Mark

Hi Cheryl,

I’ve jsut recently read through 1 Pet and thought i’d see what archives you had on it.

I found it interesting with the overarching theme of ‘suffering’ in 1 Peter that the slaves/masters paradigm essentially is addressing slaves submitting to their masters EVEN IF they are ill treated (suffering essentially).

I then found it interesting that the wife/husband paradigm is between a believing wife and unbelieving husband. Even then she is still told to submit to her husband. Imagine that, a believing wife told to submit to an unbelieving husband-profound. It is also interesting how she is told not to ‘fear’, so it seems the same suffering theme applies. A Christian woman is likely to suffer due to her faith from an unbelieving husband no doubt.

Now that is truly counter cultural. A Christian woman told to submit to a man who does not cherish Christ- that would be hard work, but as Peter saids “it is precious in the sight of God.” Imagine an egalitarian calling a woman to do that!

So i wonder how you feel about the call of Peter for a woman to submit even to an unbelieving husband. I think if we understood truly the ability of what our ‘actions’ (in this case a wife’s submission) can achieve our walk would be different. Her submission in essence could ‘win him over’ to Christ wihtout a ‘word’- praise God!

I wonder how ‘reciprocal’ submission (Egal Eph 5) applies here. Does it even apply, or can it apply since the husband is an unbeliever? Perhaps this will shed some light on EPh 5 where BOTH parties are believers. How can this ‘submission’ be reciprocal when one is not a follower of Jesus? I’ll leave that for you to try and answer. Look forward to it!