Modest: Men and Women Clothed in the Gospel

Uh oh, another book on modesty. And look, here's a surprise...it's written by men. Is that sort of what you're thinking? If so, we want to assure you that this book is different. We promise. When it comes to discussions of modesty among Christians, the problems you have probably experienced and the challenges we face as authors have the same root: expectations based on experience. Christians have come to associate any discussion of modesty as necessarily involving a certain focus and vocabulary. We just know that words like "spaghetti straps" and "bikinis" will very quickly become part of the conversation. Maybe even "head coverings." And when a man is the speaker or the author or the one leading the discussion? That's when women, in particular, often brace themselves, fearing an assault on their fashion sense and wondering if they are about the be blamed for all male struggles with sexual lust. Does he think I have to be ugly to be godly? We know this is a problem. We've read those books, heard those sermons, attended those small groups, and reviewed those pamphlets. And we are just as perplexed and frustrated as you are. That's why we knew from the start that this book had to be different. In the pages that follow, we are not going to focus on your wardrobe. In a sense, we don't even care about your wardrobe. But we care a great deal about your heart, and that is true whether you're a man or a woman. We want to see your heart so gripped by the gospel of grace that modesty becomes beautiful and desirable to you, not just in your wardrobe but in all of life. We want you to understand that modesty isn't just motivated by the gospel, it's an entailment of the gospel-it flows naturally from a solid grasp of the gospel.