LIVING WATERS
For the proclamation of the Gospel and the edification of the Body of Christ
The Woman As a Type of the Church
In his earthly ministry, the Lord Jesus Christ met with many women, and in each woman, he saw the Church.
Roberto Sáez
We will take the Scriptures in several passages, beginning with a text that is in Ephesians 5:25. It says: "Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it."
The Lord Jesus Christ met with many women, and in each woman, he saw the Church. He treated each woman in the most tender and loving way, because he had the Church in his heart. When he saw a woman –and the stories that the gospels contain about the women that Jesus met are almost always women that have some serious problem, a problem of rejection, of illness, of sin, of demons– the Lord looked upon those women with a love like nobody had ever seen before, as nobody had ever treated them before. In the Lord Jesus Christ's days, women were tremendously rejected, even among the people who had the Word of God, the Scriptures.
The sinner who anoints the Lord
A rabbi in Jesus' days said: "God, I give you thanks because you didn't make me ignorant, nor a gentile, nor a woman." That was the first prayer that a rabbi and any godly Jew would say. God would listen to it with incommensurable sadness and pain. The Lord Jesus Christ faces a world that has a rigid mental structure, a mental rigidity derived from the religious tradition registered in the Talmud (men's traditions that invalidated the Word of God, devaluing women), which made it difficult for men to understand his treatment of these women.
For example, the case of the sinful woman in Simon the Pharisee's house who poured out the jar of perfume, cried at Jesus' feet and wet them with her tears, only then to dry them with her hair. The Lord Jesus Christ received that as an act of a woman who, repentant of her sins, worshiped and thanked for that day. The Lord Jesus received her quietly, as though thinking of the day that his Church would be at his feet worshipping him.
However, Simon and those that were with him at his table quietly thought: "He doesn't have any idea of who he is dealing with, he doesn't have any idea about who is at his feet; if he only knew who was washing his feet and poured that perfume…". The Lord Jesus knew exactly what they were thinking in their thoughts; and what's more, the Lord Jesus praised the woman's attitude, and said to Simon, infront of the others that he had not greeted him with a kiss when he entered nor offered to wash his feet nor not given him much attention, but that this woman who had been forgiven for her sins, was grateful. This woman was praised, dealt with in such a sweet tender way, with that love, with that fondness that only Christ knows how to give.
One day, the Lord Jesus Christ disembarked near Capernaum. A called man Jairus came out to meet him and told him that he had a sick daughter, and he went to the house. The girl was moribund. That was the Church in its time of adolescence, with all its weakness of the II and III Century, when the Church was just a girl who didn't even have the foresight of where things were heading, because in that time Christ had not still been 'reflected upon' nor 'thought about', he had only been proclaimed, and although that is the truth that the Church must always sustain, nevertheless, in that process of sustaining a witness to Christ, so many attacks come in from the Greek philosophy and the thoughts of men. So there was the sick girl. In that time there was no treatment, no hospitals, nobody who cared for the sick; doctors were very scarce, and the girl was lying there.
On the way, a woman who suffered bleeding drew closer to Jesus among the crowd to touch him. The woman touched Jesus' garment and it would seem that the part she touched was the border, which represented the law. The woman exercised faith in what the border of that garment represented, she exercised faith in the Word, and when taking hold of it, she believed the Word, because Christ was the Word, and when she touched the Word, she was healed. Hallelujah! This is the Church; that woman was considered dirty because of her bleeding. The Lord rescued the Church from its uncleanness. Throughout the centuries the Church has been exposed to worldliness; however, the Lord has forgiven the church time and again. How many times has he washed it in his blessed blood? Countless times he has cleansed it, he has washed it time and again. Although he did it once and for all, that blood continues to be effective, it is present day by day to wash away sins.
Suddenly somebody comes with news that the girl has died. Jesus told her father not to fear because she was not dead, but sleeping; everyone laughed at him because they knew that she was dead. Jesus entered into the house and told her: "Little girl, get up"! How dead the church in its adolescence was! How exposed! And yet the Lord raised her up.
The Samaritan woman
What do we see in the Samaritan woman? She is the woman who lived in that region where racial hatred existed between Jews and Samaritans. This woman had four reasons to be rejected: she was a poor woman -she had no servant to send in search of water -, she felt tremendously rejected by society -she left to look for water at noon when nobody would see her -, she was a Samaritan woman - another reason for scorn; and she had had five husbands, and the man who she was now with was not even her next husband.
But the Lord purposely drew near to her. He could have gone by the road that all the Jews preferred, over the other side of the Jordan, but the Lord purposefully went by the land of the Samaritans to meet with that woman. And it is she on whom Jesus looks with the greatest compassion, with the greatest fondness that someone could feel for a human being, because Jesus didn't see her as a Samaritan, nor a woman, nor a sinner, nor a poor woman, but rather as a person.
And Jesus came closer and spoke to her. How tremendous that a man drew near to a woman; this was already an admirable act; a man who overlooked these prejudices was something to applaud, or to reject, or to think that he was strange. Jesus comes closer and speaks to her, and tells her everything that he knew about her. This woman was shocked, surprised, the eyes of her spirit were opened: nothing less than the Messiah was before her. She receives the revelation of Christ and goes running off toward the city to evangelise to her fellow citizens and to tell them: "Come, see a man, who told me all things that ever I did: can this be the Christ?"
And the town ran after her and all Samaria converted to Christ. The Lord Jesus used a woman, because in her he saw the Church, the Church that has been saved from all the scorns and prejudices of this world, the Church that will be the instrument of salvation for this world in darkness. Blessed is the Lord!
