Jesus Through the Eyes of Women: How the First Female Disciples Help Us Know and Love the Lord

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Far from being antithetical to women’s rights, Christianity is their firm and best foundation. (13) Christianity is the most pro-woman religion in the world. Don’t believe me? Take it from the women who encountered Jesus Christ during his life on earth. Rebecca McLaughlin’s new book, Jesus through the Eyes of Women: How the First Female Disciples Help Us Know and Love the Lord (Crossway/TGC), illumines Christ’s character from the vantage point of his earliest female followers. Here are 20 quotes that caught my attention. This is not a book about women. There are a lot of those, and I'm kind of done with them. This book was so refreshing to read in that rather than focusing on women, it focuses on Jesus. On seeing Jesus through the eyes of women mentioned throughout the New Testament to see who Jesus is. "Looking through their eyes, we see a man who valued women of all kinds--especially those vilified by others."

In Jesus through the Eyes of Women, Rebecca McLaughlin explores the life-changing accounts of women who met the Lord. By entering the stories of the named and unnamed women in the Gospels, this book gives readers a unique lens to see Jesus as these women did and marvel at how he loved them in return. ways to invest in the development of human beings and continue making vocational contributions to our McLaughlin has written this book to show us that the way Jesus treated women was revolutionary and counter-cultural. A true reading of Scripture reflects Jesus’ care, love, and respect of women. As we look at Jesus through his mother’s eyes, we see how God grabs ordinary folk to be his chosen agents in this world. When you and I let Jesus in, our humdrum lives become the buzzing center of a miracle— however little it may feel that way at times.” After building inroads for a variety of readers, McLaughlin gets into the nitty-gritty details of how women’s accounts added to the picture we see the Gospels paint of Jesus. Which stories in these books were likely included only because women witnessed and relayed them? It turns out, plenty. “If we cut the things that only women witnessed, we’d lose our first glimpse of Jesus as he took on human flesh and our first glimpse of his resurrected body,” McLaughlin writes. “The four Gospels preserve the eyewitness testimony of women.”

How the First Female Disciples Help Us Know and Love the Lord

As he is with these women, he is also with us. “Jesus is no more put off by our inevitable uncleanness than a mother who has just given birth would be put off from holding her blood-smeared newborn. Before long, Jesus would bleed for this woman.” Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 speak of Christ’s nourishment and healing, respectively. We see that Jesus is the one who truly satisfies, and he is the only one who can make us whole again. The book includes many discussion prompts at the end of every chapter, as well as Bible study questions to help you go deeper in the text. In this way, this book would be perfect for a small group or Sunday school class. Boundaries are necessary for human flourishing. The Bible’s boundaries surrounding sex and limiting it to a male and female within the covenant of marriage protects all parties and creates a safe and healthy environment for everyone to thrive. Among many other benefits, it creates financial, emotional, and physical stability.

Jesus’s longest recorded private conversation with anyone in the Gospels is with a woman Jewish men would have avoided at all costs. This woman is the first person in John’s Gospel to whom Jesus explicitly reveals himself as the Christ, and she is the last person with whom a respectable rabbi should have been spending time alone. (84) One day, Jesus was on his way to heal a 12-year-old girl when a woman who had suffered 12 years of menstrual bleeding figured that if she could just touch the fringe of his clothes she’d be made well. She was right. But Jesus didn’t just move on. He had her come forward from the crowd and commended her faith (Luke 8:43–48). Perhaps one weakness should be noted and that is that McLaughlin adds one point that shows she confuses Israel and the church. Other than this, her book is a very encouraging read).Few things get me internally riled up. Abortion, governmental corruption, and several other issues, all serve to hit a nerve and get me fired up. One subject that also creates much inner angst is when people say that Christianity is misogynistic. I get it. Much of church history is marked with terrible atrocities. And many unbiblical things have happened in the name of God, Jesus Christ, and/or the church, including the treatment of women. Sadly, many who verbally claim to be Christian, are anything but. True Christianity is not anti-woman at all. In fact, given the culture in which the church began, the dignity of women was actually elevated by the Christians of the early church. The church's Master, the Lord Jesus Christ, demonstrated a high view of women. In examining our Lord's life, one finds that numerous women were his disciples and they played key roles within the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. We gain an intimate glimpse of Jesus’s relationships with women in his friendship with two sisters. We first meet Mary and Martha in Luke, when Jesus is at their house. Martha is busy serving. Mary is sitting at Jesus’s feet, learning with the disciples. Martha complains and asks Jesus to tell Mary she should be serving, too.

