How To Radically Honor Women as Jesus Did

In a time when women were often ignored, undervalued, or treated as second-class citizens, Jesus stood apart. His interactions with women in the Gospels were radical for His culture — yet perfectly aligned with God’s design. In this episode of The Manhood Tribes Show, we explore how Jesus treated women with respect, honor, and dignity, and what that means for every Christian man today.

You’ll see how Jesus spoke directly to women when others refused to, defended their worth in public when they were shamed, and invited them into His mission and ministry. His example dismantled cultural prejudices without compromising biblical truth — showing men how to lead, protect, and love women in a way that reflects the heart of God.

If you’ve ever wondered what the Bible really says about respecting women, how Jesus balanced truth and grace, or what Christian manhood looks like in relationships, this episode will give you a clear and powerful model to follow. Whether you’re single, dating, married, or mentoring the next generation, Jesus sets the standard for how men should treat women.

Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction: Jesus and Women in His Culture
03:18 Speaking Directly and With Respect
11:42 Defending Women’s Worth Publicly
19:26 Including Women in His Mission
28:09 How Men Can Follow Jesus’ Example

💪 Want to know how you measure up as a man? Take our free quiz, called How Manly Are You? and learn how you can get better at being a man. Download for free at manhoodtribes.com/manly. 💪

Transcript

Don Ross: 0:00

All right, guys. Let me ask you a probing question today. How does a real man treat women? Or maybe better yet asked, where did you learn how to treat women? What were your examples for how to interact with a woman the way that you should talk about her, the way that you should talk to her, the way that a group of men should talk about women or interact with women. Where did your examples come from for how to be able to do those things and do you think the way that you have learned to do it is actually a good thing? Is that the way that men should treat women? I want to, in today's episode, try to talk a little bit. Along the lines of what it looks like to treat women well, the way that men really should treat women, and as we're continuing in this series about Jesus being the man most worth following, I want us to take a look at the way that Jesus treated women. Because I think it's actually going to surprise us a little bit, the way that he treated women and how that models for us, what we as men, who want to be the best men that we can be, can actually learn from him. So let's get started today here on the Manhood Tribes Show. My name is Don. I'm your host here, as always, and I'm excited about continuing in this series with you as we talk about Jesus the Man most worth following. Now kind of the whole idea with this series is we probably need to take a second look at Jesus as really a man, not just a holy man, not just the Son of God, not just a religious figure or even a great teacher, but really Jesus as a man, that as men who are trying to become the best men that we want to be, that we need to actually look at the way that Jesus lived. As a man to discern what did manhood actually mean for him and did he actually do it in the way that we are trying to, to emulate? Is he the kind of man that most of us actually want to become? I think the answer is yes. I think that all of us who are trying to be the best men we can be should look at Jesus because he's the best man who ever was. Now, this isn't just like moral speak, okay? This isn't just like, oh, Jesus was the perfect man and we, so we should all just be like him and everything's kind of nice and sweet and tidy. I think that's kind of the like overly churched idea of Jesus, that he's like nice and sweet and so we as men are supposed to be nice and sweet. I don't think Jesus was really anything like that at all. I think there were moments where he was nice and sweet and there's probably moments where we as men need to be nice and sweet, but I don't know that anyone would've characterized him that way. And so we need to really take another look to actually be able to see what was Jesus really like. As a man, one of the most important areas where we do really need to look at this is the way that Jesus treated women. Because I think probably most of us would have this idea that Jesus is kind of soft, right? If we, if we think about Jesus's personality, the way that we imagine him, we sort of imagine him being soft, maybe even a little bit effeminate. And so the idea that Jesus treated women the way that a manly man would treat women doesn't seem to mesh well with this idea of Jesus being like. Weak and soft and effeminate, right? We kind of, the picture that we have of Jesus might even be that like he was sort of like one of the girls a little bit, you know? Uh, and I don't mean to say anything disparaging about Jesus to say that, but I just mean that I think most men who've had any experience of church get an idea of Jesus being the kind of man that. They wouldn't necessarily want to hang out with. He's not really the kind of guy that they imagine themselves being friends with. He might get along really well with their wives, but not necessarily