Bible – Bible Society of Zimbabwe

Do you know God’s grace? Here are 7 Bible verses to inspire you to understand this grace.

Romans 3:23-24 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus

To understand God’s grace, we have to acknowledge that we have done what is wrong in God’s eyes. We have sinned. We are in need of forgiveness and redemption.

Ephesians 2:8-9 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

God’s grace is a free gift that doesn’t depend on any good deeds you have done. God’s grace is for all who believe in Jesus Christ.

James 4:6-7 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

In humility we turn to God and confess that we have done wrong. In humility we receive God’s grace and he will lift us up.

John 1:14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

God isn’t a distant God. He came to us and lived among us as one of us. Jesus is full of grace and truth.

Hebrews 4:15-16 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

You can come to Jesus, just as you are. He knows our weaknesses. Because of the grace of God, we are forgiven our sins.

Titus 3:4-7 But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

We don’t earn or deserve God’s grace by our good deeds, but it’s given according to God’s own mercy. By grace we are saved through our faith and even become heirs to the kingdom of God.

Revelation 22:21 The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. Amen.

This is the very last verse of the Bible and it reminds and expresses the wish for God’s grace be with you. “Amen” means “surely”, “truly” or “so be it.” We live by the hope and trust in God’s grace every day.

How does the Bible view women? At face value, some of its messages and examples can seem oppressive or devaluing. But when you learn more about how Jesus responded to the Bible’s historical and cultural context, you may rethink your first impressions. Christ entered into a specific time and culture that had assumptions very different from ours. How can understanding the biblical context inform our reading? How can the context help us to better understand who Jesus is—what he values, loves, and expects of his followers? Take a look, traveling all the way back to the culture Jesus entered.

How the Greeks Viewed Women

Let’s begin with the philosophers. Writers and thinkers often infuse a culture with certain beliefs—and this was especially so in the Greco-Roman world. When examined closely, some of their ideas may seem surprisingly antiquated to the modern reader.

For example, the revered philosopher Plato believed that women should be confined to the home while men tended to the business of state and commerce. Aristotle went even further, teaching that women were inferior to men, incapable of abstract thought, and emotionally volatile. Thus husbands and fathers were to rule over their wives and daughters. This thinking reflects the basic attitude toward women during the classical period.

How did these attitudes affect a woman’s life? The picture is not a pretty one. A young Greek girl is routinely married off to an older man. Her husband is free to take a concubine, and romantic love is not expected within marriage. Her role is to bear and raise children and run the household. She will rarely leave the house. Her education is limited to learning domestic tasks. She is not permitted to vote or hold property. Why would she be? As Euripides the playwright notes, “A woman is handicapped by intellect.” Thucydides helps him along by writing, “The name of a decent woman, like her person, should be shut up in the house.”

How the Jews Viewed Women

By Jesus’s time Greek ideas—including these ideas about women—had gradually crept into Jewish culture, despite Old Testament writings to the contrary. In the creation account in Genesis, God creates human beings as both male and female, giving them co-equal stewardship over the earth (Genesis 1:26-30). Throughout the Old Testament, women are given equal access to God’s law and held equally responsible to keep it.

The Old Testament record is replete with women whose great courage often surpasses that of the men around them. The stories of Miriam, Rahab, Ruth, Deborah, Hannah, Abigail, and Esther are prime examples of women whose insight and fortitude greatly influence the biblical narrative and the way God’s people understood themselves.

The Jewish understanding of women was so affected by exile, conquest, and trade that by Jesus’s time women were discouraged from studying Torah, God’s law, and encouraged to stay home to fulfill household duties. They attended synagogue assemblies seated separately from the men. The Greek-educated Jewish philosopher Philo, a contemporary of Jesus, saw women as having weak judgment and considered them unfit to learn the law. Some rabbis even went so far as to encourage men to limit their conversations with their own wives. What was the point of talking to someone with little knowledge of the law?

How Jesus Viewed Women

Into this distortion of God’s original intent for women comes a new teacher, the rabbi called Jesus of Nazareth. What do we know about Jesus’s relationships with women? Did he hold the same opinions as his culture? Let’s take a look at a few of his encounters with women.

Jesus speaks to a Samaritan woman in public (John 4:4-30)

Jesus shocks the woman at the well by asking her for a drink. Thus he steamrolls over cultural taboos against men speaking to women as well as Jewish prejudice against Samaritans. “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?”

