Why do we wear what we wear? The truth is, the clothes we put on communicate who we are and where our heart is. So here’s the question we must answer: Do we seek to flaunt ourselves, or do we portray humble modesty before God and our fellow man? Putting the matter simply—do we love God and our neighbor as ourselves in how we dress, or are we consumed with love of self instead?

In this podcast, Scott Brown and Jason Dohm, joined by special guest Gavin Beers, explain how that our need for clothing points to our need for Christ. Fallen man seeks to cover the shame of his sin—as our first parents did in the Garden. Yet Adam and Eve’s paltry fig leaves were not enough. Only the perfect Lamb of God can truly cover our transgression with His robes of righteousness. Our physical clothing points to this spiritual reality and should inform how we dress as Christians today.

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. We have Gavin Beers with us to talk about this whole subject of modesty. Of course, the Bible has a lot to say about clothing and modesty is a very, very small part of it. But we're here to talk about some of the breadth of meaning of the doctrine of clothing. And it's great to have Gavin with us.

Gavin is a pastor at Cornerstone Presbyterian Church in Burlington, North Carolina, a great friend, preacher at our conferences, and man, it's just so good to have him here. Okay, so Jason, Gavin just returned from street preaching. He was preaching the gospel, but you can't imagine where he was preaching the gospel from. Well, I heard it, so I can't imagine. You can't imagine.

Yeah. So Gavin, I mean, we're here to talk about the doctrine of clothing and modesty and all that. But you, I mean, just like an hour ago, you were preaching on this subject on the street in North Carolina. Yeah, I started at the beginning with the fall and the sense of guilt and shame that Adam had that was connected with nakedness and the fear of God that came into his heart at that point and how everything changed with the entrance of sin, that they were naked and not ashamed, But now they were naked and ashamed, and it's not just talking there of physical nakedness. It was like a sign.

This physical nakedness was a new sign of the sense of his nakedness before God. And of course the gospel addresses that in the covering that is provided through Christ and His righteousness. So they covered themselves and then God covered them. Talk about that. Yeah, they did.

They had an instinct to cover themselves because they sensed they were naked. It's always interesting to me that it was a very minimalistic covering that they went for. And the Lord said, no, that's not going to do. And he kills the animal and he takes the skin. And the idea of the tunic there is from like shoulder down to knee or something like that.

It's like God saying, no, your works are like these little aprons, but I'm going to cover you completely through death and atonement and righteousness. So God is the one who has to answer the problem of our sin and our nakedness and guilt before him. Yeah, right at the beginning of the Bible, you have this, this whole metaphor of clothing to help us to understand how good God is in covering our shame. Yeah, there's Ezekiel chapter 16 where you have this infant cast out to the loathing of its person. It's naked, abandoned, umbilical cord not cut.

And God says, I passed by and your time was the time of love. And then he washes and he nurtures this infant and then he clothes her that the shame of her nakedness would not appear. And of course it's a beautiful, It's an image of God calling Israel initially, but from that, of course, we see the picture of the gospel where God finds us in our sin, helpless, cast out, condemned, hated, naked, And he swaddles us and nourishes us and clothes us and even, you know, connected to modesty, he beautifies us. You know, it's very ornate the way that he clothes this infant whom he saves. You know, there are many hymns that bring this whole thing out.

Rock of Ages may be one of the most famous. Naked, I come to thee for dress. Yeah, I'm familiar with it. Helpless look to thee for grace, all I to the fountain fly. Yeah, you have that, of course, it is that scriptural image.

You know that in our church we sing psalm, so my mind goes there. Psalm 45, you know, the beauty of the bride who comes to Christ. She's robed with needle work and beautified and all the virgins follow her. And this is the one who has forsaken all to come to Christ who beautifies her and then her beauty is delightful to him. And we get those images picked up of course in Revelation as well.

Yeah, the bride is so beautiful in Revelation. Interesting, you know, I was preaching through Revelation a few months ago, the harlot is dressed somewhat like the bride, but the bride is actually beautiful. And the harlot will be slain. Yeah, two contrasts there in that section, Scott, you know, you've got the false church is a city. Mystery Bible on the Great is a woman, a harlot.