in a gang of buddies. So to think about how he treats women just doesn't seem to relate. That's not the kind of man that I want to be. I wanna challenge that idea today. I want us to rethink that sum and to examine how Jesus actually did it so that we might rethink how we should do it. Okay, so there's really kind of like three big things that I want to talk about today in terms of the way that Jesus treated women that I think will help us to get a better picture of what does it mean for a real man to treat women in the best way possible. The first thing is that at every turn, Jesus sought to treat women in a way that was of higher status than the culture around him. Now this is really kind of interesting, like Jesus was something of a revolutionary religiously. We kind of obviously know that, but we don't talk a whole lot about the ways that Jesus was a revolutionary culturally, that he really did some things that were culturally backwards or culturally polarizing or culturally like completely inappropriate in his day. To actually kind of set himself up as being a man who treated women in ways that kind of got him into trouble, made him look like a bit of an outcast, put him on the edge of society instead of being welcomed for the way that he treated women, he actually was kind of criticized for the way that he treated women. But that's because he was trying to actually bring up the dignity of women in his culture and allow them to be seen as something good as equals among men, as co-heirs to the kingdom of God, as someone who had been created alongside men, that they also had the dignity of what scripture calls the image of God, that women also were made as God's image, not just men. Not just a superior gender and an inferior gender, but really two genders who operated together to display what God is like to the world. So what were some ways that Jesus did that well, for example, in Jesus' day, if you were a rabbi, which meant that you were a teacher who had a group of disciples with you. Most Jewish rabbis would not be caught dead teaching women, certainly not having women in their inner circle. And yet Jesus wasn't afraid to do this at all. He regularly had women following him. He had women who supported his ministry. He had women who ministered to him. He spent time around women. He hung out with women. He taught. Women. That was something that Jewish rabbis did not do at all. Teaching of the Jewish scriptures was reserved for men, but Jesus made a point to be able to teach women to do things for women, to serve women, to heal women, to include women in his ministry, to involve them in the things that he was doing. Now, yes, his 12 disciples were all men. But he didn't limit his ministry to his 12 disciples. There were women who were regularly around what he was doing, both as followers and as supporters of his ministry. Jesus included women in some very radical ways, and because of that, he got talked very poorly about by the religious leaders of his day when they accused him of associating with, uh, drunkards and gluttons. Part of that was saying like Jesus was associated with the lowest of the low, and that included women that he was associating with himself, associating himself with people in ways that would make him appear scandalous and just to be around women as a male. Teacher was kind of a taboo thing to do, but Jesus did it anyway because he knew that women were worthy of that kind of dignity and that kind of recognition in his kingdom. So he wasn't about to exclude them just because that was the cultural norm for Jewish teachers to do in that day. Okay? So Jesus radically included women and he elevated their status wherever he could. The second thing is that Jesus made a point to defend or to stand up for women who were being shamed by the culture around him. So we can think of a few examples of the way that Jesus did this, and the story of the woman at the will. Jesus made a point not only to talk to her, but to reveal himself to her as the son of God. Now this was a woman who, because of her social standing, had been completely ostracized by the people around her. Her community wanted nothing to do with her, and that was because she had been with a whole bunch of men. She had had several husbands already and was now onto another one, and people just kind of knew she wasn't a woman of good repute. That didn't really seem to bother Jesus. He made a point of sitting with her, of talking with her, of drawing water with her for the sake of being able to illustrate a point of talking to her about her life and of including her in his ministry and revealing himself to her. He elevated her status. Not only that, but she was what? The Jewish people called a Samaritan. She was someone who was, uh, both religiously and historically kind of outcast from Jewish society. And so this was a woman that no rabbi would be seen associating with, and yet Jesus took time out of his day specifically to be with her and to make a point of defending her, of elevating her, and of showing that even she was somebody who was worthy of his respect. We see this again when Jesus, uh, interacts with the woman who is caught in adultery, we see her being shamed by the religious leaders around her, pulled from her own bed and nothing but a sheet and thrown at Jesus' feet, at Jesus' feet with