What Jesus has done for women

Luke 8:1-3

Does the Scripture give an account of the lives of the many who had come in contact with Jesus?  The answer is only a few and the amazing thing is many of them are women.  Most of us living in the west have no real understanding of the role the women played in the time Christ walked on planet earth.  But they did not have the same status or standing as a man, and Jesus changed all of that, the following is from a paper by B.A. Robinson

He ignored ritual impurity laws: Mark 5:25-34, describes Jesus' cure of a woman who suffered from menstrual bleeding for 12 years. In Judean society of the day, it was a major transgression for a man to talk to a woman other than his wife or children. He talked to foreign women: John 4:7 to 5:30 describes Jesus' conversation with a woman of Samaria. She was doubly ritually unclean since she was both a foreigner and a woman. Men were not allowed to talk to women, except within their own families. Jesus also helped a Canaanite woman, another foreigner, in Matthew 15:22-28. Although he described non-Jews as "dogs", he was willing to talk to her, and is recorded as having cured her daughter of demon-possession. He taught women students: Jewish tradition at the time was to not allow women to be taught. Rabbi Eliezer wrote in the 1st century CE: "Rather should the words of the Torah be burned than entrusted to a woman...Whoever teaches his daughter the Torah is like one who teaches her obscenity." 5  Jesus overthrew centuries of tradition. In Luke 10:38-42, he taught Mary, sister of Martha. He used terminology which treated women as equal to men:  Luke 13:16 describes how he cured a woman from an indwelling Satanic spirit. He called her a daughter of Abraham, thus implying that she had equal status with sons of Abraham. "The expression 'son of Abraham' was commonly used to respectfully refer to a Jew, but 'daughter of Abraham', was an unknown parallel phrase...It occurs nowhere else in the Bible." 4 It seems to be a designation created by Jesus. He accepted women in his inner circle: Luke 8:1-3 describes the inner circle of Jesus' followers: 12 male disciples and an unspecified number of female supporters (Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna and "many others.") It would appear that about half of his closest followers were women. All of the above is true and we could add so much more to what Jesus has done for women but it is of interest to this writer that Jesus allowed these women to be a model of how the Church would provide for missions, they went with Jesus to do the work of the ministry and also provided them with financial support.  From the Back Porch, Bob Rice