The crippled woman
One day the Lord meets a crippled woman, a woman who had lived for eighteen years stooped over. This woman would appear to represent the Church in her state of spiritual poverty, when the Church lost the heavenly vision and lived every day of its life looking toward the earth without being able to look toward heaven, because it had lost the heavenly perspective of Christ. How often the Church lived in this darkness, how often the Church lived as a crippled woman. But the Lord Jesus Christ lays his hands on her and tells her: "Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity." And then she stood up straight. What tenderness there is in Christ's love! What man has ever treated a woman this way?
Christ loved the Church, and he gave himself for her, in order to sanctify her, in order to present her to himself, a glorious Church, holy, without stain and without wrinkle. So that the Church may become like this, he had to treat her with so much love. Love is not a mere emotional feeling, it is not a mere romanticism, love is the demonstration of a surrendered life, of a life given in its entirety; and Christ not only demonstrated this on the cross of Calvary, but in his dealings with these women. Blessed are the women! Nobody has ever treated women as Christ treated them; nobody thought of woman as Christ thought of them, nobody ever came closer to them with the respect with which he had for them.
Martha and Mary
Being in Mary and Martha's house, he saw Martha run around doing one thing and another. Martha's way of being was formed by the chauvinist male's expectations of women, treating them in a utilitarian form, valuing them for what they did, from morning until evening doing a thousand and one different things.
But when Christ was in that house, it is not that he rejected the service that Martha offered him, but there was a better position and that was Mary's. What he saw in Mary was the Church, sitting to Jesus' feet, listening to him and looking face to face with the Lord. The Church had been lifted up so as to sit face to face with God, high above in the highest position in the universe, the Church looking face to face with God. Never before had it been thought that women could reach such levels. Blessed is the Lord! Christ loved the Church. He didn't take advantage of the service that he could have obtained from Martha. The Lord Jesus Christ valued Mary's attitude, because he saw in her the position of the Church.
A virtual image of the Church
The Lord Jesus was reacting with women in this way because he had dreamt of the Church from eternal times past and he had loved her from before the world existed. In that solemn meeting, in that anticipated and determined counsel of God, before the creation of the world, when man was thought up, when God said: "Let us make man in our image ", God surely spoke with His Son about the Church, and God surely showed His Son what the pattern of the Church would be.
We appeal to the imagination in these moments, to a supposition. Let us suppose, let us imagine that God, with His power, like someone with a ' Power Point', lights up an image on a gigantic screen of a beautiful woman, dressed in glory. When Jesus looked at it, he fell head over heels in love with her, and said: "Father, never in all creation have I seen anything equal to her, I want her for myself." "Son, she is very beautiful, but she won't always be like this." "Father, even so, I want her." "Son, she will descend very low, she will fall very far." "Father, if it is necessary to go to hell to seek her, I will go." "Son, but that will cost you very dearly." "Father, I am willing to give my life for her." "Son, that will cause us a lot of pain." "Father, the price doesn't matter, I love her and I want her to be my companion."
Can we imagine Christ thinking of the Church like this? The Scriptures allow us to think like that. And then, when the moment arrived to demonstrate his love for her and to complete the covenant he made with the Father in that meeting, when all the things were agreed in that Eternal Covenant -the Old Covenant is a transitional one, so to speak, but the New Covenant is the eternal covenant confirmed in that meeting -, the Son of God committed to come and to save, he committed to give his life, and when the moment arrived, he fulfilled it in a glorious way.
Woman, a type of the Church
So, when the first woman was created and the Lord Jesus Christ saw her, he surely dreamt of her, he saw her in the future, and how beautiful the woman was on the first day of her creation. Do you know when she was created? She was created when everything had already been created, when there was nothing else left to create, so then she came as a complement. The woman is a symbol of fullness, because without her the world would not be what it is. This should strike deep at any machismo amongst the men; it should strike a deep blow to those who think that way in the churches. Some think that woman is lesser than man. It is true that there are different roles, but in the church, in Christ, there is neither male nor female.
Nobody loved woman as much as Christ, because she represents the Church. The woman came to be the center of the creation of God. The Adam who was created was not an individual, he was not a solitary man, but rather he was a corporate Adam, because he created them male and female. God had no use for a solitary man, God needed a man accompanied by a woman; and that's why he took the woman out of the man's side, from the man's bone; not from under the sole of the foot, so that man could trample on her, nor devalue her; from his side she was taken, so that she could be his perfect helper, his partner. This was the purpose of God.
But starting from man's fall, man lost the vision of what it meant to have a partner. Oh, if man only looked at woman as Christ looks at the Church, how different marriages would be! Thinking of this the Word says to men: "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church." Are we willing, brothers, to look at woman as Christ looked at woman, thinking of her as the Church?
The fall degenerated the vision that man should have of woman, being a fragile vessel. God gave authority to the man, not so that man might think that authority was a vertical matter, of up and down.
When we think of Christ's authority, the head of the church, his authority never bothers us, because we don't feel that his authority is arbitrary. Rather, we feel that his authority is a support, it is a covering of grace, it is a mantel, a support, it is an aid and salvation. That's why man demonstrates his love to his wife by cherishing her - like Ephesians says, cherishing her, sustaining her and taking care of her, as Christ does the church.
Does Christ's authority bother you? Well then sisters, the authority of your husband shouldn't bother you either, that is, if your husband's authority is like Christ's authority for the church. Because if somebody must have authority, it must be to provide, to sustain, to aid, to support and to keep the other. But fallen man's distorted thought authority is that it is imposed by force. But who is more powerful than the Lord Jesus Christ? However, who is more tender than he? Christ loved the church and he gave himself for her.
That is the message. Let us receive this word, rejoice in it, let us be joyous, brothers because we are also the church.