Clothed

In that first garden, long ago,
Our parents walked with You unclothed.
They were sinless and unashamed
To see and to be seen and known.

Into the garden the tempter came,
Sin brought with it all its shame.
Fig leaves were not clothes enough,
Hiding when you called their names.

The tree of knowledge with it brought
Death to all who knowledge sought.
You found them there, and sent them out,
Clothed in the death their sins had bought.

Another parent, another day,
In the manger gently lay
Her sleeping boy, snugly wrapped,
In swaddling clothes upon the hay.

He grew to face another tree
On the mount of Gethsemane,
Naked hung in our sin and shame,
Unclothed for all humanity.

One day soon will come to sight,
Our Savior returning in robes of white,
Clothed in His righteousness we’ll be,
To dwell in His eternal light.

May we seek to live as those
Who will be in perfection robed,
Free from every sin and shame,
Bowing now before His throne.

“I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for He has clothed me with the garments of salvation; He has covered me with the robe of righteousness: (Isaiah 61:10a).

 

© 2023 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture are ESV and all images copyright free from pixabay.com. The opinions stated do not necessarily reflect the views of my church or employer.

New Apparel

I recently listened to a podcast from CCEF. They used an interesting analogy for sanctification and growing in Christ. It’s like being given a new set of clothes and having to discard the old, comfy, worn clothes we like. After a while the new clothes become more comfortable, but then we have to change once again. Trusting God is a constant surrender of the old life and learning to walk in the new life. Those who are completely unwilling to change may not actually be Christians. As Sam Allberry has said more than once, “If you think the gospel is something that can be slotted neatly into your life without any change, it’s not the real gospel you’ve got.”

I can look back at different times in my life where I had to give something up and did so willingly. But other times I have delayed and held on to the old clothes as long as possible, like the rich young man in Matthew 19 who was unwilling to let go of his riches to follow Jesus. I wonder if he returned later after reconsidering? I believe God often gives us more than once chance to surrender. Sometimes we have to let go a little at a time. And it’s not just sin that we need to give up. It can also be good things such as certain relationships, the career we think we want, or our dreams of the future.

Sometimes I’m not sure I want to change in a particular area, and other times I realize I have to again surrender something I’ve taken back. I tend to think that I should be farther along in my Christian walk, that I am a disappointment to God and others because I feel stuck here. “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain…” (1 Corinthians 15:10a ESV). It seems like I’ve been wearing this set of clothes for a while now, but God said through the Apostle Paul that His grace toward us is not in vain. He also said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9b). He will accomplish His purposes in us and through us in His own good time. Our reluctance to change is no surprise to Him, so we can’t disappoint Him.

I came across this quote that had been taken out of its original context:

“It [is] impossible… to be converted to Christ while at the same time loving [your] sin. It is true that anybody who comes to Christ will come with sin. In fact, he or she will come precisely because of that sin—that is, to be rid of it and its awful result. But to come to Christ while loving and cherishing sin is totally impossible. It is like an airplane trying to fly in two directions!”

The context in which I found the quote (a Sunday school lesson) might lead one to think that the author is referring to all the areas of sin in a person’s life at the time of conversion, when in fact he was referring to an individual who wanted to knowingly continue one particular sin and yet become a Christian. The fact is that we don’t even know all the areas in which we are holding onto sin even after a lifetime of faith in Christ. If God revealed every sin and forced us to choose before we could come to Him for eternal life, no one would be saved. Jesus told the woman caught in adultery “Neither do I condemn you” before He told her “Go and sin no more.” Some people try to reverse the order and say, “If you forsake all sin, then God won’t condemn you.” God is far more gracious than we even realize. He is gracious enough to reveal our sins and to cultivate our distaste for sin over time.

Tammy Maltby writes in Confessions of a Good Christian Girl:

“Even though I knew my Savior, I kept coming to points in my life when I needed more of Him than I ever thought possible… I learned firsthand that good Christian girls need the grace of Jesus just as much as unbelievers do—and that grace is abundantly available to anyone who is willing to be honest about her pain and cry out for help. But honesty can be a problem, especially for us good Christian girls, because we are so used to thinking of our lives as before-and-after stories… [The] implication is that once a person accepts the Lord, she stops sinning and lays all her brokenness outside the door. The implication is that churches are populated by those who are joyfully and triumphantly healed. And that’s just not true...” (3, 6).

