THE ATTITUDE OF JESUS TOWARD WOMEN

Hugo McCord

A question has come about the attitude of Jesus toward women. One of the excellencies of Jesus, exuding and visible in his every action toward the fairer sex, is epieikeia (2 Corinthians 10:1), defined as graciousness, kindness, gentleness. Since the “archetype and pattern of this grace is found in God” (Trench, SYNONYMS, 155), one is not surprised that one of Jesus’ names is Emmanuel (Matthew 1:23), defined as “God-With-Us.” Since Jesus is God-With-Us, and since epieikeia “is found in God,” Paul’s affirmation that epieikeia is in Jesus is only to be expected (2 Corinthians 10:1).

Though God did make man to be “the head of the woman” (1 Corinthians 11:3), in creation they are equals, both made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). Neither is superior to the other: as “the woman is not without the man in the Lord,” so “neither is the man without the woman” (1 Corinthians 11:11). No incident in the life of Jesus shows disrespect for women, but many incidents show that a gender rivalry never entered his mind.

On one occasion, Jesus entered Peter’s home, and was told that Peter’s wife’s mother was “suffering with a severe attack of fever” (Mark 1:30, B-G-D, 731). Jesus could do something that no one else could do: “he went to her, took her hand, and raised her up” (Mark 1:31), and the fever left her. She arose and took part in the housework, but Jesus did not cure her to get a houseworker, but because she was a person. And Jesus would have done the same if Peter’s wife’s father was the victim of the fever.

On another occasion, a woman, “completely bent over,” who “could not straighten up” (Luke 13:11, CEV) for 18 years, entered the synagogue. “When Jesus saw the woman, he called her over and said, ‘You are now well.’ He placed his hands on her, and right away she stood up straight and praised God” (Luke 13:13, CEV). Again, to Jesus, there would have been no difference if a man had been the victim (as shown in John 5 and in John 9).

On another occasion, “a woman who had been bleeding for twelve years,” standing in a crowd, touched Jesus’ clothes, and immediately felt relief; then, “shaking with fear,” she “knelt down in front of Jesus,” who said, “May God give you peace! (Mark 5:25-33, CEV).

On another occasion, Jesus’ love and sympathy were shown when he saw a mother in a funeral procession, carrying the body of her only son. “When the Lord saw the woman, he felt sorry for her and said, ‘Don’t cry!’” (Luke 7:13, CEV). When he had made the lad live again, “Jesus gave him back to his mother” (v. 15).

On another occasion, some men (apostles of Jesus) went too far in trying to protect their Lord. When mothers were bringing their little children for Jesus to touch with his hands, Jesus’ apostles intervened, telling them “to stop bothering” Jesus (Mark 10:13, CEV). “When Jesus saw this, he became angry and said, ‘Let the children come to me! Don’t try to stop them’” (v. 14). “Then Jesus took the children in his arms and blessed them by placing his hands on them” (v. 16).

On another occasion, the apostles were shocked “to find Jesus talking with a woman” (John 4:27), something they would not have thought of doing. But in Jesus was no gender superiority. In this case the one Jesus talked to was not only a woman, but also a foreigner, and also an adulteress (John 4:9, 18). Nevertheless, though Jesus loves, and died for all sinners of whatever race or sex, he talked with this stranger about “living water,” a “well of water springing up into eternal life” (John 4:10, 14).

This he did, though he had been walking all day (it was now about six o’clock in the evening, John 4:6), and was so “tired” he was resting at Jacob’s well until the apostles could go into town (Sychar) and bring him some food. He was both hungry and tired, but he became so interested in soul winning that he forgot both his tiredness and his hunger. When the apostles had returned and had urged him to eat, he could not, saying, “I have food to eat about which you do not know” (John 4:32). What was Jesus’ attitude toward women?

On another occasion, God-With-Us could see sincere penitence in the heart of a crying, sinful woman, as she washed “his feet with her tears” and dried them “with her hair” (Luke 7:38, CEV). His loving heart for all people caused him to say to the weeping woman, “Your sins are forgiven” (v. 48).

On another occasion, sinful men brought a sinful adulteress to Jesus, embarrassing the woman, and trying to entrap the Lord (John 8:1-11). Jesus could have won some popularity with those men if he had been a male chauvinist, and said, “Stone her!” On the contrary, God-With-Us, knowing the woman’s heart was now penitent, said, “Don’t sin anymore” (v. 11, CEV).

On another occasion, no male chauvinist would have even looked, except to criticize, at “a poor widow” as he saw her drop “two coins that were worth only a few pennies” in the temple offering box (Mark 12:41-44, CEV). God-With-Us looked with love and volunteered a beautiful compliment:

I tell you that this poor widow has put in more than all the others. Everyone else gave what they didn’t need. But she is very poor and gave everything she had. Now she doesn’t have a cent to live on (vs. 43-44).

On another occasion, an unnamed woman poured a “bottle of sweet-smelling perfume” on Jesus’ head (Mark 14:3, CEV). Spectators became angry and “they started saying cruel things to the woman” (v. 5.) No one with an unhealthy attitude toward women would have responded as did Jesus:

Leave her alone! Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing for me. ... She has done all she could by pouring perfume on my body to prepare it for burial. You may be sure that wherever the good news is told all over the world, people will remember what she has done. And they will tell others (vs. 6-9).

