- As Husbands: (3:7): Peter exhorts the husbands to be considerate. He says, live with them, treat them as equal with respect not as a competitor, share your life and be as co-heirs of the precious gift of life. Then there will be no hindrance of prayer.
It would be better for both husband and wife to ask a few questions to make their married life more meaningful. Here are the questions (taken from BE series of BE hopeful)
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- Are we partners or competitors?
- Are we helping each other to become more spiritual?
- Are we depending on the externals or the eternals? The artificial or the real?
- Do we understand each other better?
- Are we sensitive to each other’s feelings and ideas, or taking each other for granted?
- Are we seeing God’s answer in our prayers?
- Are we enriched because of our marriage, or robbing each other of God’s blessing?
Believers are exhorted to suffer for doing good: (3:8-22)
A devoted pastor was facing serious surgery, and a friend visited him in the hospital to pray with him. “An interesting thing happened today,” the pastor told him. “One of the nurses looked at my chart and said, ‘Well, I guess you’re preparing for the worst!’ I smiled at her and said, ‘No, I’m preparing for the best. I’m a Christian, and God has promised to work all things together for good.’ Boy, did she drop that chart and leave this room in a hurry!”
Peter gives 5-keys that would characterize any group of believers: (3:8)
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- Harmony: pursuing the same goals
- Sympathy: being responsive to others’ needs.
- Love: seeing and treating each other as brothers and sisters.
- Compassion: being affectionately sensitive and caring.
- Humility: being kind to encourage one another and rejoice in each other’s
To cultivate Christian love, every believers must practice the following:
- We must deliberately decide to love life: (3:10a): This is an act of the will: “He who wills to love life.” It is an attitude of faith that sees the best in every situation. Peter is asking all the believers to take a positive approach to life and by faith make the most of every situation.
- We must control our tongues:(3:10b): Many of the problems of life are caused by the wrong words, spoken in the wrong spirit. Every Christian should read (Jam.3:1-12) regularly and pray. There is no place for lies in the life of a saint.
- We must do good and hate evil (3:11): We must hate sin and refrain from it not just because sin is wrong but because we are the children of God and consecrated people. We must shun it and hate it.
- We must seek and pursue peace (3:11b): “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God” (Matt. 5:9). If we go out and seek trouble, we will find it; but if we seek peace, we can find it as well. This does not mean “peace at any price,” because righteousness must always be the basis for peace (Jam.3:13-18). Whenever we feel disgusted or down with the things happening in our lives we must read (Psa.34).