Braided Hair and Hemlines
The principle behind God's law doesn't change, only its clothing does — and the work of finding the right clothing for our own time, our own place in history, falls to us. It’s not an exact science. It’s a practical one—people in a community learning from one another, refining our stances and building connections among us as we go.
Let me use a test case to explain what I mean. Let’s talk about modesty.
Paul tells the women of Ephesus to “adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works” (1 Timothy 2:9-10). The apostle Peter tells the women of Asia Minor: “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” (1 Peter 3:3-4).
Both apostles command modesty, but neither apostle gives a precise hemline, fabric, or price ceiling. They provide an aim: don't dress to be looked at or announce what you're worth. Dress in a way that points past yourself and let your character do the talking.
I don’t believe that aim is negotiable. It's stated plainly, twice, by two apostles writing to two different congregations. The fashion and styles that present that aim will differ from culture to culture throughout history. Braided hair and gold in the first century said something specific: wealth, status, look-at-me. It doesn't say the same thing in an American church in 2026.
The application moves. The aim doesn't.
I believe it is easy to go wrong here in two opposite directions.
The first mistake freezes an application and calls it the command. Somebody decides a particular hemline or a particular decade's sense of decency is what Paul actually meant to command, and then that person treats every departure from that standard as a departure from Scripture. It feels good because it feels firm. And it is firm. It’s just firm on the wrong thing.
The second mistake notices, correctly, that Scripture never names particular fashions and concludes that therefore there are no particular applications possible. Because no universal eternal expression of modesty is spelled out, it is not possible to have an expression of modesty anywhere at any time. Modesty, then, becomes each person making a rule for herself.
But this treats the absence of a rule as the absence of an aim. But the aim was stated twice, plainly, by two apostles who clearly thought it mattered. "We can't be certain where the line falls" is not the same claim as "there is no line."
I think the best answer lies between these two extremes: hold the aim firmly and the application loosely. Ask, in your own setting, whether what you're wearing functions to draw attention to your body or announce your wealth — and hold that judgment with real conviction, because Peter and Paul did. But hold the specific application— this hemline, this neckline, this cut — the way you'd hold any judgment call, because it is a judgment call. And we’re called to make it.
Recognize too that you’re part of a community, and your judgment on a matter like this affects a community. So though you make your individual decision, loving your neighbor means taking them into account to some degree. Your neighbor should be doing the same thing, and we all should be rubbing off on each other and learning from each other.
This, I believe, is one of the things that is most difficult for individualistic Americans. We seem to feel that if we take our neighbor into account, we are being made slaves to their opinions, and we believe in liberty, not slavery.
But love, to some extent and in some ways, IS a form of submission, isn’t it? In Ephesians 5 the apostle Paul depicts one of the effects of being filled with the Spirit as “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ” (5.21). He goes on to spell out how that works in various relationships. Wives will submit to their husbands (5.22-24) and husbands will love their wives (5.25-32). This love is clearly an expression of submission to one another out of reverence for Christ. Paul goes on to talk about parent-child and master-slave relationships, portraying each as an example of mutually submissive relationship built on reverence for God and consideration for your neighbor. These are just a few examples of what the filling of the Spirit looks like when it’s fleshed out in God’s people.
That tells us what kind of people we each need to be in the Christian community. Be firm on your personal standards as you live before God. But recognize that not everyone will be in the same place as you or see things exactly as you do. Were we always in the place we find ourselves at this moment? Or did we change our minds, our stances, and our practices, as we matured and we changed? If we are still where we were when we were 3 years old, there is probably something wrong.
God stays the same and His aims stay the same because He is eternal and unchanging. We are not eternal and unchanging. WE are tentative and transient beings, passing through time like a vapor. When we look back through history, we can see that another culture, another decade, might reach the same aim by an entirely different code. A modest woman in 1830 covered far more than does a modest woman in 2026. The code was broader then and it's narrowed since. But it hasn't narrowed to nothing. Run the line through both eras and you hit the same floor: certain things stay covered, always, in 1830 and in 2026 alike. Different code. Same aim. Neither is more "biblical" than the other— the particulars of the code were never the point.
That should tell you where tentativeness belongs, and where it doesn't. Tentativeness, transience, attaches to the code, not the aim. If "we can't be sure exactly where the line is" is doing the work of justifying a choice that plainly serves the opposite of what Peter and Paul named—display, attention, status— that isn't humility about application. It's quietly walking away from an aim Scripture has clearly stated.
