What Does 1 Peter 5:3 Mean?

(3) **Neither as being lords.**—Rather, *nor yet as lording it.* The English version is somewhat too strict for the Greek and for the sense. There is a sense in which the heads of the Church are, and ought to be, lords and princes over the rest; but this is very different from “lording it,” acting tyrannically, forgetting the constitutional rights of their subjects. **Over God’s heritage.**—Quite literally, *Over the lots.* The word first of all means (as in Matthew 27:35 or Acts 1:26) the actual scrap of paper or wood that was tossed. Then it comes to mean (like the word “lot” in the language of auctions) the piece of property that falls by lot to any one’s share. Then all notion of *chance* disappears, and it comes to mean the portion assigned to any one. So St. Peter says that Simon Magus has “no share nor lot in this thing” (Acts 8:21). In Acts 26:18, Colossians 1:12, the same word is rendered “inheritance.” In Acts 17:4, our version endeavours, not very successfully, through the Latin word “consorted,” to keep up the underlying notion of the Greek, which literally is “were *allotted* to Paul and Silas.” Here, therefore, we must understand “the lots,” over which the clergy are not to lord it, to be the different congregations, districts, parishes, dioceses, which had been allotted to them. At the same time it does not at all imply that any process like drawing of lots had been resorted to in their appointment, as is seen from Acts 17:4, just cited. It will be seen that our version is misleading in substituting singular for plural, and in inserting the word “God’s.” The whole flock is God’s (1Peter 5:2), purchased with His own blood; but the “allotments” are the portions assigned by Him to the different clergy. It is some consolation to see, when we groan under the lives and characters of some church officers now, that even in the Apostles’ days cowardice, greed, and self-assertion were not unknown. **Ensamples to the flock.**—The best way of becoming a real prince and lord over men is to show them by example what they ought to do, like Chaucer’s Parson, who— “Cristes lore and hys Apostlis twelve He taught, but fyrst hee practys’d it himselve.” Leighton well quotes from Nazianzen: “Either teach not, or teach by living.”