Modesty — Prescribed by God

 

Whenever I start with any topic, especially ones that are not so clearly laid out, I also check to make sure that it is something that God cares about through His Word.  Modesty is no different.

Modesty is used a decent amount of times in the ESV translation (and others), yet it’s when you really dig deep into the Word that you see it throughout the entire Bible.  From Genesis to Revelation, I am almost positive that I could find some sort of mention in each of the sixty-six books.  That’s because modesty is so much more than just how we dress, and it is most definitely prescribed by God.  That also means that it applies to women of all ages, not just the teenagers or 20-somethings as most of our society is concerned with today.

Let’s start from the beginning:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…”  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.  And God blessed them.  (Genesis 1:26-28a)

God created us.  More so, he created us with dignity, with love, and with authority over the Earth.  We were given high value.  Our lives were important to him, and this is where our worth comes from.  I don’t think I could ever talk about modesty without addressing our worth.  You always hear people talk about self-worth or self-confidence, worth and confidence based on what we think of ourselves.  However, our worth as being one of the Creator’s is that we have an amazing God-worth!  We have confidence in his promises!  And most of all, we don’t need self-love because no one could ever love us more than God; we have God-love!

God also cared about us before we were born:

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb.  I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.  My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.  Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. (Psalms 139:13-16)

Look at the way the writer describes us as being made.  He “formed” and “knitted.”  God actively made us.  Just as he created Adam and Eve, he created you and me.  God made each of us to be just as we are.

Not only did he create us, but he has authority over us:

For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's.  (Romans 14:7-8)

Furthermore, our bodies are our “temple:”

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. (Romans 12:1)

I include all of this when writing about modesty, because I want to make sure that we all understand that the way that we live, including how we dress, is all created and given by God.  Furthermore, we are God’s and we are to make sure that we dress our bodies in a way that is pleasing to God as a form of worship to God.  Our dress is not an expression of who we are but who we are in Christ.  We don’t express individuality, we express Christ.  That is not to say that we can’t dress fashionably or uniquely; I am definitely not advocating a dress code like the Amish or other religious groups.  But we have to remember that we are God’s, bought and paid for by Christ, and we should want to please the one that loves us and cares for us more than any other.  And we must remember he has the authority, not us.

So yes, I believe God has very specifically prescribed modesty for each of his children.  To some of you, this might be preaching to the choir, but I cannot write on any of this further without creating a solid foundation in Christ.  Really, I can’t write anything without creating a solid foundation in Christ.

And if you still don’t believe me that God cares about how we dress, check out Exodus 28.  It is forty-three verses of what a priest was to wear when they went to “the tent of meeting or… came near the alter to minister” (v. 43).  While we do not have to follow these specific guidelines, this shows you how much God cared about what his chosen people were to wear down to very specific requirements.  Since we are not all priests to the Israelites and have those important roles to fill, we can be more creative in what we choose to wear, but the fact remains that God still cares about how we, as one of his Children, dress.

Join me next week as we look into how modesty glorifies God!

through His grace alone!

Sarah

A Look Inside:  I wasn’t kidding when I said I had a lot of Bible verses about modesty.  On this blog post alone, I had three more pages of just verses that I was trying to decide upon besides the ones that I chose.  And that’s not including the rest of the series that I have plans for!