Jesus then reveals himself to her as the Messiah and the giver of the living water for which she longs.

Jesus teaches a woman one-on-one (Luke 10:38-42)

Women were not expected to study Torah, yet this renegade rabbi singles out one woman and opens Scripture to her. Mary “sat down at the feet of the Lord and listened to his teaching.” This position was that of the traditional rabbinic student.

When her sister complains about needing help, Jesus tells her that “Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Jesus comforts a widow and confronts death (Luke 7:11-17)

“Don’t cry,” Jesus says to a grieving widow whose son lies dead in his coffin. He touches the coffin, defying ceremonial law. Jaws drop in amazement as the young man sits up and begins to speak. Jesus gives the widow’s son back to her, alive and well.

Jesus touches an “unclean” woman (Luke 8:43-48)

Ceremonially unclean due to a chronic hemorrhage, a woman touches the hem of Jesus’ cloak. “Daughter,” Jesus speaks tenderly. “Your faith has healed you. Shalom.”

Jesus touches an infirm woman (Luke 13:10-16)

The religious leaders object to Jesus’s laying his healing hands on a crippled woman on the Sabbath.

“You hypocrites!” Jesus does not mince words. “Any one of you would untie your ox or your donkey from the stall and take it out to give it water on the Sabbath.Now here is this descendant of Abraham whom Satan has kept in bonds for eighteen years; should she not be released on the Sabbath?”

Jesus deals with a woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11)

The woman’s accusers are silenced by Jesus’s words, “Whichever one of you has committed no sin may throw the first stone at her.” But he is gentle in his conversation with her.

Jesus allows Mary to anoint him (John 12:1-8)

When people are horrified at Mary’s extravagant outpouring of love, Jesus silences them all. Rather than rebuking her for touching him in this intimate way, he lavishes high praise on her. “Leave her alone; she’s anointing me for burial. This story will be told wherever the Gospel is preached.”

Jesus appears first to a woman after his Resurrection (John 20:11-18)

Although women were considered to be unreliable witnesses in court, Jesus assigns Mary Magdalene the task of being the first witness to the Resurrection.

Scripture’s Good News for Women

So what did Jesus really think of women? Did he touch them? Did he talk with them? Did he teach them? Did he give equal moral standing with men? Did he value them?

The record speaks for itself. First-century women in Palestine were second-class citizens. Sadly, some church leaders have still viewed and treated women in this way. But Jesus turned the tables on his culture, and his example calls us to do the same. Again and again, Jesus affirmed women’s value and dignity.

As the apostle Paul affirms in Galatians 3:26-28 (NIV): “So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Jesus and the Samaritan Woman

1 The Pharisees heard that Jesus was winning and baptizing more disciples than John. ( 2 Actually, Jesus himself did not baptize anyone; only his disciples did.) 3 So when Jesus heard what was being said, he left Judea and went back to Galilee; 4 on his way there he had to go through Samaria.

5 In Samaria he came to a town named Sychar, which was not far from the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired out by the trip, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

7 A Samaritan woman came to draw some water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink of water.” ( 8 His disciples had gone into town to buy food.)

9 The woman answered, “You are a Jew, and I am a Samaritan—so how can you ask me for a drink?” (Jews will not use the same cups and bowls that Samaritans use.)

10 Jesus answered, “If you only knew what God gives and who it is that is asking you for a drink, you would ask him, and he would give you life-giving water.”

11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you don't have a bucket, and the well is deep. Where would you get that life-giving water? 12 It was our ancestor Jacob who gave us this well; he and his children and his flocks all drank from it. You don't claim to be greater than Jacob, do you?”

13 Jesus answered, “Those who drink this water will get thirsty again, 14 but those who drink the water that I will give them will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give them will become in them a spring which will provide them with life-giving water and give them eternal life.”

15 “Sir,” the woman said, “give me that water! Then I will never be thirsty again, nor will I have to come here to draw water.”

16 “Go and call your husband,” Jesus told her, “and come back.”

17 “I don't have a husband,” she answered.

Jesus replied, “You are right when you say you don't have a husband. 18 You have been married to five men, and the man you live with now is not really your husband. You have told me the truth.”

19 “I see you are a prophet, sir,” the woman said. 20 “My Samaritan ancestors worshiped God on this mountain, but you Jews say that Jerusalem is the place where we should worship God.”

