When our daughters were young, we trained them not to steal by teaching them what did and didn’t belong to them. “Just because you see it in a store or the church nursery,” we said, “doesn’t mean it belongs to you.” The fruit displays in the produce department were especially tempting to my fruit-loving children. Pyramids of shiny apples, mounds of colorful bananas, and clusters of red and green grapes sat at eye-level as I wheeled them around in the grocery cart. They were oh, so tempting. Nakedness is, too.
Many think the Bible is a stuffy book, dated and obsolete. I beg to differ. Some chapters read like daytime soap operas. They make me squirm. In my quest to read through the Bible in a year, I came upon such a passage in Leviticus 20.
“If a man takes his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing. He has uncovered his brother’s nakedness.”
Addressing sexual sin, the primary interpretation of this passage is that a man shouldn’t sleep with his sister-in-law. This is pretty obvious. What caught my eye, though, was a subtlety: “. . . He has uncovered his brother’s nakedness.”
His brother’s nakedness? If a man is sleeping with this woman, shouldn’t it read “He has uncovered her nakedness”?
God chose this wording for a reason, and we would do well to ponder it.
Sleeping together notwithstanding, when someone gazes upon the nakedness of another, they steal what belongs to someone else. And when we dress in ways that expose our bodies (shirts that show cleavage, shorts and skirts that leave little to the imagination, bathing suits that make our underwear look modest), we invite people to look at nakedness that doesn’t belong to them.
If you’re married, your nakedness belongs to your husband. It’s for his eyes and his enjoyment only.
If you’re single, your nakedness belongs to the Lord, who is your husband (2 Cor. 11:2).
When we dress in ways that aren’t modest, we invite others to steal what doesn’t belong to them. And while all believers have a responsibility to guard their eyes, we can help them by making wise choices about what we wear.
So the next time we’re clothes shopping or selecting an outfit, perhaps we should ask ourselves, “Am I choosing clothes that honor my husband and my Lord, or am I inviting someone to steal from them?” Because, after all,
It’s not our nakedness.
If you'd like to read former Victoria's Secret model Kylie Bisuitti's perspective on modesty, CLICK HERE.
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