The Woman in Christ

The view that women are inferior to men and therefore deserving to be ruled by men has been and is still preached in the church over 2000 years after the death and resurrection of Christ. This is so regardless of Jesus modeling to us what the kingdom of God is like; A Spiritual kingdom where we are all equal as children of God with God as the head. One gets concerned to think that perhaps the world manifests a distorted kingdom of God principle while the church, which is supposed to be the light of the world, has allowed tradition, cultural and gender bias to bar it from growth and healing. Indeed Christ said that the “people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light” Luke 16:8.

Although the foundation of the Christian faith is based on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ the church sometimes acts like Christ death did not completely emancipate the woman and she is therefore to be controlled lest she runs wild. Certain scriptures are quoted out of context to permeate this view. The gospel simply means the good news, not to some but for all mankind. Luke reports that Jesus read from Isaiah 61:1-2 at the beginning of His ministry to communicate His mission on earth.  The scripture reads, “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, Because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent me to heal the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord” He finished by saying “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing”. Luke 4: 18-19, 21.

Jesus lived His life manifesting and teaching kingdom principles in line with the scripture he read from. He related to people and did things in a way that heavily clashed with the traditions of the day. He dined with sinners, engaged women in matters of the kingdom of God and welcomed children. He told Martha who was complaining about her sister Mary because she had chosen to sit at Jesus feet to hear the word instead of helping her in the kitchen, that “Mary had chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her” Luke 10:42. Martha was trying to justify the traditional role of a woman serving from the Kitchen but Jesus was telling her there is also another way and that is at the feet of the master.

Women in Jesus’ time were only supposed to be seen not heard but Jesus gave them a voice. Why would He refuse to judge a woman found in the act of adultery and sentenced to death (John 8:2-11)? Where was the justice for such a woman sentenced to an act that involved a man but charged alone? Jesus did not need to tell the woman’s accusers what to do but requested the one without sin to be the first one to throw the stone. No one could because they were all as guilty as this woman. Perhaps if Jesus was not there to defend the cause of the woman she would have been killed while the man’s sin was overlooked.

Another time Jesus took time to engage the Samaritan woman at the well in a conversation in order to introduce her to the kingdom of God. This woman is said to have had 5 “husbands” and was currently living with another man (John 4:18). Jesus encounter with this woman was so liberating that she “left her water pot” as she hurried to preach the good news that Jesus had revealed to her (John 4:28). Her first congregation was men who after hearing what she had to say followed her to find Jesus “And many of the Samaritans of that city believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified” John 4:39.  The interesting thing is that his disciples who were away at this meeting when they came back “marveled that He talked with a woman: yet no one said, “what do you seek?” or “why are you talking to her?” John4:27. Jesus was acting contrary to the traditions of the day and was in the process introducing and demonstrating how to live in the kingdom of God.

People sometimes question why there were no women in Jesus 12 disciples if God was of equality. To answer this one must understand the culture of the day in Jesus times. The times that Jesus lived women were not allowed to worship with men and were treated more as men’s property.  In fact there is a saying that Jews used to pray, “Lord I thank you that I am not a Gentile, a slave or a woman”. Jesus had to work with the prevailing culture and transform it from within.  He also needed to prepare the woman and teach her the things of the Kingdom of God as He invited her in to a position that had been dominated by men up to His time. In other words Jesus was ending the past and introducing the future. 

Jesus told off the Pharisees who had “transgressed the commandment of God with their traditions. —teaching as doctrines the commandments of men” Mathew 15: 3, 9. He also rebuked the lawyers for “you have taken away the key of knowledge” Luke 11:52. The Pharisees and Lawyers had erroneous interpretation of scripture and man-made rules which made it hard for people to understand God’s truth and practice it.  Today in the church there are many man made rules which inhibit the service of God, in particular as concerns women.

Many women will quietly pretend that they are happy with the way things are but struggle inside wondering why they have this zeal to serve the Lord in a capacity that the church tells her she cannot because she is a woman. There are those who believe that a woman “is less spiritual” than a man which to me is delusional thinking because the evidence from scripture and modern day worship tell a different story. These kinds of belief have sadly discouraged some gifted women from being involved in church business and have opted to be of service in the world because they find acceptance there than in the church. This is by itself is a tragedy because only in Christ can a woman truly find freedom.

Scripture teaches that the devil masquerades as the angel of light and he does so by hijacking kingdom principles and sells them to the world but with distortion to deceive the world. The feminist philosophy was a noble one, but like everything of the world was taken to extremes and instead of staying as an issue of equality it has become a process of emasculating the man and taking away a woman’s femininity. This is how the devil corrupts things of God and makes them of the world and uses them to destroy humans. The devil understands that God does not discriminate between the man and the woman because Christ broke the curse that was pronounced on both men and women in the Garden of Eden.

It is time that the church allowed the Holy Spirit to perform the task of building the church by allowing all the members to serve in any position He has equipped them to. We are one body and we need each other to fulfill the mission that Christ gave to the church.  There is no gender when it comes to spiritual matters since we are all just vessels that God uses to communicate His will to the world. The kingdom of God is a Spiritual one and “God is Spirit and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth” John 4:24.