1 Peter 3:7

Ye husbands, in like manner, dwell with your wives according to knowledge, giving honor unto the woman, as unto the weaker vessel, as being also joint-heirs of the grace of life; to the end that your prayers be not hindered.

In Christianity, obligations are never a one-way street, but reciprocal by nature. If slaves have obligations, so do their masters; if children have duties toward their parents, so do parents have duties toward their children; if wives have duties to fulfill, so do their husbands. This is noticed extensively in Ephesians and Colossians where such duties are spelled out reciprocally for all of the classes here mentioned; but the principle is extended infinitely to include all obligations where human relationships are involved.

Dwell with your wives according to knowledge ... Macknight translated this, "Husbands cohabit with your wives according to knowledge,"[10] which, in the light of the probable meaning of next to the last clause, appears to be the likely meaning of it.

As unto the weaker vessel ... Modern women resent such a view as this; but the unanimous opinion of all mankind for centuries confirms it as a fact. Plato said, "Lighter tasks are to be given to women than to men because of the weakness of their sex";[11] and as long as golf courses have one set of rules for men and another for women, every country club on earth bears continual witness to it. In those lands where women do not enjoy the chivalrous preference and honor which Christianity has brought to them, their status is invariably one of progressive reduction and oppression. In turning away from Christianity and staking all of their hopes upon a newly won legal status, the great mass of womankind will eventually find that they have been woefully short-changed and cheated.

Giving honor unto the woman ... The honor given to women through obedience to this great Christian ethic cannot fail to be forfeited through acceptance of the current temptation of women to rely, not upon this chivalrous honor which God through his gospel has conferred upon them, but upon a projected legal status which they view as giving them something better; whereas there is nothing better than the holy reverence that Christians have for the person and personality of women, and particularly their wives. This honor has been manifested in many small things, such as offering women seats in crowded rooms, or removing hats in elevators (things which have certainly gone out of style); but they were signs of a deeper respect and reverence for women which were essential features of the Christian ethic toward women. Of course, it could be that the respect and reverence continue without their external indicators; but it may well be feared that these too have gone out of style. For the Christian, the loving appreciation and holy regard for women can never go out of style, because they are firmly grounded in the word of the apostles, as in this verse.

As being joint-heirs of the grace of life ... The meaning usually given to this clause makes "the grace of life" to be that of eternal life; and, of course, this is frequently the meaning of it throughout the New Testament; however, such a view of it here would make a pagan husband a joint-heir with his wife, of eternal life; and that cannot be true. It would seem better, then, to understand it as did Mason:

The grace of life is life in the natural sense, the mysterious and divine gift (not apart from one another, but conjointly), which they are privileged by the Creator's primeval benediction (Genesis 1:28) to transmit. They have the power no archangel has, to bring human beings into existence.[12]

To the end that your prayers be not hindered ... As Kelcy noted, "This is an illustration of the fact that one cannot be right with God when his relations with another human being are wrong."[13]

[10] James Macknight, Macknight on the Epistles, Vol. V (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, reprint, 1969), p. 473.

[11] Plato, as quoted by Archibald M. Hunter, op. cit., p. 124.

[12] A. J. Mason, op. cit., p. 415.

[13] Raymond C. Kelcy, The Letters of Peter and Jude Austin, Texas: R. B. Sweet Company, 1972), p. 67.