these religious leaders preparing to stone her as a way of trapping Jesus. Okay. Now, none of this is really about the woman in the religious leader's mind, but Jesus takes the scene and turns it around so that it absolutely is about her. He challenges all those religious leaders by saying, who among you is without sin? You should be the one to cast the first stone. Then, and of course, none of them can own up to that, and so they drop their stones and they walk away. Jesus defends this woman. He doesn't know if she was really caught in adultery or not. Maybe she was, maybe she wasn't. But Jesus doesn't actually stop to bother with that detail. He just says, no woman should be shamed in such a way as these religious leaders are doing, that he knew that they were trying to trap him, that they weren't actually concerned about her, and they certainly were not concerned about. Restoring her out of her sin. They just wanted to use her as a weapon to be able to trap Jesus. And if her sin was, the cost of that and the punishment that she got was the cost of it, then so be it. They had accomplished their goals. Jesus didn't want any woman to be used as a weapon or a trap that intentionally. Degraded her and put her into a place where she was something less than a human being. Jesus wanted to defend and support her in that moment so that he could elevate her to her rightful place as a co-heir of the Kingdom of God and as a co image of God alongside even those men who were seeking her worst. Now as he defended her, he did say to her that he didn't cast any judgment, but he encouraged her go and leave your life of sin. So whatever he knew about what she had done, he still was calling her to obedience and to faithfulness, but he was doing it in a way that honored her, that respected her, that defended her, that supported her as a person, and didn't shame her based on her sin. Jesus did something radical in that moment that showed not only to that woman, but to all women, that he was for them, that he met them in their lowest places and in the places where society most tended to overlook them and to say, I love you. I don't judge you, but I want the best for you, and it doesn't include this sinful way of living. So we see from the way that Jesus treated and interacted with these women, that he was all about defending and supporting those who were most vulnerable and who had been most oppressed. Okay, one more thing, and certainly not the least. On the list is that Jesus actually entrusted his resurrection message first to women. Now, this is a radical point, but if you read the gospels in the Bible, those are the stories about Jesus' life. You will see that in each one of them, the first people to the tomb that found that Jesus was no longer there were women. It was women who discovered that Jesus' body was not in the tomb, and even who met with him or with angels to learn that he was risen from the dead. And then those women were tasked with taking that message to the 12 disciples and to let them know that Jesus was not dead, but was alive. That's what Christians call preaching. The gospel. It was women who first preached and announced the resurrection of Jesus. Now, this is, frankly, this is a scandalous detail in the story of Jesus from the first century because women, especially in that Jewish society, were not considered to be able to have reliable testimony in a court of law. So if you wanted to be able to have a witness to an event, it was not women who could reliably do that. It had to be men. So to include women in the story as the first witnesses of Jesus's resurrection as the first preachers of his account of rising from the dead, this was really risky. This was not the kind of detail that you wanted to include if you wanted people to have confidence in the message that Jesus had risen from the dead, because in that culture, women giving that message would've been considered. Unreliable. It would've been considered questionable that that detail was included. People might have read that and thought, uh, I'm not sure that I can trust these women to carry that message. And yet Jesus did. He did trust women to carry that message. In fact, the gospels all make a point that these women were the first ones to see him and to carry that message to the disciples. This is so powerful. We see here that Jesus knew that women had an important role to play in his kingdom, that they were capable of far more than the culture had judged them, of that they were reliable, that they were trustworthy, and that their gender didn't have. Anything to do with their reliable or their trustworthiness. In fact, in some ways it might have even increased it, but the point that Jesus was making was to be able to show that women had value and dignity and they should be seen as such if the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. If the victor over death could entrust that message to women, then certainly we could entrust them with far more than we have been considered doing. Now, okay. These are all examples of how Jesus really went way outside the cultural norms to make a point of showing the value of women, their dignity, their worth, their capability, all of the things that made women good as co-heirs, as co-equals, and his co images in God's kingdom. He made these points. So what though, does