And the true church is a city, a new Jerusalem coming down from heaven and she's also a woman, a bride adorned for her husband. Yeah. Yeah. We've had a couple of discussions or podcasts about clothing, dress, modesty now. And the thing that is striking me sitting here is, I don't know, we're six minutes in or something like that.

And there's been no talk of cleavage or mini skirts, you know. It's so common when clothing and modesty is on the table to just skip right to that as if there's nothing more at stake than just not showing flesh. Obviously not showing flesh is part of the discussion, but it's not the discussion. Yeah. Why clothing?

For beauty and glory. Exodus 28. Hey, let's talk about the whole matter of clothing in the law, because you have, you have the ceremonial law and the law of the priests, you know, and then you have, you know, other things. Let's just talk about the clothing in the law. Yeah, you've got general commands in the law.

And it's always. Struck me that where you have the the moral prohibitions in terms of. You know. Who you can marry, how close to a person you can marry. That sexual intimacy there is referred to as uncovering the nakedness.

And so you've got this intimate thing of nakedness and there are confines to it. So you've got that general idea where nakedness is brought in. And then you've got those other aspects of the ceremonial law where clothes are for beauty and for glory, and particularly with the priesthood they are typical of the beauty and glory of Christ. But yet with the priest's garments you have the practical instruction that he's to wear these long shorts, I suppose we could call them, so that when he's working around the altar, that his nakedness does not appear. And so even in these garments, which are so typical of Christ, you've got, well, okay, here's a practical issue that you need to address as well.

I wouldn't argue there's anything typical about that, But it's very practical. It's to preserve modesty, which would be in agreement with the whole tenor of the law. This man is to be holy as the Lord is holy. And therefore, Yeah, modesty would be a big thing he would need to preserve in his ministry. Yeah, he's to cover up even if someone were looking up or as he's ascending, you know, the stairs, this type of thing.

And again, he's a man, Scott, you know, where we tend to think of, well, this is a woman thing. Right, yeah. Most of what the Bible says about modesty isn't like what you were talking about, skirt lengths and cleavage. It does include that, but it's, you know, most of the texts are addressed to both men and women. You have this principle, don't you, that even going back to Genesis chapter three, everything has changed with the entrance of sin.

That the same thing is now different. You know, the man and the woman are equally naked, they're equally unashamed, and now sin has brought in a perversion of our hearts so that the same thing for each person, man and woman, is now a shameful thing if it's not found in a particular context. And, you know, the male-female thing is interesting because there is truth that men and women are different. And men tend to get the bad press on this one, they're more visual and therefore attracted to physical form and that immodesty would be a greater problem to them. But sometimes when we speak of that, it's almost as if it's not a problem to women and that women are to dress in a certain way to protect men and there's truth in that as well.

But modesty has to begin with who we are before God, irrespective if we're men or women. It's we're sinners before God and he requires us to wear clothing for a particular purpose, not in our fallen state. It is interesting that both the man and the woman are clothed the same way, but you kind of have these double standards out there. Like, for example, if you would say a woman should be covered from her shoulders to her knees, well, a man doesn't have to do that at the beach. I mean, he can tear off his shirt and be unclothed.

You know, what are your thoughts about that? Well, I think it's separated from history. I think it was up until about the 1920s or 30s in this country. If a man had his t-shirt off at the beach, it would have been a civil offense. So sometimes we speak from the age we live in, which is dislocated from everything else.

And as a result, we don't have the proper perspective on things. We have a common pastor friend, he's pastoring down in Fayetteville. Their family would go to the beach every summer. Extended family, so, you know, entrenched family tradition. And this five-year-old son one year says, Dad, why is everybody in their underwear?

Of course, it's not underwear. In some cases, it's less than we wear in terms of our underwear, but because it's the beach and because these things are entrenched in how we grew up, we don't think of it that way. But if somebody was dressed that way, you know, in downtown, it would seem very out of place, but because it's out of the beach, it's in place. Yeah, I remember when I became a Christian and before that, these things were never in my mind. And it then became an issue.

And I would speak to Christians who hadn't even thought about this. And this was just normal. It wasn't deemed anything that Christians should be different in. I remember thinking, and it's not an image that I want to conjure up in people's minds, but I challenged a lady on this question. I said, if I happened to accidentally burst into your bedroom when you were changing and you were wearing your underwear, you would start screaming, get out, get out.

