Journal: Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
Volume: JBMW 09:1 (Spring 2004)
Article: Celebrating Biblical Womanhood: Godly Garments
Author: Nancy Leigh DeMoss

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JBMW 9:1 (Spring 2004) p. 95

Celebrating Biblical Womanhood: Godly Garments1

Nancy Leigh DeMoss

Host of the Revive Our Hearts Daily Radio Program, Buchanan, Michigan

[Editor’s Note: The following is the second in a series of columns on the issue of modesty by Nancy Leigh DeMoss. This series on modesty originally aired in the form of a three week radio broadcast, beginning June 16, 2003. Her radio program—”Revive Our Hearts”—is heard on more than 250 stations.]

Clothing can make life hard. Whose idea was it to wear clothes anyway? Do clothes really matter?

To answer these questions we need to go back to the beginning—to the first three chapters of Genesis—and see how all this “clothing stuff” got started. In this passage, we see a four-part progression, a sequence of events that took place back in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. This narrative has a lot of bearing on how we got to where we are today.

Now in Genesis chapter one and in the first part of chapter two, we have the whole story of creation. At the end of chapter one we are told that God looked at everything He had made and said it was “very good.”

Then, beginning in Gen 2:20, there’s a description of God making a helper suitable for the man. God made the woman and gave her to the man. That was good, too, for after the man and woman had been united, we read in Gen 2:25: “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed” (ESV).2

Here’s the first phase in the whole development of clothing: Originally, there was no clothing and there was no shame and no guilt. Adam and Eve were in a sinless condition, so there was no shame. They had no knowledge of evil, so nakedness prior to the Fall was innocent. It was not shameful.

Now then, we come to Genesis 3, and we see the entrance of the enemy. The serpent challenges the woman and then the man, who follows suit, to disobey God’s commandment not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In verse 5 the serpent said to the woman: “God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened.” So, verse 6 tells us that “when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.” This was the ...

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