21 Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, the time will come when people will not worship the Father either on this mountain or in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans do not really know whom you worship; but we Jews know whom we worship, because it is from the Jews that salvation comes. 23 But the time is coming and is already here, when by the power of God's Spirit people will worship the Father as he really is, offering him the true worship that he wants. 24 God is Spirit, and only by the power of his Spirit can people worship him as he really is.”

25 The woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah will come, and when he comes, he will tell us everything.”

26 Jesus answered, “I am he, I who am talking with you.”

27 At that moment Jesus' disciples returned, and they were greatly surprised to find him talking with a woman. But none of them said to her, “What do you want?” or asked him, “Why are you talking with her?”

28 Then the woman left her water jar, went back to the town, and said to the people there, 29 “Come and see the man who told me everything I have ever done. Could he be the Messiah?” 30 So they left the town and went to Jesus.

31 In the meantime the disciples were begging Jesus, “Teacher, have something to eat!”

32 But he answered, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

33 So the disciples started asking among themselves, “Could somebody have brought him food?”

34 “My food,” Jesus said to them, “is to obey the will of the one who sent me and to finish the work he gave me to do. 35 You have a saying, ‘Four more months and then the harvest.’ But I tell you, take a good look at the fields; the crops are now ripe and ready to be harvested! 36 The one who reaps the harvest is being paid and gathers the crops for eternal life; so the one who plants and the one who reaps will be glad together. 37 For the saying is true, ‘Someone plants, someone else reaps.’ 38 I have sent you to reap a harvest in a field where you did not work; others worked there, and you profit from their work.”

39 Many of the Samaritans in that town believed in Jesus because the woman had said, “He told me everything I have ever done.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they begged him to stay with them, and Jesus stayed there two days.

41 Many more believed because of his message, 42 and they told the woman, “We believe now, not because of what you said, but because we ourselves have heard him, and we know that he really is the Savior of the world.”

Jesus Heals an Official's Son

43 After spending two days there, Jesus left and went to Galilee. 44 For he himself had said, “Prophets are not respected in their own country.” 45 When he arrived in Galilee, the people there welcomed him, because they had gone to the Passover Festival in Jerusalem and had seen everything that he had done during the festival.

46 Then Jesus went back to Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. A government official was there whose son was sick in Capernaum. 47 When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and asked him to go to Capernaum and heal his son, who was about to die. 48 Jesus said to him, “None of you will ever believe unless you see miracles and wonders.”

49 “Sir,” replied the official, “come with me before my child dies.”

50 Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live!”

The man believed Jesus' words and went. 51 On his way home his servants met him with the news, “Your boy is going to live!”

52 He asked them what time it was when his son got better, and they answered, “It was one o'clock yesterday afternoon when the fever left him.” 53 Then the father remembered that it was at that very hour when Jesus had told him, “Your son will live.” So he and all his family believed.

