How Does Jesus and His Interactions with Women Inform Our Beliefs?

Scholars agree that Jesus valued and elevated women. At the same time, scholars disagree as to whether Jesus’s affirmation and ministry to and with women have a bearing on whether to limit the ministry of women.[1] An essential element for deciding about women’s functioning in the church, in other words developing your theology of women, is a review of the New Testament accounts of Jesus’s ministry to, and interactions with, women.

Several questions to consider in one’s review are: What is the nature of Jesus’s interactions with women? Does Jesus teach male-female distinctions in leadership? How does Jesus’s modeling with women inform our understanding of Paul’s teaching about women in leadership? And, what conclusions do scholars draw from Jesus’s ministry to, and with, women?

In the Gospels, one finds Jesus not only teaching but also asking and answering important questions. Let’s sift the scriptures for God’s wisdom with women’s full flourishing in the Lord as our goal. Carolyn Custis James reminds us,

Jesus’ mission was to make great theologians out of all of us. He stated as much when he said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10b), for as he later explained, “This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3, emphasis theirs).[2]

Jesus and the Incarnation

The Virgin Mary was the first person told that the long-awaited Messiah was Jesus (Luke 1:31). After the angel Gabriel told Mary she would conceive by the Spirit’s power, she replied, “Yes, I am a servant of the Lord; let this happen to me according to your word” (v. 38). Mary witnessed the miracles surrounding Jesus’s birth. She attended the wedding in Cana, where Jesus performed his first public miracle (John 2:4–8). The Gospels reflect that Mary followed Jesus throughout his ministry (Mark 3:31; Luke 8:19; John 2:12). She stayed with him throughout his crucifixion (John 19:25–27). After Jesus’s resurrection, she is found praying with one hundred twenty of his followers in the upper room, as well as on the day of Pentecost (Acts 1:13–14).

Timothy Ralston, in his chapter titled “The Virgin Mary: Reclaiming Our Respect” expresses that Mary “stands apart as perhaps the greatest example of discipleship in the New Testament.”[3] Mary was the key witness of Jesus’s conception, birth, ministry, death, and resurrection—truths on which the entire Christian faith depends.

Jesus Taught and Equipped Women to Evangelize and Teach

The Gospels reveal that Jesus taught women in private and in public. Jesus spoke to a Samaritan woman when most Jews avoided Samaritans (John 4:6–7). Seated at Jacob’s well, Jesus engaged her in a theological conversation. She is the first person to whom Jesus introduced “living water” (v. 10) and the first person to whom Jesus identified himself as the long-awaited Messiah (v. 26).

The Samaritan woman believed in Jesus, left her water jar, and set out to tell the good news to those in her village, many of whom believed (vv. 28–30, 39). The Twelve return to Jesus, wondering among themselves why Jesus was speaking to a woman (v. 27). Jesus points them to the surrounding fields which he described as “ripe for harvest.” He continued, “Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life” (v. 35–36). Coming from the direction of town, a group of Samaritans approach Jesus to report the faith-filled result of their townswoman’s testimony, and to invite him to stay with them, and many more believed (v. 39–41).

In the same way that the prophet Anna had prophesied in the Temple about baby Jesus “to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem” (Luke 2:36–38), the Samaritan woman announced the presence of the Messiah to her townspeople and her testimony reaped “fruit for eternal life” (John 4:36–39).

Turning to Bethany, while Jesus lodged with Mary and her siblings, Lazarus and Martha, Mary assumed a disciple-in-training position at the rabbi Jesus’s feet. Martha, objected, but Jesus replied to her, “One thing is needed. Mary has chosen the best part; it will not be taken away from her” (10:42). Jesus affirmed Mary’s choice to pursue spiritual training with his words: “needed,” “the best part,” and “it will not be taken away.”

Jesus Welcomed Women Disciples

Speaking of female disciples, Jesus was revolutionary for the times by ministering to, and with, women. A mathēthēs [Greek term for “disciple”] of Christ is a learner who seeks to learn from, follow after, and emulate the Teacher (Luke 14:26–27). Though Jesus called twelve men as his first disciples (Matt 10:1–4; Mark 3:14), counterculturally he also welcomed women as his disciples.

