How Jesus Made a Better World for Women | Dustan Bell

Calvary Christian Church Podcast - Audio

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HOW JESUS MADE A BETTER WORLD FOR WOMEN

It’s common for people today to assume that religion in general, and Christianity in particular, restricts and represses women. In reality, nothing and no one has done more to advance the equality and dignity of women than the Bible, and the life and teaching of Jesus.

History shows us that gender equality hasn’t always been high on humanity’s radar. So how did we come to assume that everyone, particularly the genders are equal? Biologically speaking, men and women are not equal in structure. Men are almost always physically stronger, so on what grounds do we say women are equal to men?

Tom Holland in “Dominion”

That every human being possessed an equal dignity was not remotely a self-evident truth. A Roman would have laughed at it … The origins of this principle . . . lay not in the French Revolution, nor in the Declaration of Independence, nor in the Enlightenment, but in the Bible.

From the very first page, the Bible upholds the dignity and value of men and women.

Genesis 1:27

So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them.

God’s creation ideal is unmistakably clear, that women possess the same inherent value. Both are image bearers of God and are representations of God’s own nature.

Genesis 1:27 explains why the book of Exodus commands honour be given to both mother and father (Exodus 20:12).

In the ancient world, it was typical that prophets would speak only to kings and adult males. But when Moses, the first prophet, assembles the people on Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim in Deuteronomy 27-28, and reads them a list of blessings for faithfulness and curses for disobedience, he includes women, children and foreigners also.

Deuteronomy 29:10–12

“You are standing today, all of you, before the LORD your God: the heads of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, all the men of Israel, your little ones, your wives, and the sojourner who is in your camp, from the one who chops your wood to the one who draws your water, so that you may enter into the sworn covenant of the LORD your God, which the LORD your God is making with you today…”

For thousands of years the Bible has honoured women with a variety of significant roles. Old Testament examples include Esther, Ruth and Deborah.

If you were to read the accounts of Jesus’ life, through first century eyes, you’d be shocked at how Jesus’ treated women.

Rodney Stark in “The Rise of Christianity”

“… women were in relative short supply owing to female infanticide, practiced by all classes, and to the additional deaths caused by abortion. The status of women was very low. Girls received little or no education [and] were married at puberty and often before. Under Athenian law a woman was classified as a child, regardless of age, and therefore was the legal property of some man at all stages of her life. Males could divorce by simply ordering a wife out of the household.”

At a time when most men viewed women as inferior and weak, Jesus was revolutionary in the value he placed upon women.

· His longest recorded conversation with any individual was with a Samaritan woman of ill repute (John 4:7-30).

· Dining at a Pharisee’s house, he allowed a “sinful woman” to gate-crash, and she preceded to anoint his feet with perfume and wipe them with her hair. When the host objected, Jesus used the opportunity to commend and defend the woman and rebuke the Pharisee who’d dismissed her.

· Jesus taught women, in a culture where most went uneducated.

· When Jesus was met by a woman with a bleeding disorder, He was tender with her, calling her “daughter,” (Matt 9:22; Mark 5:34; Luke 8:48)

· To another woman who’d suffered with a debilitating back condition for 18 years, Jesus addressed her as “daughter of Abraham” (Luke 13:16).

· Two of his close friends were sisters, Mary and Martha.

· Some of Jesus’ final words from the cross were to do with the welfare of his mother, as he said to John the disciple, “Here is your mother”. (John 19:27)

· Luke notes that Jesus’ ministry was funded by several women, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna, and many others (Luke 8:1-3)

The sight of men and women travelling together, working as co-workers as Jesus taught, healed and performed miracles would have horrified many.

Dorothy Sayers:

“Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man—there never has been another.

A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronized; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them as ‘The women, God help us!’ or ‘The ladies, God bless them!’; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unselfconscious. There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could guess from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything ‘funny’ about women's nature."

Jesus not only affirmed the value and significance of women, but championed their gifts and called them into ministry.

· It was women who were the first to see Jesus' resurrection.

· Upon seeing Christ, Mary goes to the disciples (men and women) proclaiming, "I have seen the Lord!" (John 20:18)

· In Matthew's account, Jesus instructs the women to go and tell His disciples (Matt 28:10).

Jesus’ example shaped the role of women in the early Church

Women were full members of the covenant community (Acts 1:14), serving as partners and leaders.

· On the Day of Pentecost when the church was born, the Spirit was poured out upon men and women, both filled and prophesying. (Acts 2:17-18)

· Women in the Church were expected to use their spiritual gifts, to their full potential, as equal partners in the mission of God.

· The Apostle Paul considered at least twelve women as co-workers in his ministry.

· Paul taught that widows and older women ought not be abandoned but were to be given a place of honour.

D.M. Scholer

“Jesus respect for and inclusion of women as disciples and proclaimers provided the foundation for the positive place of women in the earliest churches and their ministry.”

Galatians 3:28

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Greg Sheridan in “God is Good for You”

Christianity from the start was much better for women and girls than anything that had previously been on offer in the ancient world. It utterly rejected infanticide and abortion. Infanticide had been practised overwhelmingly against girls. So Rome had a structural imbalance of numbers, a shortage of women common in traditional societies that practise sex selection through killing female infants.

All of a sudden, Christian families had a lot more daughters than other families. And women and girls could participate in Christian life in a way undreamed of in most of the ancient world.

Not only did Christians as a result have a lot more children but also … they attracted large numbers of female converts. And the female converts resulted in male converts.

Christianity, in many explicit passages in the New Testament, taught that marriage was a mutual and loving relationship. The prohibition on adultery applied equally to men as to women. This had not been the practical reality previously … The Christian ideals of mutual love within marriage, of fidelity within marriage, and of chastity before marriage, were much better for women and girls than the rapacious behaviour of men previously.

Historian Samuel Moyn in “Christian Human Rights”

“… without Christianity, our commitment to the moral equality of human beings is unlikely to have come about…”

Ancient civilisations viewed the father as not only the head of the household, but almost like a god in his own right, effectively owning his wife and children who were regarded as his property, meaning he was able to do what he liked with them.

But Christianity gave rise to the belief that each human being is created in the image of God and possesses an immortal soul.

Rebecca McLaughlin in “Secular Creed”

“In Greco Roman culture, the idea that every woman had the right to choose what happened to her body would’ve been laughable. Christianity threw out this model. Rather than being seen as inferior to men, women were equally made in God’s image.”

Understanding that Christianity was introducing new paradigms in how men were to relate to women, we start to understand the shape of some of Paul’s teaching to households in the New Testament.

Ephesians 5:22–33

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Paul uses just 52 words to instruct the women, because in that culture, everyone just assumed wives ought submit to their husbands. Paul uses 163 words to instruct the men, because what he was teaching was radical.

Wherever the Christian message has spread and been taken seriously, dignity, care, and opportunities for women have increased. When men live for Jesus, homes, communities and workplaces become better for women.

James 1:27

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

Rebecca McLaughlin in “Secular Creed”

… if Christianity is true, the central plank of women’s rights isn’t our right to have our unborn babies killed. The central plank of women’s rights is Mary’s unborn child, who grew to be the man who valued us so much he died on a Roman cross so we could live. Filled with the Holy Spirit, Elizabeth shouted to her pregnant cousin Mary, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” (Luke 1:41–42) … truly this baby conceived out of wedlock and born into poverty changed everything for women.