In our latest installment of Unchanging Truth, Gender Blog is highlighting a series of articles from Nancy Leigh DeMoss on how modesty relates to biblical womanhood.

The following excerpt is from the first article in DeMoss' series, "Caution! Your Clothes are Talking." It was published in the Fall 2003 issue of JBMW.

If I tell you that there's a woman coming down this church aisle in a long, white, formal dress, what would you say is probably the occasion? It's a wedding; she's a bride. How did you know? Because clothing communicates.

If I tell you there's a teenager bundled up in a snowsuit, mittens, a wool hat and a scarf would you agree with me that the teenager is probably not on his way to a picnic?

Clothing and appearance send a message. They can communicate our occupation or an occasion we're marking. In some of the world's religions, women are clearly identifiable by their dress.

Clothing can communicate something about our socio-economic status. You can look at some people and think, "She looks like a wealthy woman." Or you might look at another woman and-purely on the basis of her clothing-say, "She doesn't look like she comes from a financially stable background."

Clothing also communicates a message about our values, our character, our attitudes. For example, you can look at the dress of some and tell that neatness is not a concern to them.

The Bible speaks of occasions when people would wear sackcloth as a sign of mourning or repentance. So, if someone was wearing sackcloth, he was sending a message about what was going on in his heart.

Scripture also indicates that clothing can send a message about our morals or the lack thereof. For example, in Proverbs 7:10 we read of the adulteress that she was "dressed as a harlot" (NASB). The woman is dressed in such a way that you can look at her and see that her motives are not pure toward this man.

In Genesis 38:13ff., we learn of a woman named Tamar, a widow who wanted to seduce a man to whom she was not married. Accordingly, she took off her widow's garments (v.14). Such garments were a specific type of clothing that would have communicated that she was a widow. Tamar, however, changed her clothes and put on the clothing of a prostitute, for the man she was trying to seduce knew her. In fact, he was her father-in-law. But when she changed her clothes, he didn't recognize who she was. He just looked at her clothes, and judging her to be a prostitute, he went in to be sexually intimate with her. Of course, I point that out not to justify him, but to demonstrate that clothing can send a powerful message.

It is just as true today that women are sending a message with their clothing. Many of them know exactly what message they're sending. Perhaps some others are naïve, having become so influenced by this culture that they don't know any other way to think about clothing.

You can read the rest of this article here.

Part 2, "Godly Garments," is available here.

Part 3, "Philosophies of Beauty in Conflict," is available here.

A good question to ask in order to gauge the importance of an issue is, "How closely related is this issue to the Gospel?" Some would probably accuse me of hijacking the Gospel if I related it too closely to gender issues. After all, gender has nothing to do with the forgiveness of sins, reconciliation, or substitutionary atonement. Being egalitarian or complementarian is not something that determines our eternal destiny as adopted children of God. Praise God this is true! Yet, a more penetrating question may be, "Do we stand to lose something of the Gospel if egalitarianism is assumed?" In my opinion, the overwhelming answer is Yes.

A biblical test-case can be seen in the flow of thought of Ephesians. The first two chapters show the general/universal understanding of the Gospel. The Gospel is, most fundamentally, God's plan of redemption on behalf sinners through Christ. Readers of this letter must, first and foremost, come to terms with Paul's emphasis on the Gospel being God's work despite human sinfulness. Other than faith, Paul doesn't attribute anything to the human sinner in the effectiveness of the Gospel. In fact, many argue that the entire phrase "For by grace you have been saved through faith" (2:8) is the "gift" that 2:9 is referring to. The conclusion of chapters 1-2 is that there is nothing peculiar about any individual sinner that would cause them to be the darling of God's saving work. Rather, as 2:4-5 tells us, salvation is to be attributed to the richness of God's mercy.

Chapter 3 of Ephesians affirms this conclusion. What God has revealed in Christ is redemption, not only for covenant Israel, but for Gentile sinners as well. If racial status cannot keep us away from the love of Christ, it is easy to conclude that social status, age, wisdom, or gender cannot either. And we see that the rest of the New Testament affirms this same conclusion.  The Gospel is for all those - every tongue and tribe - who repent of their sins and believe in the Gospel. Praise God for his infinite wisdom!

Interestingly, Paul does not end his letter with chapter 3. He knows that when the Gospel is believed, it is the power to change the life of the Christian. In other words, after one is forgiven of their sins and saved from the wrath to come, the Christian life cannot be simply reduced to moralism. Rather, the Gospel radically shapes how we live and make choices. So, for example, he writes at the end of chapter 4, "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you."  And also 5:2, "And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." Paul exhorts his readers to forgive one another and walk in love not because that is how we need to get along until Christ comes back, but because God in Christ loved and forgave us. Paul bases his Christian ethic on the cross of Christ. Interestingly, Paul's command to walk in love and forgive one another is still as universal as the Gospel. All those who are redeemed in the Lord are to love and forgive one another and even submit to one another.