Jesus himself defined his disciples, “Who is my mother and who are my brothers?” Then gesturing to the men and women gathered—his disciples—he answered, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Matt 12:48–50).

Luke names Tabitha (also called Dorcas) a mathetria and records her community’s praise for hergood deeds and ministry to the poor and widows(Acts 9:36–39). She suddenly fell ill and died. Some fellow disciples urged Peter to come, and he raised her from the dead. Upon hearing Tabitha’s story, many believed in Jesus (vv. 38–42).

Jesus’s inner circle included women.[4] Jesus’s female disciples included Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna, and many other women who traveled with him and his other disciples (Luke 8:1–3). Traveling with Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem, they supported him with their financial means. He invited their presence, accepted their financial support, encouraged their learning, affirmed their identity as disciples, and commissioned them to ministry.

In her new book Women Who Do: Female Disciples in the Gospels, Holly J. Carey writes,

“Any work that neglects the role that women play as committed followers of Jesus misses an essential component of what discipleship means in his ministry.”[5]

Carey asserts that “a comprehensive study of female discipleship in the Gospels” (which her book provides) will reveal that “it is their active discipleship that makes them exemplars for Christians.”[6]

Jesus Chose Women as Witnesses and Commissioned Them to Ministry

At a time when a woman’s testimony was inadmissible in court,[7] God chose women as his key witnesses. As mentioned, Mary, the mother of Jesus, witnessed his conception, birth, death, and resurrection, along with the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost. Jesus’s mother and Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna, and many other women traveled with Jesus while he preached (Luke 8:2). They witnessed his execution (23:49) and his burial (23:55).

Mary Magdalene was the first to see Jesus resurrected. All four gospels record her witness of the resurrection. Calling Mary by name, Jesus commissioned her: “Go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’” (John 20:14–18).

Jennifer Powell McNutt in her new book The Mary We Forgot: What the Apostle to the Apostles Teaches the Church Today reminds us that at Jesus’s death, the curtained barrier to the temple’s Holy of Holies tore in two. The Son’s death and resurrection opened the gateway to the Father’s throne of grace. McNutt writes, “Christ lifted barriers and extended our access both to the triune God and to one another… To make sense of her [Mary Magdalene’s] presence there at that monumental juncture in human history, we must see that this moment is her apostolic calling, marked by the rending of the curtain.”[8] McNutt notes that just as Paul makes his “claim to apostolicity as divine command… Mary Magdalene too was directly sent by the risen Christ, and there is no higher authority.”[9] Paul affirms that the holy places of God are open to all without distinction with this declaration, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28 NIV).

From the Virgin Mary to the Samaritan woman to Mary Magdalene, God revealed himself in significant ways to women. Jesus enabled women to minister at his side and to share his good news with men and women. The core doctrines of the Christian faith depend on the eyewitness testimony of women.

Complementarian Interpretations

Complementarians agree that Jesus co-labored with women and affirmed and elevated them in ways contrary to cultural norms.[10] James A. Borland, in his chapter titled “Women in the Life and Teachings of Jesus,” describes three ways Jesus affirmed and elevated women.

First, “Jesus placed a high value on women.”[11] For example, “Females are seen by Jesus as genuine persons, not simply as objects of male desire.”[12]

Second, Jesus regularly addressed women in public: the woman at the well; the woman adulterer taken to be stoned (John 8:10–11), the widow of Nain (Luke 7:12–13), a woman with a bleeding disorder, whom he called “daughter” (8:48), a woman bent over by a spirit for eighteen years, whom he called “daughter of Abraham” (13:12–16), and the group of women following him to the cross (23:27–31).

