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26th March 2025
WednesdayReflection
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John Piper
Founder & Teacher, Desiring God
"How Much Jewellery Is
Too Much Jewellery?"
1 Timothy 2 v 9-10
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Consider an analogy between adornment of hair and stylish clothing and use of makeup, on the one hand, and riches and wealth, on the other hand.
The New Testament does not call riches and wealth evil in and of themselves, but almost the entire New Testament has a trajectory toward simplicity, and the appearance of loving this world more than we love God.
It would be good to put in front of us two of the most straightforward texts about a woman's clothing and adornment and how she presents herself.
Here is 1 Timothy 2:9-10
I also want the women to be modest and sensible about their clothes and to dress properly; not with fancy hair styles or with gold ornaments or pearls or expensive dresses, but with good deeds, as is proper for women who claim to be religious.
And 1 Peter 3 v 3-4.
He's saying this to wives who are married to unbelieving husbands, probably because of the temptation to use their sexual reality to somehow influence this unbelieving husband. And Peter's saying,
You should not use outward aids to make yourselves beautiful, such as the way you fix your hair, or the jewellery you put on, or the dresses you wear. Instead, your beauty should consist of your true inner self, the ageless beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of the greatest value in God's sight.
So there's the great principle for women -
and, I would say, obviously for men as well.
It's like bodily exercise. We like to quote this:
"While bodily exercise is of some value, godliness is of value in every way"
..... 1 Timothy 4:8
And so outward adornment, you could say, is of little value, and internal adornment is valuable in every way.
That's the first thing we can infer from those texts.
"Don't focus more on the external beauty than the internal beauty."
Second, Peter's and Paul's restrictions are not meant to be total.
And the reason we know that is because he says, "Do not let your adorning be . . . the clothing that you wear" (1 Peter 3:3).
That does not mean, "Don't wear clothing."
It means, "Don't devote your main efforts and concerns to your clothing but to inner beauty."
Third, the language of Paul about clothing is almost entirely about what is "fitting" or "becoming" or "appropriate"
Now, the implication of these guidelines seems to be this:
within an ever-changing, highly corrupt culture then and now, with fringe elements of grunge and gaudy and provocation, focus on what your clothing and adornment and makeup say about you as a person, not you as skin or you as shape.
Paul calls this "what is proper for women who profess godliness".
Twenty years ago, we might have felt like we didn't need to talk about that.
Everybody knew what that is.
I believe Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 11:14. "Does not nature itself teach you?"
Nature itself teaches you that long hair on a woman it is a thing of beauty. Her long hair has been given her to serve as a covering.
And he teaches the same in Romans 1,
where he says people are acting against nature (Romans 1:21-28).
"The eyes that are drawn to more skin are not drawn to more skin because it's beautiful, but because it's more skin."
Now, that means exposing less skin, not more skin.
And it means less tight-fitting leggings and shirts.
And if a woman gets upset with me at this point and says,
"I don't need to calculate my clothing according to male sexual temptation"
my response is,
"Well, that's true.
You don't have to calculate your clothing that way.
But I would ask you this question:
Do you believe that beautiful attractiveness is increased by the amount of skin you expose?"
More skin is not beauty; it's a magnet.
It has nothing to do with beauty.
It has everything to do with pure, physical, magnetizing skin.
And a godly woman knows this. She does not want to be a skin magnet.
She wants to say with her clothing,
"I'm thankful I'm a woman, I love beautiful simplicity, and Christ is my greatest treasure."
><(((°>
This is an edited version.
The full article is avaiable on request
'John Piper'
is founder and teacher of Desiring God and chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary.
For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Foundations for Lifelong Learning: Education in Serious Joy.
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