a good reason. For it happened comparatively often in those early days that Christian women had heathen husbands. In the case of these husbands particularly, though other witnesses are not excluded, it was true that they who were disobedient to the Word of the Gospel, who were unbelievers, might be influenced and put into a state of mind favorable to the acceptance of Christianity by the conduct and behavior of their wives, even if these should not speak a single word of reproach, remonstrance, or admonition. For the entire conduct of the Christian women was to be a powerful argument for the truth and power of Christianity. As the men noticed with what care these Christian women kept themselves unspotted from the prevalent sins of unchastity, with what meekness and diligence they did the work of the household, with what reverent deference they observed the will of the housefather, it was bound to make an impression on them. A man would then also argue from the existence of these wifely virtues to the power of the Christian faith, the result being that his interest in the Gospel might lead him to the acceptance of the Word. Thus he would be gained for Christ, and Christ Himself would be his gain.
To this end, however, Christian women were to remember: Whose adornment should not be the outward braiding of hair, and putting round golden jewelry, or putting on (showy) dresses, but the hidden man of the heart, in the incorruptible beauty of gentleness and of a quiet spirit, which is precious before God. See Isa 3:17-23. The apostle mentions only a few of the evidences of worldliness and vanity which threaten women in particular. There was the elaborate coiffure which was built up with braids and golden combs, 1Ti 2:15, and nets and artificial aids; there was the putting on of golden ornaments, of rings and bracelets and pendants round the forehead, the arm, the ankle, the finger; there was the vesting in costly and showy garments—all customs affected by the fine society ladies of the world. Note that Peter does not inveigh against neat dresses and modest, simple jewelry, but against that show of dress and finery which indicates that the heart is taken captive by such transitory, vain baubles. The true ornament of a Christian woman is the hidden man of the heart, the new spiritual nature and life. This new, divine life will ever manifest itself in a disposition and in deeds of gentleness and meekness, in a quiet spirit, without pride, assumption, anger, and passionate boisterousness, Rom 7:22. These virtues will clothe a Christian woman better than the costliest mantle which this world can supply, and, what is more, such conduct is precious in the sight of God. Note: This lesson should be heeded especially by many of the foolish young women, married and unmarried, who in our days are following the example of the painted and gaudily dressed women of the world.
Christian women will always be ready to follow the example of the sainted women of the Bible: For so did also the holy women formerly adorn themselves, who hoped in God, being subject to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, of whom you have become children, if you do well, and do not yield to any sudden terror. The meek and quiet attitude which has been praised by the apostle will naturally be accompanied by that conduct which unhesitatingly acknowledges the headship of the man. This is the chief, the finest ornament of a wife professing Christianity, as the example of the women of the Bible shows. Their hope was directed toward God and His promises; they knew that the reward of God was greater than anything that the world might offer and give, if they should want to follow its vanities. The apostle singles out Sarah as an exceptional pattern in this respect, in her submission to her husband. She acknowledged, she called him lord, the head of the household. She was perfectly willing to occupy a subordinate position, to be a true helpmeet to Abraham, Gen 18:12. And so Christian wives will become true children, true daughters of Sarah, if their entire life is spent in doing good, if they are continually active in good works, if they conduct themselves according to the will of God in their married state. At the same time they are to fear no terrors, not to yield to false fear in any matter. The reference is most likely to the incident related Gen 21:10, where Sarah did not hesitate to insist upon expelling the bond-woman with her son, since Isaac alone was the child of promise. Where the will of God, therefore, is clear, either in command or in prohibition, a Christian woman will not let a false dread keep her from obeying the Lord first of all.
That the husbands, according to this word, have no absolute power over their wives is indicated also in the next verse: You husbands likewise (give due honor to them), dwelling with the feminine, as with the weaker vessel, according to knowledge, giving honor to them as also fellow-inheritors of the grace of life, lest your prayers be hindered. The idea of giving due consideration and honor to every person in the station assigned to him by God governs the thought also here. Both the husband and the wife are vessels according to God’s creation, but the man is the stronger, the woman the weaker vessel. But now the husband should show that he appreciates the greater responsibility laid upon him by God in caring for the weaker vessel, his wife, in the proper manner, especially according to knowledge, with the application of Christian common sense. The husband should always be conscious of this fact and let this consideration govern his entire treatment, his entire attitude toward his wife, in all the conditions and circumstances of life. See 1Th 4:4. With all the intimacy that obtains between husband and wife, the former must never forget that he owes his helpmeet a measure of honor, namely, that which belongs to her as coheir of the grace of life. As Christians they both have their hope and faith set on the same salvation, and they should wander hand in hand to reach that glorious goal. If the husband does not observe this rule, hut attempts to lord it over his wife in a manner for which he has no authority, then the sighing of his wife will be an obstruction in the way of his prayers, her groaning will accuse him before the Lord even before the words which he foolishly considers a prayer have reached the Throne of Grace. The love and wisdom which the married life requires, especially among Christians, should cause all those that have entered into the blessed state of matrimony to seek wisdom from on high in daily, fervent prayer.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 3, 5, 7 General Information:
General Information:
Peter begins to speak specifically to women who are wives.
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In this way, you who are wives should submit to your own husbands
Just as believers are to "Obey every human authority" (1 Peter 2:13) and servants are to "be subject" to their masters (1 Peter 2:18), wives are to submit to their husbands. The words "Obey," "be subject," and "submit" translate the same word.
some men are disobedient to the word
Here "the word" refers to the gospel message. To disobey means that they do not believe. See how you translated a similar phrase in 1 Peter 2:8. AT: "some men do not believe the message about Jesus" (See: Metonymy)
they may be won
"they may be persuaded to believe in Christ." This means that the unbelieving husbands will become believers. This can be stated in active form. AT: "they may become believers" (See: Idiom and Active or Passive)
without a word
"without the wife saying a word." Here "a word" refers to anything the wife might speak about Jesus.
they will have seen your sincere behavior with respect
The abstract noun "behavior" can be translated with a verb. AT: "they will have seen that you behave sincerely and respectfully" (See: Abstract Nouns)
your sincere behavior with respect
Possible meanings are 1) "your sincere behavior toward them and the way that you honor them" or 2) "your pure behavior toward them and the way that you honor God."
translationWords
submit
disobey
word
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 3, 6, 7 3:1-7 The last of Peter’s three exhortations about accepting…
3:1-7 The last of Peter’s three exhortations about accepting authority (2:13–3:7) concerns wives and husbands (cp. Eph 5:21-33; Col 3:18-19).
3:1 accept the authority of (literally submit to): Wives are instructed to acknowledge that God has appointed the husband as head of the relationship (see 2:13; Eph 5:22-25). Submission in the ancient world took the form of obedience (see 1 Pet 3:6). God also intends the husband to be a loving and respectful head (3:7; see Eph 5:25-30). However, Peter focuses especially on wives with pagan husbands who would potentially be hostile toward their wives’ faith. • without any words: Peter urges Christian wives to evangelize their husbands through their submissive and appropriate behavior.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.