that mean for us as men today? How do we take those kinds of things? You and I aren't rising from the dead and having people, you know, transmit our message to others. Like we don't quite have the same ability to do anything about women's status culturally as Jesus might have done. So what does that mean then? How should we take those things and learn from Jesus as a way of treating women in our day and age? Well, I think we can take a few things away from what he did. The first thing is to recognize that because of our strength as men, we do have something to offer in both protecting and elevating women around us. We can give of our strength to help women be in a stronger place culturally. Now, even in our culture where women are, for the most part, thought to be equals, even if they're not always treated as equals. There still is room for us as men to be able to show up in a way that defends and supports and allows room for women to be able to participate in things. Those are all ways that we can follow. Jesus's example of elevating the status of women and defending them in places where they might be vulnerable to the culture's criticism or wrong assumptions about women. We as men can make that stand and at times. It might cost us a little bit, it might cost us a reputation. It might cost us a little bit of being able to participate in jokes with the guys around the office or the guys around the ball team, or you know, whatever else. It might cost us a little bit in that regard. But it cost Jesus a whole lot. It cost him the ability to be respected by other religious leaders of his day, but it gained him so. Much. It gained him not only the respect and the following and the support of women in his ministry, but it gained him the respect of men as well, who wanted to be able to be like him and to recognize that women had something to offer. There were men who wanted to treat women well, to treat them better than the society around them did. And they saw that as an opportunity to follow Jesus and do his as he did. As you take a stand and stand up for women, there are other men who probably want to do the same but are afraid to do that. So use your strength, whether that's your voice, your position, your reputation, whatever it is that you have to offer, use it to be able to support and encourage the women around you. You also can trust the women around you. Use your courage. It's a mark of manhood and we talk about it regularly to put your trust in the women around you. Let them know that they have your support and that you trust their ability to not only handle things well, but to handle them with. Excellence This is especially true in religious circles where women are often treated as second rate citizens. So for those of you who are trying to follow Jesus, you may have more room than most at being able to trust. The women around you and help them know that they have dignity and they have capability at doing things well and with excellence in a way that will be respected and rewarded. Now lastly is just very simply what Jesus did as well. Love the women around you. Now, of course, I'm not talking about loving them inappropriately. Jesus didn't love any woman inappropriately, but he did love them well. He saw their needs, he paid attention to them. He saw their identity and sought for ways to be able to encourage it, not to shame it. And if you can do those things, which. Aren't inappropriate. They're not violating any kind of relationship that you might have with your wife or other women in your family, but it, you can do that in a way that communicates to women, you love them as human beings. Even if you're not trying to communicate that you love them romantically, your love for them will go a long way in being able to help them love themselves and to turn that love back around to others as well. All right. There was a lot here and probably some things that maybe made you a little bit uncomfortable. Might have actually put some ideas in your head that are going, I'm not sure I've ever really thought about treating the women around me that way. That's okay. That's what Jesus does to all of us. He causes us to rethink the way that we do things. So I hope that that's what you've gotten out of this message today. If you like this content, I would love for you to like the video and to subscribe to the channel, uh, to be able to not only get more of it, but to help other men get it as well. I would also encourage you to consider signing up for our Manhood Tribe's community. This is where you can find other like-minded men. To be able to connect with and to build community with so that you can do this kind of life with others who are trying to do it as well. Just go to manhood tribes.com/community and look for the opportunity to be able to sign up when our community opens its doors. Next, finally, if you enjoyed what we talked about today, I would love for you to engage in the comments and just say, what's one thing that you can do as a man to treat the women around you the way that Jesus would have? What's one thing that you can do as a man to treat the women around you the way that Jesus would have put your answer in the comments below, and I look forward to engaging with you there, and I'll talk to you again next time here on the Manhood Tribe Show. We'll see you then.