1 Peter 3:2Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

The Apostle has set forth moral teaching for all: for kings, rulers, masters, and servants. For those under authority he laid down as law that they obey kings and rulers, to whom obedience is due and in the matters where it is due. By this he showed that the rulers themselves have in the laws a certain outline and impulse toward justice.

For whatever they do according to the laws, they will not be condemned. But for whatever they do contrary to them, unlawfully, unjustly, and arbitrarily, they will perish. For the law was given to them for the benefit of the peoples, as the Apostle Paul says in Rom 13:4.

It should be noted that blessed Peter wants good and honorable wives to be subject to unbelieving husbands on this condition. They must not only do no harm to their husbands' authority, but also be invincibly steadfast in so pure a life that they serve as an example of purity and faith even for their husbands.

Those who have put on Christ through baptism have vowed to imitate His life in the flesh. Therefore, those who arrange and adorn the hair on their heads with artificial braids, to the harm of those who look, and thereby entice unstable souls, we heal in a fatherly manner by a fitting penance.

We guide them as children and teach them to live chastely. Leaving the deception and vanity of the flesh, they must continually direct the mind toward imperishable and blessed life. They must have a pure manner of life in the fear of God.

The Apostle exhorts Christian wives to conduct their life in purity and fear, that is, not as it was among the Gentiles. Their life must not be the life of slave-wives, fearing their lord-husbands and chiefly caring to please their husbands in everything. No, their life must be life in the fear of God, or, as in the Russian translation, a God-fearing way of life. It consists in the desire of wives, by their purity and holiness, to dispose their husbands also toward the same pure life. Compare Eph 5:21-33.

See verse 1. Besides submission to husbands, the Apostle sets purity and the fear of God as characteristic marks of such a life. These two qualities are especially attractive in women.

The duties of wives and husbands (1 Pet 3:1-8). To the former the Apostle commands submission to their husbands, so that by meekness and a pure life they may have a good influence on them. They are to adorn themselves not with outward braiding of hair or ornaments of gold, but with inward qualities of the heart, like the holy women, for example Sarah, who obeyed Abraham. To husbands he commands prudent and meek conduct toward their wives, as toward the weaker vessel and as toward fellow heirs of the life of grace.

Having defined the civic relations of Christians, the Apostle Peter now gives counsel concerning family life, which is first ordered by wives. He counsels them to obey their husbands and generally to live in the fear of God, since by this they can dispose their husbands toward Christianity.

Knowing women’s usual passion for finery, the Apostle counsels them to adorn themselves not with perishable beauty, but with spiritual beauty, that is, purity of heart. They should adorn themselves with what is especially precious before God: meekness and obedience, imitating the righteous wife of Abraham and other holy women.

“Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they behold your pure and God-fearing conduct.”

As above the Apostle required Christians living among pagans to obey authorities and masters, so he also requires wives likewise to obey their husbands, even if these husbands are pagans. Of course, it was not easy for Christian wives to live with pagan husbands, to witness their superstitions, their worship before idols, and perhaps to endure oppression from them for the faith. Yet none of this was to hold wives back from obedience to their husbands.