Gentle Reader,
“Jesus said to her, ‘I who speak to you am He.'” – John 4:26 (NKJV)
The first person to whom Jesus explicitly revealed His identity was a woman.
Let that one sink in.
There are hard passages in the Bible, passages that, taken at a surface level, seem to teach us that God views women as second-class. Sub-human. That He commands our subjection to any and all men. The key word here is seem. Men have taken these words and twisted them to suit their own sinful purposes. They have sought to keep women in our “place,” which is a place never defined nor commanded by God.
Because there’s nobody who’s more pro-woman than the Savior. Nobody.
He shouldn’t have even been talking to this woman, this Samaritan woman, this woman who’d been in and out of several relationships. Her femaleness, her ethnicity and her track record all amounted to a great black mark on the ledger. Jesus completely steps outside of all the boundaries. He shatters all the expectations.
This wasn’t the first time that God ignored the views of men and interacted with a woman either directly or through a prophet (for a small sampling, see Genesis 16, Genesis 18:1-15, 2 Kings 4:1-37, Luke 1). This wasn’t the last woman He would invite into His life during those years of ministry (Luke 8:1-13). To this day Jesus continues to draw women to Him, redeem us, remake us and equip us for service.
Jesus never abuses or overlooks women.
He invites us to be with Him.
For all entries in the Jesus: 31 Days with the Savior series, go here.