1 Peter 3:1

ὁμοίως. In accordance with the same principle of submission to God’s ordinances for mankind. The wife, like the slave, was raised to new dignity by the Gospel; and, especially in cases where the husband remained a heathen while the wife had become a Christian, the duty of submission to marital authority needed to be consecrated and ennobled by its recognition as part of God’s will.

In Ephesians 5:22-24 St Paul regards marriage as the earthly picture of the union between Christ and the Church. The husband’s duty therefore is loving self-sacrifice and the wife’s is reverent submission.

St Peter however shows no trace of this among the thoughts which he borrows from Ephesians. In Colossians 3:18 St Paul merely describes the submission of wives to their own husbands as “fitting in the Lord.” In 1 Corinthians 7 he urges a Christian wife not to seek separation from a heathen husband if he is willing to live with her in peace, and one reason for this is that she may be the means of converting her husband.

τοῖς ἰδίοις�. The insertion of ἰδίοις here and in Ephesians 5:22 and Titus 2:5 is not an implied warning against unfaithfulness, but states the husband’s claim. “Submit because they are bound to you by special ties.”

Deissmann, Bib. Stud. p. 123, argues that in the LXX. ἴδιος is often used to translate the possessive pronoun (suffix) and sometimes where the Heb. has no possessive at all. So in late Greek and Inscriptions, etc., it is used merely as equivalent to ἑαυτοῦ or ἑαυτῶν, cf. 1 Corinthians 7:2. But J. H. Moulton, Gram. p. 87 ff., thinks that the sense of “own” is retained in many passages in the N.T.

ἀπειθοῦσιν τῷ λόγῳ. The same phrase was used in 1 Peter 2:8, ἀπειθεῖν implies more than mere disbelief (ἀπιστία). It is used in the LXX. to represent Hebrew words meaning to despise or to rebel. So here some husbands are described as deliberately setting themselves against the truth.

κερδηθήσονται. The future indicative is read by the best MSS. instead of the subjunctive in the T.R. There are several instances of a future indicative after ἵνα in the N.T. (see Winer-Moulton Gram. p. 361), sometimes in the same sentence with a subjunctive, e.g. Revelation 22:14. The indicative cannot, however, be pressed as implying a more certain result than the subjunctive.

ἄνευ λόγου. A.V. and R.V. without the word. The absence of the article however denotes some distinction from τῷ λόγῳ in the preceding clause. The meaning is that deeds speak louder than words, and the constant spectacle of the wife’s conduct will be a silent witness to the truth of Christianity, with the power to win over the husband without any spoken testimony or argument. For κερδαίνειν of winning a person, cf. Matthew 18:15 and 1 Corinthians 9:19.