54 This was the second miracle that Jesus performed after coming from Judea to Galilee.

1 Nowe when the Lord knew, how the Pharises had heard, that Iesus made and baptized moe disciples then Iohn, 2 (Though Iesus himselfe baptized not: but his disciples) 3 Hee left Iudea, and departed againe into Galile. 4 And he must needes goe through Samaria. 5 Then came hee to a citie of Samaria called Sychar, neere vnto the possession that Iacob gaue to his sonne Ioseph. 6 And there was Iacobs well. Iesus then wearied in the iourney, sate thus on the well: it was about the sixt houre. 7 There came a woman of Samaria to drawe water. Iesus sayd vnto her, Giue me drinke. 8 For his disciples were gone away into the citie, to buy meate. 9 Then sayde the woman of Samaria vnto him, Howe is it, that thou being a Iewe, askest drinke of me, which am a woman of Samaria? For the Iewes meddle not with the Samaritans. 10 Iesus answered and saide vnto her, If thou knewest that gift of God, and who it is that saieth to thee, Giue mee drinke, thou wouldest haue asked of him, and hee woulde haue giuen thee, water of life. 11 The woman saide vnto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to drawe with, and the well is deepe: from whence then hast thou that water of life? 12 Art thou greater then our father Iacob, which gaue vs the well, and hee himselfe dranke thereof, and his sonnes, and his cattell? 13 Iesus answered, and said vnto her, Whosoeuer drinketh of this water, shall thirst againe: 14 But whosoeuer drinketh of the water that I shall giue him, shall neuer be more a thirst: but the water that I shall giue him, shalbe in him a well of water, springing vp into euerlasting life. 15 The woman said vnto him, Syr, giue me of that water, that I may not thirst, neither come hither to drawe. 16 Iesus said vnto her, Go, call thine husband, and come hither. 17 The woman answered, and saide, I haue no husband. Iesus said vnto her, Thou hast well said, I haue no husband. 18 For thou hast had fiue husbands, and he whom thou nowe hast, is not thine husband: that saidest thou truely. 19 The woman saide vnto him, Sir, I see that thou art a Prophet. 20 Our fathers worshipped in this mountaine, and ye say, that in Ierusalem is the place where men ought to worship. 21 Iesus saide vnto her, Woman, beleeue me, the houre commeth, when ye shall neither in this mountaine, nor at Hierusalem worship ye Father. 22 Ye worship that which ye knowe not: we worship that which we knowe: for saluation is of the Iewes. 23 But the houre commeth, and nowe is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit, and trueth: for the Father requireth euen such to worship him. 24 God is a Spirite, and they that worship him, must worship him in spirit and trueth. 25 The woman said vnto him, I knowe well that Messias shall come which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell vs all things. 26 Iesus said vnto her, I am he, that speake vnto thee. 27 And vpon that, came his disciples, and marueiled that he talked with a woman: yet no man said vnto him, What askest thou? or why talkest thou with her? 28 The woman then left her waterpot, and went her way into the citie, and said to the men, 29 Come, see a man which hath tolde me all things that euer I did: is not he that Christ? 30 Then they went out of the citie, and came vnto him. 31 In the meane while, the disciples prayed him, saying, Master, eate. 32 But he said vnto them, I haue meate to eate that ye know not of. 33 Then said ye disciples betweene themselues, Hath any man brought him meate? 34 Iesus saide vnto them, My meate is that I may doe the will of him that sent me, and finish his worke. 35 Say not ye, There are yet foure moneths, and then commeth haruest? Beholde, I say vnto you, Lift vp your eyes, and looke on the regions: for they are white alreadie vnto haruest. 36 And he that reapeth, receiueth rewarde, and gathereth fruite vnto life eternall, that both he that soweth, and he that reapeth, might reioyce together. 37 For herein is the saying true, that one soweth, and an other reapeth. 38 I sent you to reape that, whereon ye bestowed no labour: other men laboured, and ye are entred into their labours. 39 Nowe many of the Samaritans of that citie beleeued in him, for the saying of the woman which testified, He hath tolde me all things that euer I did. 40 Then when the Samaritans were come vnto him, they besought him, that he woulde tarie with them: and he abode there two dayes. 41 And many moe beleeued because of his owne word. 42 And they said vnto the woman, Nowe we beleeue, not because of thy saying: for we haue heard him our selues, and knowe that this is in deede that Christ the Sauiour of the world. 43 So two dayes after he departed thence, and went into Galile. 44 For Iesus himselfe had testified, that a Prophet hath none honour in his owne countrey. 45 Then when he was come into Galile, the Galileans receiued him, which had seene all the things that he did at Hierusalem at the feast: for they went also vnto the feast. 46 And Iesus came againe into Cana a towne of Galile, where he had made of water, wine. And there was a certaine ruler, whose sonne was sicke at Capernaum. 47 When he heard that Iesus was come out of Iudea into Galile, he went vnto him, and besought him that he would goe downe, and heale his sonne: for he was euen ready to die. 48 Then saide Iesus vnto him, Except ye see signes and wonders, ye will not beleeue. 49 The ruler said vnto him, Syr, goe downe before my sonne dye. 50 Iesus said vnto him, Go thy way, thy sonne liueth: and the man beleeued the worde that Iesus had spoken vnto him, and went his way. 51 And as he was nowe going downe, his seruants met him, saying, Thy sonne liueth. 52 Then enquired he of them the houre when he began to amend. And they said vnto him, Yesterday the seuenth houre the feuer left him. 53 Then the father knew, that it was the same houre in the which Iesus had said vnto him, Thy sonne liueth. And he beleeued, and all his houshold. 54 This second miracle did Iesus againe, after he was come out of Iudea into Galile.