And your instinct would be to cover over. But you put a pattern on it. You called it a bikini. And now you walk by on the beach with it, you know, can you not see there's a problem in your thinking? And then the Lord's mercy, the woman understood what I was saying.

So here's a classic New Testament text on the topic. It's 1 Peter 3, 3 and 4, where Paul writes, I do not let your adornment be merely outward, arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel. Rather, let it be the hidden person of the heart with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God. So Gavin, I think you were sort of getting at this earlier. The things that we ought to be known by as sons and daughters of God are internal things.

And even setting immodesty aside, the way that we can dress, even if it's not immodest, can make us known for very external things. And Paul is calling for something very different here, that our adornment wouldn't be merely outward or just outward, but that we would be known for an incorruptible beauty that God is able to give us. Yeah, I think it's vital. We have a legalistic tendency. So even when Christians are starting to move in the right direction in their thinking about issues of modesty.

We can fall into a kind of checklist Christianity, well, got the right skirt length, things are covered and so forth. But with the whole of our sanctification, it has to be from the inward out. And even if you take the word modesty, it actually roots the whole discussion in an inward disposition, because modesty is first a spirit that we should have, you know, contrary to say pride be linked with humility. You know, we talk of a modest person, person who's not showing off. Yeah.

So someone who's talking about themselves all the time, boasting, he would say that that's that's immodest. And but then you take the same principle and you apply it to clothing, which is in some ways it externalizes who we are. Clothes communicate. So, a policeman wears a certain set of clothes, communicates who he is. Ministers in the past have worn certain clothes to communicate who they are.

And so what we put on communicates something about who we are and where our heart is. And so you can have a modest clothing in the sense that it's flamboyant. And we're concerned about the latest fashions and having the right labels. And we get juked to be billboards for the companies who charge us loads of money to buy their product so we can walk about with their name right across our our chest because that's that's the thing that you have to have. So we're showing off and look at my label, look at the prestige of what I can wear.

And then when it comes to what people normally think about immodest clothing, we're showing off again. We're showing off our bodies in a way that would be designed to draw attention to ourselves, whether it be a guy who's the gym goer and he's got this physique that he's proud of, well he kind of modestly show that off so that people look at him and say, wow, look at that body. And then the woman who's wanting to show off her body so as to receive flattery and attention from someone else. But all of that to say is that it's actually a heart matter. What is it behind the clothes that we're wearing that is driving us to dress in that particular way.

So, Jim and Elizabeth Elliott, thought deeply about these things as they were, as they were courting in college and trying to decide, whether, they ought to remain single or to get married. And I'm going to give a quote. It's a loose quote because I don't have it in front of me, and it goes years back. I think it's from a book actually of Jim Elliot diary entries, But this would be really close to what he actually said. He said, if lust is spiritual adultery, then immodesty is spiritual seduction.

Which I think is a helpful way to think about it because no one wants to argue whether or not lust is spiritual adultery. Jesus has already rendered a verdict on that in the Sermon on the Mount. But the thing that couples it to a modesty is that if that's spiritual adultery, then it is spiritual seduction to dress in a way that would draw someone to lust. Yeah, and that connects really to the law, which Scott was talking about earlier, the law and how it deals with this. And, you know, the Seventh Commandment summary command dealing with all of our lawful sexual relations and sinful sexual desires and actions.

When that's parsed out in the Westminster Larger Catechism, It includes both in the duties that are required and the sins that are forbidden, the question of modest apparel. You know, we are duty-bound to dress modestly, we are forbidden to dress immodestly. But why is that? Well, the fundamental issue there is that it's a moral commandment that we are to preserve our own chastity and the chastity of others. So there you've got in the law, second table dealing with our human relationships, something that is also somewhat reflective of the second commandment and idolatry and spiritual fornication and spiritual harlotry and seduction.

Now it's going on between man and man. And to step back from that to what Christ says, you know, the two great commandments, love God with all your heart, love your neighbor as yourself. So the seventh commandment teaches us to love ourselves biblically and to love our neighbor as ourselves in this area of how we dress so that we preserve and love to ourselves, we preserve our own chastity and love to others. We dress in a way that's going to preserve their chastity. Gavin, chastity is not a word that we use a lot now.

