“When someone brings up the Bible in everyday conversation, a common response is “Isn’t the Bible sexist?” But how many people who say that have looked carefully at what the Bible has to say about men and women? Take the time Jesus spent at Simon the Pharisee’s house—He points to a woman and asks, “Do you see this woman?” (Luke 7:44). It’s worth noting what follows.

Cutting through the judgmental murmurings of the crowd, Jesus’s question to Simon was intentionally provocative. It’s not hard to imagine the response running through Simon’s head: “See her?! It’s impossible to miss her! This woman—this infamous sinner, this impure interloper—has gate-crashed my dinner party and caused an outrageous scandal! So what does it say about You, Jesus, that You’re so eager to welcome her?”  

It says a lot. Clearly, Simon the Pharisee and Jesus Christ have very different understandings of what it means to “see” a woman. Jesus compares the woman’s treatment of Him with that of Simon and uses the example of the woman to teach Simon about the nature of forgiveness.  This divergence between divine and human sight is nothing new. Right from the first chapter of Scripture, we are told that “God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27, NIV).

In his introduction to humanity, the author of Genesis deliberately spells out that women, too, belong to that elevated, divine image-bearing category. Such a perspective stands in radical contrast to the ancient mind-set of celebrated thinkers, such as the fifth-century BC Greek philosopher Plato, who once stated, “It is only males who are created directly by the gods and are given souls . . . [T]hose who are cowards . . . are changed into the nature of women in the second generation” (Plato, Timaeus, § 90e).

Unlike Plato, when God looks at a woman, He sees a person He has formed in His own likeness, and He calls her creation “very good” (Genesis 1:31). In fact, there is only one thing about God’s creation that He calls “not good”: for the man to be alone  (Genesis 2:18). And so the woman is not only made in God’s image; she is made to be ezer kenego. While ezer is often translated “helper.” it mostly appears in the Old Testament to describe the strong rescue of the Lord intervening on behalf of Hs people. Kenego, often translated as “suitable,” means to be a counterpart or a match.

Consequently, far from “putting her in her place,” as some would suggest, in Genesis 2 the woman is given the same divine mandate to be fruitful and to have dominion over the earth, as a strong and sustaining counterpart to the man. In this way, gender is introduced in the Bible not to divide but to unite—not as a problem but as a solution. The intimacy and honor between these first humans are such that the man calls her “flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone” (Genesis 2:23). In their relationship there was no room for shame—that came later. 

When they both disobeyed God by eating fruit from the tree, we are told that their eyes were opened. They began to see God and each other differently. No longer unified, they leapt straight to blame and they sought ways to shame—and we’ve been doing it to one another ever since.  

In telling the truth about human nature and human behavior, the rest of the Bible recognizes the catastrophic breakdown between women and men by recording numerous sexist and abusive stories of polygamy, rape, incest, and violence against women. As one example, consider the concubine in Judges 19 who is brutally gang raped, murdered, and dismembered. This horror story is recounted as an example of the horrendous abuses perpetuated when a people turn from God’s ways and “only do what is right in their own eyes” (Judges 17:6; 21:25). And yet, even as their status as co-image bearers is overlooked and trampled upon, God never loses sight of who these women are to Him, nor does the Bible participate in a “cover up” of the nature of the abuses they suffer. Rather, Scripture sets their stories front and center both as a witness and as an indictment against such injustices. Even the Old Testament legal codes, which sometimes offend 21st-century readers, upon closer examination are written not to oppress but rather to protect women as far as possible in a world gone awry.

Notably, the God of the Bible goes further than just championing women against injustice. He empowers them to be champions of justice themselves! Thousands of years before the first female justice of the United States Supreme Court, God appointed Deborah to serve as the chief judge over all Israel, and under her leadership Israel knew a rare 40 years of peace (Judges 5:31). Or consider the “wise woman of Israel” and the “prophetess,” both established titles given to women who were spokespersons for God’s righteousness and justice among the communities of Israel (2 Samuel 14; 20; 2 Kings 22:14–20). 

Despite strong opposition, throughout His ministry, we see Jesus overturning the sexist conventions of His day to consistently elevate women. While His own disciples may be “surprised to find him talking to a woman,” Jesus gladly eschews social taboos to have a life-changing conversation with a Samaritan woman (John 4:7–42). When her sister, Martha, thought Mary should be serving rather than learning alongside the men, Jesus defended Mary’s choice as the better one and treated her as an honored disciple (Luke 10:42). And even though the Pharisees despised Him for associating with female “sinners,” Jesus did not find their emotions and affections “too much.” Indeed, He honored them for their uninhibited outpourings of love!(Luke 7:47; Mark 14:9). While today we may debate whether the Christian God and His Scriptures are sexist, back then the women who actually encountered Jesus couldn’t keep away—quite the contrary! They came running to reach this man who saw them like no other, the one in whose sight all shame was banished at last by radical, liberating love. In the words of Hagar, an oppressed foreign slave who encountered God at her lowest moment: “[Hagar] gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: ‘You are the God who sees me,’ for she said, ‘I have now seen the One who sees me’” (Genesis 16:13, NIV).