How Does Jesus Revolutionise Attitudes Towards Women?
The following is a summary of a talk by Lara Buchanan, speaker at OCCA The Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics.
In this piece, I want to take a closer look at how Jesus interacted with women. This matters deeply for Christians because Jesus is not understood merely as a prophet or wise moral teacher. Christianity claims something far more radical: that Jesus is God the Son, fully revealing the nature, character, and heart of the Creator.
Christian belief in the Trinity holds that Father, Son, and Spirit share the same divine nature. This means that what is true of Jesus is true of God. God is not distant or unknowable, but has chosen to be known. Jesus himself said, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9), and “The Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing” (John 5:19). Paul echoes this in Colossians: “The Son is the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15).
For Christians, then, Jesus offers the clearest window into who God is. So if we want to know what God thinks about women—about dignity, power, and worth—we need to look closely at Jesus.
In the UK, there is a popular BBC programme called Who Do You Think You Are? where well-known figures trace their ancestry. While we may be less conscious of lineage than people in the ancient world, we still instinctively care about where we come from. In Jesus’ day, genealogies were central to identity, history, and legitimacy. Bloodlines mattered enormously.
That is why the opening of Matthew’s Gospel is so striking. Jesus’ genealogy includes women: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba. To modern readers this may seem unremarkable, but in an ancient biography this was extraordinary. These women were not only female, but many were foreign, vulnerable, or morally complicated. Their presence signals, right at the beginning of the story, that something different is happening.
What happened to Jesus’ disciples that led them to record women so deliberately? What did they encounter in Jesus that reshaped their understanding of power, worth, and who belongs in God’s story? In what follows, I want to explore several ways in which Jesus revolutionised attitudes toward women; not just in theory, but in lived reality.
A View of Women at the Time of Jesus
To appreciate how radical Jesus’ actions were, we need to understand the context in which he lived. First-century Jewish culture had been deeply influenced by Greek philosophy, which generally held a low view of women. Aristotle taught that male virtue was expressed through command, and female virtue through obedience. Even philosophers who spoke positively about women often believed they required male guidance to restrain their supposed moral weakness.
This thinking shaped social, legal, and religious life. Women had limited legal rights, restricted access to education, and little public voice. Jewish historian Josephus wrote:
“The woman, says the Law, is in all things inferior to the man… the authority has been given by God to the man.”[1]
By Jesus’ day, Jewish men prayed daily, thanking God that they had not been created women. Women were excluded from studying or teaching the Torah and were increasingly segregated in religious life. They were widely regarded as morally weaker, intellectually inferior, and spiritually suspect.
Let’s compare this with the attitude of Jesus.
How Did Jesus Treat Women?
The first thing to notice is that Jesus was openly relational with women and consistently honoured them where society demeaned them. In Luke 7, He welcomes and defends a woman whom others view with shame. In John 11, Jesus counts Mary and Martha among His close friends, not merely as household figures but as trusted companions.
Where religious laws had been weaponised to exclude women, Jesus restored their original intent. In Mark 5, a woman suffering from a bleeding condition touches Jesus, violating purity laws that would have kept her isolated. Rather than rebuking her, Jesus affirms her faith and restores her dignity. He then touches a dead girl, again crossing purity boundaries, to show that compassion matters more than ritual separation.
In Luke 13, Jesus heals a woman who had suffered for eighteen years. When challenged for breaking the Sabbath, He refers to her as a “daughter of Abraham,” a title of honour rarely applied to women. In doing so, He publicly affirms her spiritual worth.
At a time when women were blamed for male desire, Jesus reverses the moral logic. While contemporary teachers warned men to avoid women because of their supposed danger, Jesus teaches that lust originates in the heart of the one who desires (Matthew 5).
Jesus’ Approach to Women in His Ministry
Jesus also consistently included women in his teaching. He deliberately drew on imagery from both male and female spheres of life. His parables spoke of winemaking (Matthew 9:17) and the lighting of a city (Matthew 5:14) which were traditionally male occupations, but also of sewing cloth (Matthew 9:16), and the lighting of a home (Matthew 5:15) which were activities associated with women. In Luke 15, he pairs a parable about a shepherd searching for a lost sheep with one about a woman searching for a lost coin. He is constantly representing both men and women in His teaching.
