1 Peter 3:8-16

The injunctions on the subject of the blamelessness of conduct by which Christians should be distinguished in their political, civil, and domestic relations, are now succeeded by a train of exhortations of a wider kind. These are given in as rich detail as the former. They are addressed to all believers without distinction, and without special reference to the particular orders of life which are indicated by the terms subjects, slaves, wives, husbands. They are given, nevertheless, in connection with the same general inculcation of seemliness of conduct (chap. 1 Peter 2:11-12), of which those other counsels were applications; and they express, therefore, various broad and general elements in the kind of life by which gainsayers are to be silenced. Heathen eyes would be keen and jealous scrutineers of what Christians were, not only in their attitude to magistracies, their ideas on the rights of property, their mode of life within the sacred circle of the home, but also in the whole compass of their relations to each other and to the world outside. So we have here in the first place a bird's-eye view of what they ought to be among themselves, and then, in larger outline, a picture of what they ought to be in face of the hostility of surrounding heathenism. The former subject is briefly dealt with. The latter is unfolded at length, and is enforced by appeal both to general principles and to Christ's example.