On another occasion, Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, poured “a very expensive bottle of perfume” on “Jesus’ feet,” and dried them “with her hair” (John 12:3, CEV). Judas Iscariot openly criticized Mary, but Jesus took up for her: “Leave her alone. She has done this for my burial” (v. 7).

On another occasion, Jesus complimented Mary because she thought that a spiritual lesson is more important than social entertaining. Jesus said to her sister,

Martha! Martha! You are worried and upset about so many things, but only one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen what is best, and it will not be taken away from her {John 12:41-42, CEV).

On another occasion, one of the reasons why Jesus walked some 25 miles, mostly uphill, from “beyond the Jordan” to Bethany, “about two miles from Jerusalem” was to comfort Mary and Martha in the death of their brother Lazarus (John 10:40; 11:1-14, CEV).

“When Martha heard that Jesus had arrived, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed in the house” (11:20). In Jesus’ talk with Martha he told her he wanted to see Mary. Martha returned home and said to Mary, “The Teacher is here, and he wants to see you” (v. 28). “As soon as Mary heard this, she got up and went out to Jesus” (vs. 28-29). When “Jesus saw her weeping,” he “was deeply moved in his spirit and troubled” (v. 33). Soon the sympathy in Jesus’ heart for the two sisters was seen outwardly, for “Jesus started crying” (v. 35).

On another occasion, Jesus was carrying his cross on the way to Golgotha. He saw and heard many women beside the road “crying and weeping for him” (Luke 23:27, CEV). Jesus knew what those ladies did not know, that they and their children yet unborn would suffer calamity and weeping in the fall of Jerusalem. So, Jesus, instead of thinking of his own misery, “turned to the women and said: ‘Women of Jerusalem, don’t cry for me! Cry for yourselves and for your children” (v. 28).

While Jesus was dying, he looked down and saw his mother standing by the cross, and his aunt Mary, and Mary of Magdala, and the apostle John (John 19:25, FHV). Apparently Jesus stepfather was dead, and his mother was a widow. Family members normally see after the needs of their blood-kin (cf. 1 Timothy 5:4, 8), but Jesus did not see any of his four brothers or any of his sisters (Mark 6:3; John 7:5) standing with his mother, a mother suffering as though “stabbed by a dagger” (Luke 1:35, CEV).

So Jesus had to turn to John, a non-family member, but deeply loved (John 13:23; 19:26; 20:2; 21:7, 20), to look after his mother. They all heard Jesus’ words coming down from the cross, first to Mary: “Woman, look! Your son,” and then to John, “Look! Your mother” (John 19:26, CEV). Only seven words from the dying Jesus, but they tell us something about his attitude toward women.

John had the same attitude that Jesus always displayed. As a result, “from that hour” Mary had another son (who “took her to his own house”), and John had another mother (v. 27).

The beautiful respect shown to Mary was not meant to exalt her above other mothers “who hear and keep God’s word” (Luke 11:28, CEV), but it does mean that Jesus respected motherhood.

After Jesus died, apparently his mother walked away with John, but his aunt Mary and Mary of Magdala stayed and watched Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus as they took down Jesus’ body, and they followed them as they carried the body to a garden tomb (Matthew 27-61; John 19:38-41). Even when the men had departed, Jesus’ aunt and Mary of Magdala lingered, “sitting over against the sepulchre” (Matthew 27:61).

Jesus’ first resurrection appearance was not, as one would expect, to the apostles, but “first to Mary of Magdala” (Mark 16:9, FHV). Why Jesus appeared first to a woman is unknown. One would expect that he would appear first to the apostles, for they were his “ambassadors,” and soon (on Pentecost Day, May 28, A.D. 30) they would be under-kings, sitting on “twelve thrones judging the twelve [spiritual] tribes of Israel” (Matthew 19:28). But whatever the reason why Jesus appeared first to a woman, the incident shows clearly that in Jesus is no gender-rivalry, no gender complex, nothing negative about the fairer sex.

That women were partners with Jesus in his work, and that he protected their rights, are facts that changed much of the world’s history.

The condition of WOMAN in antiquity was little better than that of the slave. She was the property of her husband, if married; if unmarried, she was the plaything or slave of man, never his equal.

“Contemptuous distrust” of women was the “dominating force” in the “highest minds.” “One would not know from the allusions in the manifold and elaborate writings of Cicero that he ever had” a mother. One man “celebrated the funeral of his wife with a fight of gladiators, only regretting that the African panthers intended for the occasion had been delayed by stormy weather.”

But the New Testament named and honored more women than are “to be found in all the works of the Augustan age.” Libanius, pagan sophist and tutor of the apostate emperor Julian, in speaking of a Christian mother, Anthusa, exclaimed: “What women these Christians have!” And now millions of men who have not accepted Christ have accepted his teaching about the worth of the female sex (FROM HEAVEN OR MEN, McCord, 82-83).