Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Peter · About this commentary
Servants and Unjust Masters
1 Peter 2:18-20
18 Servants, be in subjection to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the wicked. · WEB
The instruction is addressed to the party with no power, and the letter is careful to say that what is being endured is genuinely unjust.
Household servants are addressed directly, which already says something: they are treated as members of the congregation capable of a decision, not as property to be instructed through an owner.
The hard phrase is not only to the good and gentle but also to the unreasonable. The letter does not pretend the second kind is rare, and it does not tell anyone the treatment is deserved or secretly beneficial. Verse 19 calls it suffering unjustly, in so many words, and verse 20 distinguishes a beating taken for wrongdoing — for which no credit is claimed — from suffering for doing good.
That distinction is what keeps the passage from endorsing the arrangement. An instruction that had approved of the institution would not need to say the suffering is unjust; it would explain why it is not.
What makes the endurance commendable is named precisely: conscious of God. The endurance is not owed to the master and is not a judgment about him. It is directed past him, which is the only thing that could make bearing it something other than defeat.
And the letter is about to ground all of it in the one case where an innocent man was treated worst of all, which is why this instruction and the next block cannot be separated 1 Peter 2:21–23.
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