Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - 1 Peter 3:1 - 3:1
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
B. SOCIAL DUTIES. 1Pe 2:13 to 1Pe 3:12
13 This warfare against heathen principles of living does not mean the subversion of the necessary bonds of society. Rather it deepens and intensifies them. God has instituted various forms of authority among men, and to those you must submit yourselves for His sake.
(a) 14 TO CIVIL RULERS, whether it be to the king as supreme ruler in the Empire or to subordinate magistrates, as officers sent (by God) through the agency of the king to execute vengeance upon evil-doers but to commend well-doers. 15 For this is one of the ways of God’s own working. His will is that by well-doing men should silence the purblind calumnies of the senseless sort of men who attack them. 16 In submitting to such institutions you will not be reverting to the old yoke of slavery from which you were ransomed. You will only be obeying “the law of liberty.” Instead of acting like men who misuse their liberty as a cloak of their malice, you will be acting as the bond-servants of God (“whose service is perfect freedom”). 17 It is your duty in general to honour all men, in particular to love your brethren in Christ, to fear God, to honour the king.
18 The same principle applies to all your social relationships.
(b) HOUSEHOLD SLAVES (despite the fact that in Christ there is neither bond nor free) must, with a full sense of the fear of God, submit themselves to their masters, and that not only to those who are good and considerate but also to those who are unfair or capricious. 19 For if a man recognizes his service as part of God’s discipline for him, and for that reason submits to the hardships of unjust treatment, God will approve (or thank him for) his conduct. 20 I say “unjust treatment” for there is nothing heroic in submitting to be buffeted for actual faults. But if you have to suffer in spite of doing good work and bear it patiently, such conduct does find favour with God (or even His “Well done”), 21 because you will be responding to God’s call which was to follow Christ. He also suffered on your behalf, and in all His sufferings He left you an outline sketch to fill in by following in the track of His footsteps. 22 He was the ideal sufferer described in Isaiah 53, “He did no sin,” “No deceit was found in His mouth.” 23 When I saw Him being reviled He was not reviling in reply. When He was being ill-treated He was not threatening vengeance. No, He was all through committing His cause to God whose verdict is always just (however unjust man’s sentence may be). In His own Person “He bore our sins.” 24 When His Body was offered up upon the Cross our sins “laid upon Him” were included in it. Sins therefore ought to find no place in us. Christ died as our sin-bearer in order that we might regard ourselves as dead to sin and break off all connexion with sins and live (as risen with Him) to righteousness. By His precious scars you Gentiles were healed. For the prophet’s words are true of you. 25 You were straying like lost sheep, but now in your conversion you returned to the good Shepherd, who was all along watching over your souls though you knew it not.