Verse 18
Servants be in subjection to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward.
In subjection to your masters ... Peter's instructions here are in full harmony with Paul's instructions to the Ephesians and the Colossians (Ephesians 5:6ff; Colossians 3:22ff). "The sacred writers use language of studied moderation, carefully avoiding any expressions which might be regarded as exciting to violence or revolutionary outbreaks."[47] Of course, Christianity was squarely opposed to the institution of slavery; but there were considerations of the most weighty nature that forbade any such thing as a campaign against it. Such an attack would have intensified the persecutions coming upon the church; and equally important is the fact that any overt championship of the cause of the slaves would have promptly inundated the church with a whole army of unregenerated persons, seeking not Christ, but their freedom from slavery. It was Christ's purpose to change the world, but not with dynamite; the holy faith acts as leaven.
But also to the froward ... Peter took into account the two kinds of slavemasters, the good and the bad, cautioning the slaves to give loyal and true service to both kinds, because that was God's will. Up to here, Peter had only vaguely mentioned the suffering coming upon the church, but in this he passed to "a class who were (already) sufferers indeed, the slaves of the household."[48] "Froward is an archaic English word that has a literal meaning of crooked, perverse, unreasonable, or cross-grained."[49] Even such wicked masters were to be honored and faithfully served by the Christians who were slaves.
[47] B. C. Caffin, op. cit., p. 74.
[48] J. R. Dummelow, Commentary on the Holy Bible (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1937), p. 1044.
[49] Elmer C. Homrighausen, The Interpreter's Bible, Vol. XIII (New York and Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1957), p. 117.
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