Jesus engaged women in serious theological dialogue. In John 4, He reveals His identity as Messiah to a Samaritan woman, which broke ethnic, moral, and gender boundaries all at once. In John 11, his declaration “I am the resurrection and the life” is spoken to Martha, in the context of grief and deep theological reflection.
These are not incidental conversations. They are among the most powerful moments in the Gospels.
Jesus Uses Female Imagery to Describe God
Jesus also uses explicitly female imagery for God. As He approaches Jerusalem, He laments over the city, saying He longs to gather its children as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings (Matthew 23:37). This maternal image portrays divine protection, tenderness, and vulnerability.
Likewise, when Jesus compares God to a woman searching for a lost coin, He presents female experience as a legitimate and powerful reflection of God’s character. In doing so, Jesus echoes the Hebrew prophets, such as Isaiah, who likens God to a woman in labour (Isaiah 42:14).
Jesus Had Female Disciples
In Matthew 12:45, Jesus points to the crowd He calls His disciples and says, “Here are my mother and my brothers.” Culturally, one would never point to a group of men and refer to them in the female. The inclusion of feminine language strongly suggests a mixed group. In Luke 10, the text shows that Mary of Bethany sat at the feet of Jesus to hear Him teach. This was an official phrase used of a Rabbi and their disciples. When Martha, her sister objects, Jesus affirms Mary’s choice. Martha’s unease with her sister’s actions are most likely because Mary is breaking cultural taboos by joining the men and learning theology.
Ben Sira of Jerusalem wrote, “May the words of the Torah be burned rather than be given to women!”[2] Jesus, by contrast, welcomed women as learners and disciples.
Why Did Jesus Only Have Male Disciples in His Group of Twelve?
Some ask why, if Jesus valued women so highly, the Twelve were all male. Two observations are helpful. First, Jesus often subverted expectations quietly rather than confrontationally. Second, the Twelve function symbolically. They represent the twelve tribes of Israel, signalling that Jesus is fulfilling God’s covenant promises.
The Twelve are not presented as a template for leadership. They were all Jewish, free men. There were no Gentiles and no slaves. Does this mean that only people who are Jewish and of a free class could be leaders within Jesus’ church? To claim that would be certainly to contradict significant teaching of Jesus and the New Testament as a whole. The maleness of the Twelve appears to serve a theological purpose, not a universal rule.
All the Major Moments of Salvation History Involve Women
Women are central to every major movement of salvation. The incarnation is known through Mary, the mother of Jesus (Luke 1). At the cross, when male disciples flee, women remain (Mark 15:40). And at the resurrection, women are the first witnesses.
Eyewitnesses to the Resurrection
In first-century Jewish law, women’s testimony was considered invalid. Josephus wrote that women’s evidence should not be admitted due to their supposed unreliability. Yet Jesus appears first to women after his resurrection, entrusting them with the foundational testimony of Christianity (Matthew 28; John 20).
This is extraordinary. The resurrection – the cornerstone of Christian faith – is announced by those society refused to trust.
Concluding Thoughts
Throughout the Gospels, Jesus implicitly asks religious leaders, “Who do you think you are?”—especially when power is used to diminish others. But he also asks a deeper question: “Who do you say that I am?”
If Jesus is God incarnate, then His treatment of women reveals God’s heart. It shows us that God values every person equally. He values women extremely highly, as He values men. His treatment challenges distorted views of power and worth. It affirms that exclusion, patronisation, and domination were never God’s intention.
And this vision extends beyond women. It speaks to anyone treated as less than—because of gender, race, class, age, or status. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection proclaim that God is making all things new.
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References
‘Against Apion’, Falvius Josephus, c. AD 97
Sotah 3. 4., Ben Sira
Lara Buchanan