Let me use a test case to explain what I mean. Let’s talk about modesty.
Paul tells the women of Ephesus to “adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works” (1 Timothy 2:9-10). The apostle Peter tells the women of Asia Minor: “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” (1 Peter 3:3-4).
Both apostles command modesty, but neither apostle gives a precise hemline, fabric, or price ceiling. They provide an aim: don't dress to be looked at or announce what you're worth. Dress in a way that points past yourself and let your character do the talking.
I don’t believe that aim is negotiable. It's stated plainly, twice, by two apostles writing to two different congregations. The fashion and styles that present that aim will differ from culture to culture throughout history. Braided hair and gold in the first century said something specific: wealth, status, look-at-me. It doesn't say the same thing in an American church in 2026.
The application moves. The aim doesn't.
I believe it is easy to go wrong here in two opposite directions.
The first mistake freezes an application and calls it the command. Somebody decides a particular hemline or a particular decade's sense of decency is what Paul actually meant to command, and then that person treats every departure from that standard as a departure from Scripture. It feels good because it feels firm. And it is firm. It’s just firm on the wrong thing.
The second mistake notices, correctly, that Scripture never names particular fashions and concludes that therefore there are no particular applications possible. Because no universal eternal expression of modesty is spelled out, it is not possible to have an expression of modesty anywhere at any time. Modesty, then, becomes each person making a rule for herself.
But this treats the absence of a rule as the absence of an aim. But the aim was stated twice, plainly, by two apostles who clearly thought it mattered. "We can't be certain where the line falls" is not the same claim as "there is no line."
I think the best answer lies between these two extremes: hold the aim firmly and the application loosely. Ask, in your own setting, whether what you're wearing functions to draw attention to your body or announce your wealth — and hold that judgment with real conviction, because Peter and Paul did. But hold the specific application— this hemline, this neckline, this cut — the way you'd hold any judgment call, because it is a judgment call. And we’re called to make it.
Recognize too that you’re part of a community, and your judgment on a matter like this affects a community. So though you make your individual decision, loving your neighbor means taking them into account to some degree. Your neighbor should be doing the same thing, and we all should be rubbing off on each other and learning from each other.
This, I believe, is one of the things that is most difficult for individualistic Americans. We seem to feel that if we take our neighbor into account, we are being made slaves to their opinions, and we believe in liberty, not slavery.
But love, to some extent and in some ways, IS a form of submission, isn’t it? In Ephesians 5 the apostle Paul depicts one of the effects of being filled with the Spirit as “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ” (5.21). He goes on to spell out how that works in various relationships. Wives will submit to their husbands (5.22-24) and husbands will love their wives (5.25-32). This love is clearly an expression of submission to one another out of reverence for Christ. Paul goes on to talk about parent-child and master-slave relationships, portraying each as an example of mutually submissive relationship built on reverence for God and consideration for your neighbor. These are just a few examples of what the filling of the Spirit looks like when it’s fleshed out in God’s people.
That tells us what kind of people we each need to be in the Christian community. Be firm on your personal standards as you live before God. But recognize that not everyone will be in the same place as you or see things exactly as you do. Were we always in the place we find ourselves at this moment? Or did we change our minds, our stances, and our practices, as we matured and we changed? If we are still where we were when we were 3 years old, there is probably something wrong.
God stays the same and His aims stay the same because He is eternal and unchanging. We are not eternal and unchanging. WE are tentative and transient beings, passing through time like a vapor. When we look back through history, we can see that another culture, another decade, might reach the same aim by an entirely different code. A modest woman in 1830 covered far more than does a modest woman in 2026. The code was broader then and it's narrowed since. But it hasn't narrowed to nothing. Run the line through both eras and you hit the same floor: certain things stay covered, always, in 1830 and in 2026 alike. Different code. Same aim. Neither is more "biblical" than the other— the particulars of the code were never the point.
That should tell you where tentativeness belongs, and where it doesn't. Tentativeness, transience, attaches to the code, not the aim. If "we can't be sure exactly where the line is" is doing the work of justifying a choice that plainly serves the opposite of what Peter and Paul named—display, attention, status— that isn't humility about application. It's quietly walking away from an aim Scripture has clearly stated.