Are you saying anything more than sexual purity when you say chastity? Yes. Yeah. Preserving, well, you talk about the chaste virgin, this would be obviously the person, the woman who's not being with a man. So sexual purity, obviously avoiding what we would call fornication before marriage and any manifestation of adultery within marriage.

So mind and body. Yeah. She is in our relationships. So in love to ourselves before God, this issue of apparel is key. In love to others as ourself that we would do to them as we would have them do to us.

We would dress so as to love them. And you know it's interesting I read an article a few years ago by a woman who became somewhat controversial and the whole argument was the problem is men and it was a defense of beach attire and Christian women should be able to wear this without a conscience issue. And I was thinking about that and her argument was the problem was with men, men have the lust, they need to deal with their sin, they can't blame women. We'll step back from that. Let's take it to full-on nakedness, right?

Are we going to justify full-on nakedness because the problem is with man, he should be able to look at this nakedness and not have a problem. Are we going to justify that and put the blame on the one who struggles? Well, I think most people would say, no, no, we wouldn't do that. We would draw a line there. But once you do that, you've already conceded the principle that there is a manifestation of nakedness, not covered modestly, that is problematic to another person when it comes to their sin.

So if I love that person, I will dress in a way that I'm not going to be a temptation or stumbling block to that person's chastity in mind or in action. You know, we talked about the word modesty briefly, you know, a few minutes ago. And you know what, you know, what I would, what I would pray we would do is when we stand in front of the mirror, we say, Lord, how do I, You know, how do I demonstrate these robes of righteousness? But modesty is something, you know, of the heart, like you had pointed out. And, you know, modesty and speech behavior, you know, there, there's a whole range of outward behaviors that flow from immodesty, not just in clothing, not just in alluring clothing, but it's actually a category that governs, it's a quality that governs all kinds of behaviors, not just how you dress.

Yeah, it's, we live in an immodest society increasingly. And one thing I was saying today in preaching on the street is Adam and Eve are gripped with the fear of God because of their nakedness and they immediately, instinctively try to cover up. As far as we live in a culture that is publicly undressing itself, you know, and becoming increasingly immodest, that's a siren call saying there is no feared God before their eyes. Because the instinct was to clothe as soon as Adam and Eve felt the shame of their nakedness. But linked to the issues of the heart and immodesty, you know, we can think of it in terms of clothing, but we can also have immodest thoughts, we can a modest speech.

And increasingly today, we've got what I would call increasing emotional immodesty. And so Christians are concerned with the uncovering and the revealing of the body. And we're glad they're concerned about that. Within marriage, a husband and wife can be naked and not ashamed. There's a context for uncovering and revealing yourself physically to one another.

But one thing that I see with the rise of the social media age is that people are more and more emotionally immodest. So if you maybe think of it as the undressing of the soul, there's no discretion, everything hangs out, all of our feelings are plastered on Facebook for everyone to see and I've warned my own congregation about this, that this is actually emotional immodesty. You're undressing your soul publicly to the world. And that's also connected to intimacy. I've warned my daughter about this.

When you think about forming a relationship towards moving to marriage, I hope you know what she does. You're not going to undress your body in front of this man until he is your husband. But care is also needed in that pre-marriage relationship to manage how much you would immodestly undress your soul. Suppose you don't get married, there's a huge amount of intimacy that can be revealed if there's a lack of discretion and a careless management of that. And then even in marriage, there's that constant revealing of ourselves, one another, to our husband or to our wife, but now we have the context for it.

This covenant life partner that we can be emotionally intimate with, which is actually the bedrock of physical intimacy. But again, those things go together and people don't tend to think of, okay, well, I could just be completely undressing myself in a spiritual or emotional way that perhaps I need to take care with. And our forefathers, I believe, understood that better. Yeah. Amen.

You know, I was really touched by that in Jeff Pollard's book, The Public Undressing of America. Great, great treatise on the whole doctrine of clothing and modesty, but he spends quite a bit of time talking about that word modesty. It's a great place to go to understand that. Well, there's so much more to say about this, but I think we've about run out of time. But Gavin, thank you so much for joining us on such an unusual topic, but it has tremendous depth, much more depth than people think.

Yeah, always a pleasure, Scott. Thank you so much. And thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast, and hope you can join us next time. We encourage you to check out ChurchandFamilyLife.com