‘Household servants, be in subjection to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the harsh.'
The fact that instructions were given to household servants/slaves would have been startling to the ancient world. The general view was that it was masters who should be instructed on how to behave towards their servants, not slaves towards their masters. Slaves and servants had no say in the matter. But the Gospel turns things upside down. Peter, like Paul, gives the servants status, and puts them in the position of being those who could make a choice, thus increasing their own self-respect, and enabling them to recognise that they did have control over their own lives, even if they were slaves or menial servants.
His advice is provided to servants within a household, whether slave or free. They are to be obedient to their masters and treat them with due respect because they themselves (the servants) walk in the fear of God. And this not only to be towards the good and gentle but towards all, even those who are harsh, unfair or difficult to please. By this means they would be taking charge of their own lives and demonstrating that, although they were ‘God's freedmen', they still fulfilled their own duties and responsibilities as servants because they were obedient to Jesus Christ. This would then also bring Christianity into favour. And who knew whether by so doing they might win their masters for Christ? (Compare 1 Peter 3:1). And after all to behave as good servants was a part of their calling (Matthew 20:26-27).
By this means also they would avoid bringing Christianity into disrepute by being seen as encouragers of bad or insolent behaviour or of lawlessness. It would prevent their own behaviour as recognised Christians from being a bad witness and as a result causing problems for other Christian slaves, who might become tainted by any bad example, and it would demonstrate that the love of God towards their masters was active in their lives. It would be a living out of what they taught and believed (Matthew 5:42-48).
And it would actually, in fact, help to ensure their own wellbeing, and the well-being of fellow-Christian servants. For on the one hand recalcitrant behaviour might well have resulted in Christian slaves being unnecessarily banned from attending Christian meetings, on the grounds that such meetings were subversive and produced bad servants, while on the other good behaviour might well have the opposite effect. Once masters discovered that becoming a Christian produced a good servant, they would be delighted for their servants to become Christians.
Normally in fact no master of those times would have been expected to discourage his servants from worshipping their own gods for it was recognised that even slaves must have time off to worship such gods (which many took advantage of for their own benefit), while to fail to provide them with the opportunity might bring the wrath of the god on themselves. But it would be quite another thing if such worship was found to produce insolent behaviour from one who felt superior because he considered that he was a ‘citizen of Heaven', and therefore felt that he was too important to be expected to serve.