Is The Bible Good For Women?Sýnishorn

The Bible's story opens with a very good creation. There was a good environment, a good relationship between Adam and Eve, and a good God for them to serve. But Genesis 1 and 2 were quickly followed by Genesis 3. The world fell into sin, and chaos reigned again. As humanity struggled through the chaos for millennia, Jesus entered into it. He was born, He lived, and He died. And then He swallowed up sin and death by rising from the dead. From there, God began His global restoration project.

Note how Jesus initiated this restoration of humanity shortly after His resurrection in Matthew 28: He handed it back over to God’s image bearers, His disciples, the church. Jesus’s final words before His ascension to heaven, the Great Commission in Matthew 28:18–20, are pivotal and profound. Jesus didn’t stay on earth physically to accomplish God’s plan; He, as His Father did in the Garden of Eden, sent His people into the turmoil to bring the good news of Jesus’s kingdom to the world.

God tasked the disciples to be His vicegerents once again. He dignified the human race anew with the Great Commission by saying, in essence, “Subdue the earth and fill it, but now the focus of such filling is the good news of God’s coming kingdom through Christ.”

I love the term commission. The prefix com- means “with” or “together.” Jesus invites His followers to join with Him in mission. Commission is different from submission, where one gets in line behind a commander leading others. Though we certainly submit to God in obedience to His kingdom commands, this Great Commission has a different emphasis. God invites us to value and live out the mission as He does. He invites us to participate in it together with Him.

The work of this “co-mission” in light of redemption is not so different from what I envision would have happened with Adam and Eve, if not for the fall of man, as they extended out from the garden. God told them to subdue the earth, work it, and keep it. In the Great Commission, Jesus re-dignifies God's image bearers to go out and do it again, with a focus on Jesus's sacrifice which restores to us the fellowship with God that Adam and Eve squandered through their sin.

Go, tell the world, spread the good news of redemption to all of creation. What nobility we see in the Great Commission when we read it in light of the creation mandate of Genesis 1. God is reclaiming what He created us to be, His vicegerents on earth, stewarding His creation in His image. Read hard stories from Scripture in light of how far things had fallen from God's plan at creation and the hope of the New Testament as God begins to restore it all through Christ. When we do so, we have a great tool for answering the question of the Bible's goodness for women.