Third, Jesus valued women by the way he addressed divorce, saying it falls short of God’s purpose (Matt 19:3–9; Mark 10:2–12). And, he demonstrated women’s value by his consideration of women as persons as opposed to property (Matt 5:32; 19:9; Mark 10:11–12; Luke 16:18). Jesus’s “condemnation of the sin of lust was crucial in allowing Him and His followers to enjoy social contact as male and female, something nearly foreign to the Jewish mores of His age” (Matt 5:28–29). In other words, Jesus taught men to corral their thoughts instead of avoiding females.[13]

John Piper and Wayne Grudem acknowledge these truths, yet also argue for sex-based role limitation: “It simply does not follow to say that since women ministered to Jesus and learned from Jesus and ran to tell the disciples that Jesus was risen, this must mean that Jesus opposed the loving headship of husbands or the limitation of eldership to spiritual men.”[14]

Egalitarian Interpretations

Egalitarians disagree with sex-based role limitations. Philip Payne points to the significance of Jesus’s affirmation of women disciples, “Disciples in Jesus’s day were trained to carry on a rabbi’s teachings, typically becoming teachers themselves, and the rabbis’ disciples were always male. Jesus’s teaching of both men and women disciples implies that he wanted women as well as men to be religious teachers.” Bible women such as the Samaritan woman, Priscilla, and Mary Magdalene exemplify this, “Nor did Jesus prevent women from proclaiming the gospel to men.”[15] Todd Still, Dean of George W. Truett Theological Seminary, discusses a trajectory “of inclusion and embrace” in the New Testament and that Jesus “affirmed women in principle and practice,” which in his view necessarily points the church today to do likewise.[16] Holly Carey asserts,

“When the crucial function of female disciples as exemplars of active discipleship is overlooked, this gap will have a corresponding effect on any contemporary discussion of female discipleship in the church.”[17]

From this brief review of the Gospel accounts, it is clear that women are an integral part of God’s redemptive plan. What say you? Have you engaged in an in-depth study of what the Bible says about women to develop your theology of women? If you’re intrigued, I invite you to subscribe to my bi-monthly newsletter Querying Questions: Exploring Questions About Women and the Church, and join the waitlist for a self-paced online course, Theology of Women Academy: A Deep Dive into Understanding Biblical Views and Developing Your Beliefs on Women and the Church. What you believe about women matters.

Image: Mosaic in the Basilica of St. Pudentiana, Rome. Visualmuseum.gallery

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[1] Aída Besancon Spencer, “Jesus Treatment of Women in the Gospels,” in Discovering Biblical Equality: Biblical, Cultural, and Practical Perspectives, ed. Ronald W. Pierce and Cynthia Long Westfall, 3^rd ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2021), 90–91. See also James A. Borland, “Women in the Life and Teachings of Jesus,” in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, ed. John Piper and Wayne Grudem, 1^st ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1991), 113.

[2] Carolyn Custis James, When Life and Beliefs Collide, 36.

[3] Timothy Ralston, “The Virgin Mary: Reclaiming Our Respect,” in Vindicating the Vixens: Revisiting the Sexualized, Vilified, and Marginalized Women of the Bible, ed. Sandra Glahn (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic, 2017), 123.

[4] Jennifer Powell McNutt, The Mary We Forgot: What the Apostle to the Apostles Teaches the Church Today, (Brazos Press, 2024), 153.

[5] Holly J. Carey, Women Who Do: Female Disciples in the Gospels, (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2023), 9.

[6] Carey, Women Who Do, 9.

[7] Cohick, Women in the World, 124. The legal remedy for women required a male representative or guardian. Cohick notes, “An important exemption from male guardianship was made for female Roman citizens who had three live births and a freedwoman who had four live births. These conditions were…enacted under Augustus (Gaius, Institutiones 1.145, 171),” 124, n 66; Gryson wrote, “Rabbinical tradition generally manifested a profound contempt for woman and stipulated more than once that her witness could not be received” (The Ministry of Women, 111).

[8] McNutt, The Mary We Forgot, 193–4.

[9] McNutt, The Mary We Forgot,” 196, 198.

[10] Spencer, “Jesus’s Treatment of Women in the Gospels,” RBMW, 91.

[11] Borland, “Women in the Life and Teachings of Jesus,” RBMW, 113.

[12] Borland, “Women in the Life, 114.

[13] Borland, “Women in the Life,” 115.

[14] John Piper and Wayne Grudem, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, 67.

[15] Philip Payne, “The Bible Teaches the Equal Standing of Man and Woman,” Priscilla Papers 28, no. 1 (Winter 2015): 7.

[16] Todd D. Still, “Jesus and Paul on Women: Incomparable or Compatible?” Priscilla Papers 27, no. 3 (Summer 2013): 16–19.

[17] Carey, Women Who Do, 11.