About This Guide: This weekly groups guide, “Living Hope: Words of Life for Challenging Days — Eight Weeks in First Peter,” is designed as a companion to Living Hope, our Fall 2021 teaching series, fostering discussion, study, and prayer, especially in a group setting. Join a group for a meaningful way to connect to our community.
home reveals our inner life
Teaching Text: 1 Peter 3:1-12
Wives, in the same way submit yourselves to your own husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes.
Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to adorn themselves. They submitted themselves to their own husbands, like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her lord. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.
Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.
Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.
For, “Whoever would love life and see good days must keep their tongue from evil and their lips from deceitful speech. They must turn from evil and do good; they must seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”
Themes
Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:
The horror of household codes to modern ears.
Dignity and empowerment to the oppressed.
The revealing of our inner lives.
Hindered prayers.
Love with compassion and humilitythe horror of household codes to modern ears.
Dignity and empowerment to the oppressed.
The revealing of our inner lives.
Hindered prayers.
Love with compassion and humility.
Presence
Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:
One of the greatest spiritual practices we are given is the ability to be present in a consistent way. Practice being present with God and with one another. Here are some ideas:
Create 2-4 minutes of silence and mediate on a scripture.
Psalm 30: You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, that my heart may sing your praises and not be silent. Lord my God, I will praise you forever.
Discuss this question:
What wailing or sorrows do you carry right now that you want God to redeem for joy?
Formation
Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:
How does this text shape how we think and look at the world we are in?
When we are suffering we need to remember who we are, need a way to get persecutive on our pain, and need to know that it isn’t the end of the story.
Peter is saying look: home reveals our hearts, there is a Jesus way in all our relationships, and God is the one who will judge.
Context of the text:
Taking a familiar song and changing it is a little bit like what Peter is doing here.
The Roman Empire had conquered the world through its military might, but following close behind was its culture and ideology and social norms.
They worked to impose Greco-Roman culture on all the world.
That meant the philosophers and thinkers of the empire would address the “Roman Way” across all of society.
We find ourselves bristling at Peter and Paul’s words in the New Testament and how they strike our modern ears, but they were arriving when written in a specific context.
That context in many ways was like a song that most everyone knew and so we need to see where they simply upheld what the culture put forward and where they differed from it.
Where they differed is going to communicate a lot. It is like changing the words of a song everyone knew.
Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Plutarch all wrote or extensively referenced household codes in their writings.
The ways a man, a woman, a child, a servant should be in the home.
There is great historical evidence that a new religion entering the Empire would be judged on how it addressed these codes as they were seen as essential for maintaining social order.
The Egyptian Isis cult in particular encountered violent resistance for asserting a woman could hold authority over her husband.
This is the world Peter and Paul were writing into and to communities already experiencing persecution.
Peter does know that how we will in our most everyday, familiar relationships says a lot about us.
Home reveals the heart:
Peter is saying there is a way to live even in the difficultly of our moment where you can win over the heart of your unbelieving husband to the true God.
“While some modern interpreters consider the New Testament household codes to be hopelessly chauvinistic, they fail to read the codes against their contemporary literature, which shows that the New Testament writers actually subverted cultural expectations by elevating the slave and the wife with unparalleled dignity.” —Karen Jobes
“When read within its original historical setting, these verses become a call to social transformation within the Christian community, allowing it to become an alternate society based on God’s redemptive plan. The Christian’s willingness to suffer unjustly out of reverence for God in order to follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ is a radical break with social expectations of that day just as it is in our own day.” —Karen Jobes
How do you respond to suffering unjustly?
Peter to husbands is saying if you use your physical strength or place of authority in society to mistreat your wife your prayers will not be heard by God.
That’s a pretty powerful warning when the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls overturned table in the temple because it had drifted from being a house of prayer for all nations.
“Christian marriage is understood as a lifelong commitment in an exclusive one-flesh union that mirrors the profound mystery of Christ and the church (5:32). On this model of Christ’s love for his church and the church’s submission to Christ, marital love is understood as the resolve to live one’s entire life totally committed to the well-being of one’s spouse in every decision. When “submission” of the wife becomes the central issue, the image of Christian marriage has already been distorted.” —Karen Jobes
This whole section is showing us that there is a Jesus way in all our relationships.
Peter gives us something of a summary:
Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. This is the startling invitation of love in a broken world.
Peter was calling for a revolution. But not a once in a generation revolution of violent overthrow. And not the trampled underfoot weakness of being consumed into the surrounding cultural so there is no difference. But an alternative way of love rooted in Jesus. And a hope that ultimately God is the judge.
Psalm 34: “Whoever would love life and see good days must keep their tongue from evil and their lips from deceitful speech. They must turn from evil and do good; they must seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”
Roots their hope and roots their confidence.
Hope that God sees and makes promises.
Confidence that God will sort out the world and make it right.
Love
Read these notes and discuss the questions below:
John 15:13: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
Love in this passage is revealed to often look like willingness to suffer and serve.
If home reveals the heart… Look at your home life(or those relationships closest to you) and examine the condition of your heart.
How are my closest relationships? How is my heart towards those close to me? Is there conflict that you want to invite jesus into? Is there a way you can embrace sacrifice or suffering that could show them the way and love of Jesus?
Pray for one another in the group.
