Did you ever walk into a large store and the first section you came across was the Cosmetics Department? The first clue usually is the overpowering, knock-you-out fragrances. Behind the counter are male and female cosmeticians wearing a thick mask of makeup – sometimes in excessive quantities. The whole thrust of their sales strategy is outward beauty. Rings on most fingers and toes, glittering bracelets, neck chains, ear danglers and other body modifications (piercings), puckered painted lips, thick black eyelashes, elaborate hairstyles and frighteningly long colored fingernails. Obviously, their focus is totally external.

Archaeologists have not uncovered any old wedding photographs or family pictures of the Apostle Peter and his wife but I have a sneaky suspicion their attention to outward adornment was minimal and modest. Some try to dismiss the Apostle Paul’s comments about our bodies and ‘how’ we should present ourselves outwardly to a world perishing in darkness. They write him off as an old-school, out-of-style bachelor who had a few axes to grind about women and everything else. Unfortunately, these people seem to dismiss the inspiration of Scripture and miss the fact that Paul was just an instrument to record God breathed words on parchment. But what can be said about Peter? He was a married man and he too wrote about outward adornment and external attractiveness.

Based on Peter’s life and the thrust of his epistles, I think we could accurately speculate how a conversation with Peter might go if we were to ask him about our dress and appearance in today’s society. I think his advice might go something like this:

“Dear child of God, get your eyes off the fashions and flashy trends of this godless age and the empty world around you. The images you see in celeb magazines, on billboards and in commercials are people who are living superficial and shallow lives. They are focused on THIS life – not on eternity. Their beauty is skin deep – inside they are empty. Why copy them? They have no inner beauty because at their core they are empty sinners lacking a relationship with Jesus Christ. They spend hours and lots of money trying to dress themselves up externally when their real concern should be their internal appearance before the Lord.”

“Now dear child of God, you are in this world but you aren’t to be a part of it or like it. Think of yourself as a traveler passing through foreign territory on the way home. See yourself as someone pitching a tent each night and then getting up the next morning to continue your journey to the eternal city where you have a permanent home. Rather than trying to look like them, live before them in such a way that your inner beauty shines through. The world uses all these superficial trappings to make outward impressions of beauty. You have something far deeper. Focus on cultivating that inner beauty so it will radiate and shine out, catching the watchful observing eyes of the unsaved. Maybe then you will have the unspeakable joy of a non-believer asking you: ‘What do you have that I don’t have?’

“I wrote extensively in my epistles about how unattached and how unlike the world around us we should be. I also wrote these words…..”

Christian men and Christian women should be marked by modesty and simplicity. Having things attached to our bodies or engraved on our bodies or applied to our bodies could be labeled attached attractiveness or applied beauty; but what is most pleasing and precious to the Lord is the inner beauty of a life of submission and devotion to the Lord – distinct and separate from the world around us.