In the same way, you who are
younger must accept the authority of the elders. And all of you must clothe
yourselves with humility in your dealings with one another, for "God
opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." (1 Pet 5:5 NRSV)
It is common for some Protestants to appeal to clothing imagery as if it is proof of imputation. However, clothing imagery in the Bible and other Jewish-Christian texts is an outward sign of an inward reality. On this, see, for e.g.:
Clothing Imagery, Psalm 109:29, and Romans 5:19: Further Proof that the Reformed Understanding of Imputation is Unbiblical
See also:
Response to a Recent Attempt to Defend Imputed Righteousness
The Petrine text quoted above further refutes the misunderstanding of clothing imagery: Peter is hardly instructing Christians to have the mere appearance of humility; it is to be a inward reality, as even Protestant commentators note:
Humility. For both the older and the younger generation,
humility ought to be the hallmark of Christian living. Peter writes, “All of
you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another.” Is the word all restrictive or comprehensive? In the
restrictive sense it applies to the younger men, so that verse 5a and 5b form
one unit. But this combination leaves the rest of the sentence grammatically
unrelated to the preceding. Most translators, therefore, have opted for the
comprehensive meaning of all. They
have combined verse 5b and 5c, so that 5a forms a separate sentence.
“Clothe
yourselves with humility toward one another.” The Greek gives an interesting
description of the act of putting on humility. The word clothe means to tie a piece of clothing to oneself. For example,
slaves used to knot a white scarf or apron over their clothing to distinguish
themselves from freemen. The suggestion is that Christians ought to tie
humility to their conduct so that everyone is able to recognize them. Peter
exhorts the readers to fasten humility to themselves once for all. In other
words, it stays with them for the rest of their lives.
What is
humility? Jesus invites his followers to learn humility from him. He invites
all those who are weary and burdened to come to him and learn. For, he says, “I
am gentle and humble in heart” (Matt. 11:29). Humility comes to expression when
we consider others better than ourselves (Phil. 2:3). Humility is one of the
Christian virtues, next to compassion, kindness, gentleness, and patience (Col.
3:12). Scripture also warns against false humility, which has the appearance of
wisdom and demonstrates its worthlessness in a show of “self-imposed worship”
(Col. 2:18, 23). And last, Peter instructs his readers how to live as
Christians by telling them, among other things, to “be compassionate and
humble” (3:8). (William
Hendriksen, Exposition of the Epistles of Peter and the Epistle of Jude
[New Testament Commentary 16; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1987],
196)
Peter’s directive to
everyone counters the possibility of blind submission to authority just as it
sabotages all attempts to exercise authority on the basis of status: “Clothe
yourselves with humility.” In antiquity, what one wore was an index of one’s
social position. “One’s garment announces what one is for another, not what one
is in and for oneself.” That Peter would instruct everyone to wear the same
garment, irrespective of its color or quality or texture, is itself already
a startling negation of the social distinctions that among people in Roman
antiquity would have been worn like uniforms in a parade.
But Peter goes much
further, identifying the one garment to be worn by all as “humility”—or,
better, given the relative rarity of the term he uses, as “that way of
thinking, feeling, and acting associated with the lowly.” In his citation of
Prov. 3:34 (“God opposes the arrogant but gives grace to the humble”), Peter
will use a term more at home in the Greek Bible: ταπεινός (tapeinos, “humble, lowly,”
used 77 times in the Greek Bible), but here he uses ταπεινοφροσύνη (tapeinophrosynē, used 7
times in the Greek Bible). Conscripting a word built on the root of one of his
favored terms (φρονέω, phroneō,
“think”), Peter thus concerns himself, and his audience, with a frame of mind
or pattern of thinking that belongs to persons who have done with positioning
themselves in the world’s social hierarchy in order to ensure that they are
treated with appropriate esteem by their social underlings. When so much of life
is directed by the compass of social stratification, with honor and shame the
north and south poles, the consequences of this metamorphosis are practically
infinite. The form of one’s greeting, such gestures as the averting of the eyes
and the raising of the chin, the range of one’s information-sharing, the
material and color of one’s clothing, the nature of economic exchange with
others, one’s treatment before the courts, possibilities for friendship and
matchmaking, invitations to share a meal and the quality of food to place
before others, the obligation to truth-telling, assumptions about seating
arrangements, who can speak to whom and under what conditions—the list of
affected expectations and interactions is practically endless. All these forms
of behavior are set aside in favor of a single disposition within the family of
believers: to comport oneself in ways that esteem others.
In today’s world, care
must be taken lest we assume that the opposite of humility is or can only be
self-promotion or self-assertion. In the world of Peter, believers may have
chafed at their marginal status out of a concern to claim the status that would
have been theirs by heredity, and in the Christian communities to which Peter
addresses himself some may well have (erroneously) positioned themselves above
the rest. In such contexts, pride or arrogance is indeed sinful. Not least on
account of Peter’s assumptions regarding the marginal status of most if not all
of his audience, however, it is worth inquiring into how sin of this nature
might manifest itself in marginalized persons and communities. In fact, among
some, sin can take the form of a numbing of the self just as easily as, among
others, it is displayed as self-assertion—as a failure to embrace one’s
personhood rather than as a predisposition toward extending it at the expense
of others. “To subordinate oneself,” we cannot forget, is the opposite of
“withdrawal,” and is not a form of resignation. It is active engagement. A
world build around social stratification works only if those who are of high
status exhibit disrespect toward those of lower status and if those of low status esteem those of higher status.
Manipulation of others and other forms of coercive behavior, moreover, can be
performed by those who seem to be powerless as well as by those whose power is
more visible and muscular. Seen in this way, “pride” is more pervasive than its
popular identification with machismo
or conceit might suggest. Although sin related to the honor-shame continuum
might be expressed as machismo, it
also has its shadowy sides, as persons at all points of the continuum of power
and privilege refuse to embrace either only
or fully their places as equals
within the household of God.
Peter’s citation of
Prov 3:34 provides further warrant (“for” or “because”) for his admonition to
humility of thought and life. It does so by allowing the antithesis of God’s
behavior toward the arrogant and the humble to demonstrate Peter’s desired
outcome. “Arrogance” is a widely denounced vice—e.g., Sir 10:7: “Arrogance is
hateful to the Lord and to humans.” In a Greco-Roman setting, at least, not the
denouncing of “arrogance” but the opposition of “arrogance” to “humility,” as
if these were the only available options, would have been troubling. It is one
thing to urge against arrogance and ludicrous presumption but quite another to
encourage among all persons slavish ways of thinking and acting in the world;
“humble” describes the enslaved, after all, not the free. Favor (or “grace”) is
due the esteemed, not the lowly. The lowly are the objects of antagonism, not
the esteemed. But Christians are slaves, “slaves of God” (2:16), so “lowly” is
an appropriate descriptor. What is more, if the apportioning of honor is God’s
prerogative, then worldly conventions are neutralized; new canons are in place;
the social order has been rewritten. (Joel
B. Green, 1 Peter [The Two Horizons New Testament Commentary; Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2007], 170-71)