Thankfully, God understands me better than I understand myself, and He extends grace for each change along the way. He knows just how much time and grace is needed to both inspire and enable change. Perhaps someday I’ll look back and realize I have changed without even realizing it. For example, I remember times in school where I played sick so as to avoid public speaking. Now I know that wasn’t nearly as big of a deal as I’d thought at the time. God brought a change in perspective over the course of several years. I trust He can and will do something similar for any and all areas of my life that may be contrary to His perfect plan. His grace is never in vain.

“Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely... He who calls you is faithful; He will surely do it” (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24).

© 2018 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated all images are copyright free from pixabay.com.

Do What?!

The Australian Open Tennis Tournament made the news recently when an interviewer asked Eugenie Bouchard to twirl to show off her outfit. Although I missed that bit of “news,” it came to my attention later through a post by Matt Reagan on the Desiring God blog. Reagan’s post drew quite a bit of negative attention on their Facebook feed as being sexist in itself, along with not making a great deal of sense. I wanted to make a couple comments on his post, but then to look at what Scripture has to say.

Reagan implies that twirling is an activity pursued by little girls, but not little boys. Evidently he hasn’t spent a lot of time around little boys. Perhaps his emphasis was intended to refer to girls showing off their dresses, but I’ve known plenty of little girls who won’t wear dresses. He asks, “Why are Eugenie and Serena wearing the outfits in the first place? Are they not intentionally demonstrating their feminine beauty to the world?” I would counter that they are wearing those outfits because that is the standard for their sport, although there is some variation within the WTA. Women in the WNBA aren’t wearing little skirts and being asked to twirl for the cameras. Personally, I think Eugenie responded graciously to an idiotic request. I dare someone to ask a UFC fighter to twirl for her fans!

Both the original interview and the blog post serve to illustrate a problem we have created with gender issues in this country. Apparel and behavior are often linked to gender in ways that are inconsistent and nonsensical. When children (or even adults) measure themselves by this arbitrary standard, they may feel there is something lacking and therefore believe they are in the wrong body. I’m not suggesting little boys should be allowed to wear dresses, but we do need to take a careful look at what our standards for femininity and masculinity are and where they come from.

There are a few references to apparel in Scripture. Perhaps most familiar is Peter’s appeal to wives in 1 Peter 3:3-4, “Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear—but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious” (ESV; see also 1 Timothy 2:9-10). Alongside that is God’s statement to Samuel “For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7b). Jesus had some pretty harsh words to say about the Pharisees concerns for appearance: “They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long… Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness” (Matthew 23:5, 27).

God is far more concerned with the state of our hearts than the style of our clothes. Some of the most beautiful people are those who are outwardly marred or crippled, but their love of God shines through. Jesus Himself “had no form or majesty that we should look at Him, and no beauty that we should desire Him” (Isaiah 53:2).

I’ve searched on multiple occasions for Scriptural instructions that apply specifically to women aside from those related to spouse or children, and the Bible just doesn’t say much. The Proverbs 31 description is about the extent of it, and there is very little there that could not also be applied to men. Conducting business and the affairs of the household with diligence and integrity are the duties of every person. Once again verse 30 makes it a matter of the heart: “Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” Certainly there are plenty of points where debate could be raised, such as women teaching in the church (1 Timothy 2:12) or hair length for men and women (1 Corinthians 11:14-15), but those are a topic for some other blog.

I come to a couple conclusions: 1) Both men and women want to be recognized primarily for their accomplishments, not their apparel; for their deportment, not their dress. 2) God honors those whose hearts seek after Him regardless of their outward circumstances. God found David to be “a man after His own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14). We get into dangerous territory when we create our own standards that have nothing to do with God’s law— “This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me; in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men” (Matthew 15:8-9).

Perhaps if we truly chase after God’s heart, we can learn to let go of all the secondary issues and fulfill Paul’s admonition in Romans 12:9-10: “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.” What better way is there to honor someone than by recognizing the desire of their heart above all else?

--Also check out my friend Rebecca Chasteen’s blog post on a similar topic: https://thesteadyblog.wordpress.com/2014/05/19/and-then-you-remember-shes-not-you-and-youre-not-dying-on-that-hill/