In my life I don't think that there has been a more heated Bible passage to discuss than 1 Peter 3. Dealing with the roles of husbands and wives and the response Christians should have (and should have had ) to the directions in this passage is a virtual "hornet's nest". Now first off let me just say this...because if you don't get this part there won't be any point for you to continue reading.

When you come to learn from the Bible you should not ignore the context in which it was written. If you treat it as a scientific text book which can have individual parts dissected without there being an effect on the bigger picture you are opening yourself up to a world of potential dangerous errors. One of the best analogies to understand this I read in Donald Miller's book, Searching For God Knows What. In it he basically pointed out that if we treat scripture as merely a list of rules, its like viewing our faith as a formula or a recipe instead of a relationship. What really hit home though was when he asked us to relationally put ourselves in God's position and see how we would feel if someone felt as though if they followed a recipe (i.e. 15 min. of prayer, 20 min of Bible reading, 1 weekly church service) that it would equal a good relationship with God. It was as if you were dating someone and you thought that regardless of everything else if you got her flowers twice, took her to three movies and gave a goodnight kiss that she would be your girlfriend. And I remember honestly feeling that God must often feel almost insulted by how so many approach having a "relationship" with Him.

Submitting is essentially living out the great commandment in relationships. It is about living by the "I'm Third" principle, which basically means that in all you do you put God first, others second and yourselves third. It is essentially an exercise in faith because to truly live that way you must have faith that as you focus on God and others that He will take care of you. Peter's directions to his readers here put this into practice...wives, who had found a new found freedom in their identity in Christ, were reminded of their call to serve. Husbands, were reminded of their need to show respect to their wives (something that could easily be said was not the cultural norm for their society). And everyone was reminded of the example of Christ and how he submitted to all that we should have endured. His example should make us blush in shame before every time we are adamant about asserting our own rights.

Submission may be almost a dirty word in our culture because we're often big on asserting our rights and "getting our own". But submitting to one another is really a sign of deep faith in a loving and powerful God.

1 Peter 3:1