Scandalous Behavior

Scandalous Behavior

Jesus’ Attitude Toward Women

Author Dan Brown revived ancient legends as the basis for his worldwide best seller, The Da Vinci Code. The “secret” information supposedly suppressed by the early church includes Jesus’ marriage to Mary Magdalene and the children they are said to have had. The book also claims, among other things, that the idea of Jesus being divine was invented by a meeting of church bishops in A.D. 325.

Christians with knowledge of the Bible found the material in The Da Vinci Code scandalous, and rightly so. During Jesus’ ministry, many people found his behavior scandalous, but for a different reason. His dealings with women especially must have shocked people in a culture where the men prayed in thanksgiving to God that they were not born as women. Although rabbinic teachings held that it would be better to burn the words of the Law than to teach them publicly to a woman, Jesus willingly taught God’s truth to the women among his followers. Jesus allowed women to support his ministry and to travel with his disciples. He initiated a conversation with a Samaritan woman with a questionable reputation (see John 4:6-26) and shocked dinner guests by allowing a repentant sinful woman to touch him (see Luke 7:37-50).

Jesus went against social norms to demonstrate that men and women are equally valued in God’s sight. We are all born as sinners in need of a Savior. We will never be able to comprehend fully the anguish and suffering that it cost a holy God to become a human and come to a world infected with evil. We will never know the pain that Jesus experienced in his agonizing death on the cross to pay the price for our sin. And we will never know the immensity of God’s love for us that broke through time and space, scandalized a world caught in sin’s grip, and wouldn’t let anything keep him from reaching us. But we can spend the rest of our lives thanking him for it.

With all my heart I will praise you, O Lord my God. I will give glory to your name forever, for your love for me is very great.

Psalm 86:12-13