However, Paul begins to apply the Gospel at a more particular level at the end of chapter 5. Up until this point, Paul displays how the Gospel functions universally to change the lives of Christians. Yet, from 5:22-6:9, Paul shows how the Gospel applies in particular to husbands, wives, parents, children, slaves, and masters. At a very significant level, the Gospel applies to a wife differently than it does to her husband. The Gospel informs a husband of God's design for him as a man in a way that is different than the wife. Interestingly, the Gospel does not blur gender distinctions, but, rather, gives them definition. Our identity as men and women and how we relate to one another is informed by God's saving work in Christ Jesus.

If egalitarianism is assumed, there are at least two aspects of the Gospel that we lose. Both are significant.

First, marriage, throughout Scripture, is used to portray God's saving promises and his covenant faithfulness to his people. If we lose the important distinctions between the roles of husbands and wives in marriage, then we lose a significant biblical understanding of God's work in Scripture and in redemptive history.

Second, a central concern of Paul in all his letters, especially Ephesians, is not only Gospel clarity, but also how the Gospel applies to the Christian life. If we have confusion as to how men and women ought to act and fulfill divinely intended roles in the Church, marriage, and family, then there will be confusion as to how to apply the Gospel to the Christian life. As we see in Ephesians 5, God has particular applications of his Gospel that are gender specific. If we lose the gender specificity, then we lose a divinely intended Gospel application.

This is the third clip in our series from D.A. Carson's talk at the Different by Design 2009 conference. In this clip, Carson addresses how we should understand Paul's appeal to the creation order (1 Tim. 2:13) in the argument of the passage.

Part 1 on "Permit" can be seen here.

Part 2 on "Authority" can be seen here.

You can listen to all of Carson's address here.

[The following excerpt is from John Piper's chapter in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, entitled "A Vision of Biblical Complementarity: Manhood and Womanhood Defined According to the Bible." The entire chapter is available here.]

The tendency today is to stress the equality of men and women by minimizing the unique significance of our maleness or femaleness. But this depreciation of male and female personhood is a great loss. It is taking a tremendous toll on generations of young men and women who do not know what it means to be a man or a woman. Confusion over the meaning of sexual personhood today is epidemic. The consequence of this confusion is not a free and happy harmony among gender-free persons relating on the basis of abstract competencies. The consequence rather is more divorce, more homosexuality, more sexual abuse, more promiscuity, more social awkwardness, and more emotional distress and suicide that come with the loss of God-given identity.

It is a remarkable and telling observation that contemporary Christian feminists devote little attention to the definition of femininity and masculinity. Little help is being given to a son's question, "Dad, what does it mean to be a man and not a woman?" Or a daughter's question, "Mom, what does it mean to be a woman and not a man?" A lot of energy is being expended today minimizing the distinctions of manhood and womanhood. But we do not hear very often what manhood and womanhood should incline us to do. We are adrift in a sea of confusion over sexual roles. And life is not the better for it.

[However,] the Bible does not leave us in ignorance about the meaning of masculine and feminine personhood. God has not placed in us an all-pervasive and all-conditioning dimension of personhood and then hidden the meaning of our identity from us. He has shown us in Scripture the beauty of manhood and womanhood in complementary harmony. He has shown us the distortions and even horrors that sin has made of fallen manhood and womanhood. And he has shown us the way of redemption and healing through Christ.

To be sure, we see "through a glass dimly." Our knowledge is not perfect. We must be ever open to new light. But we are not so adrift as to have nothing to say to our generation about the meaning of manhood and womanhood and its implications for our relationships. Our understanding is that the Bible reveals the nature of masculinity and femininity by describing diverse responsibilities for man and woman while rooting these differing responsibilities in creation, not convention.

When the Bible teaches that men and women fulfill different roles in relation to each other, charging man with a unique leadership role, it bases this differentiation not on temporary cultural norms but on permanent facts of creation. This is seen in 1 Corinthians 11:3-16 (especially vv. 8-9, 14); Ephesians 5:21-33 (especially vv. 31-32); and 1 Timothy 2:11-14 (especially vv. 13-14).7 In the Bible, differentiated roles for men and women are never traced back to the fall of man and woman into sin. Rather, the foundation of this differentiation is traced back to the way things were in Eden before sin warped our relationships. Differentiated roles were corrupted, not created, by the fall. They were created by God.

CBMW is having a Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (JBMW) Twitter contest. The winner of the contest will receive a free one-year subscription to JBMW. Here is how the contest works:

If you follow CBMW on Twitter (if you don't, you'll need to start!) look for today's Twitter update (10/05/09). All you need to do is re-tweet the message and you are entered into the drawing - make sure you include @CBMWorg when you re-tweet the message.

If you are not familiar with our journal, here are few articles to give you a taste:

Rob Bell's "Feminine Images" for God: A Review of Rob Bell, NOOMA: "She." Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008. by Chris Cowan

O.J. Simpson Is Not a Complementarian: Male Headship and Violence against Women. by Russell D. Moore

Young vs. Old Complementarians. by Mark Dever