In fact, it seems that Jesus let Lazarus die partly so that he could have this conversation with Martha—whom he loved (John 11:5)—in which he uttered world-changing words: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25–26). Perhaps my favorite of these is the author’s take on the well-known story of Mary and Martha. When Jesus tells Martha, who is “distracted with much serving,” that her sister Mary “has chosen the good portion” by sitting at his feet, McLaughlin doesn’t see it as an indictment of the domestic anxieties that can plague women (how often have you heard a woman confess to “being a Martha”?). Rather, his words are a “validation of female discipleship,” of Mary’s and Martha’s access to Jesus as thinkers and students, not just servers. Through the eyes of the sinful woman who crashes Simon the Pharisee’s dinner party (Luke 7:36-49), at last we see Jesus as “the one who defends” the woman wetting his feet with her tears and wiping them with her hair. Rather than tearing this woman down along with his host, Jesus lifts her up “as a shining, tear-stained paragon of love to humble the self-righteous Pharisee.” In a culture where women were often silenced, Jesus commissions a female disciple to announce his resurrection to his male disciples. Strikingly, Mary Magdalene is the first person in John’s Gospel to call Jesus ‘the Lord.’" A winsome apologist with a Ph.D. in renaissance literature and a degree in theology, McLaughlin brings an academic’s understanding of history, context, and biblical commentary to bear on the core question of this book: How did the women named in the Bible describe their interactions with a Christ who was as countercultural then as he is today? And what would we have missed had these women not told others, ‘I have seen the Lord’? (John 20:18)We deny that the use of AI is morally neutral. It is not worthy of man’s hope, worship, or love. Since the Lord Jesus alone can atone for sin and reconcile humanity to its Creator, technology such as AI cannot fulfill humanity’s ultimate needs. We further deny the goodness and benefit of any application of AI that devalues or degrades the dignity and worth of another human being. Some might equate Jesus with those actions, too. But the Bible tells a drastically different story. Women were pivotal in Jesus’ minestry. “If we cut the things (out of the Bible) that only women witnessed, we’d lose our first glimpse of Jesus as he took on human flesh and our first glimpse of his resurrected body.” Christianity threw out this model. Rather than being seen as inferior to men, women were equally made in God’s image. Rather than being free to use slaves and prostitutes (of either sex), men were expected to be faithful to one wife, or to live in celibate singleness. Yet, when one turns to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, a radical, revolutionary view of women shines forth through the grace-filled words and loving actions of Jesus toward the females in his life. Jesus broke through both Jewish and Gentile forms of oppression against women and offered a fresh view of the female gender which has provided the undergirding for true women’s freedom and rights up through the present day. Besides John, women are largely the consistent witnesses of Jesus’ excruciating death, burial, and resurrection as well. In a chapter on life, McLaughlin focuses on these women’s accounts to winsomely argue for, not against, biblical soundness at several points, anticipating opposing views. She even quotes a resurrection skeptic and politely refutes his claims.

Each chapter highlights characteristics of Jesus. We see prophecy, discipleship, nourishment, healing, forgiveness, and life. She reminds us that, in that culture, the only reason to say that women witnessed all this is that they really did. Bringing Christ into focus The book delves into what these women witnessed by dividing the stories into six broad categories, from discipleship and nourishment, to healing and forgiveness. Zooming inBefore we get into her masterful debunking of certain myths and stereotypes, let me deflate one on the author’s behalf: though women are in the title, this book is not just for women, and it is not even really about women. This is a book about the person of Christ, and it is for all those who want to know and follow him more. The fresh perspective it offers us is an aide to that lifelong endeavor. In Rome, “men no more hesitated to use slaves and prostitutes to relieve themselves of their sexual needs than they did to use the side of a road as a toilet.” The idea that every woman had the right to choose what happened to her body was laughable. The women we meet teach us the gospel in compelling ways. Every one of them helps us savor Jesus a little bit more. They stir up affection for familiar truths while McLaughlin helps make connections that are novel for readers who are older in the faith. necessary ethical standard for the collection, manipulation, or exploitation of personal data—individually