The First Sexual Revolution: How Jesus Transformed the World for Women

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This is Part 2 of a three-part series on the Sexual Revolution. For the first article, please see The Sexual Revolution Lies to Women.

A Better Revolution

The 1960s promised a sexual revolution. And it delivered — just not the kind most people expected. The fallout is now impossible to ignore: rising loneliness, regret, anxiety, and abuse, especially for women.

Even secular voices like Louise Perry are sounding the alarm, wondering aloud if we’ve dismantled something vital in our pursuit of freedom.

But what if the sexual revolution we actually need… already happened?

Not in the 20th century. Not in a courtroom or a university.

But in dusty towns under Roman rule — led by a carpenter’s son who never married and spoke to women like no man ever had.

The Roman World Was a Sexual Free-for-All — But Only for the Powerful

To understand how revolutionary Jesus really was, we need to look at what he was confronting. The Greco-Roman world was permissive — but only for those at the top. In Rome, consent wasn’t the rule — power was.

Men could sleep with their wives, mistresses, slaves, prostitutes, and even adolescent boys. So long as they didn’t violate another man’s wife or take a “passive” role, it was socially acceptable. This wasn’t fringe behavior — it was expected.

Slaves had no sexual rights.

Prostitution was institutionalized.

Infanticide — especially of baby girls — was routine.

Women’s worth? Conditional. A Roman woman’s job was to marry, bear sons, and stay silent. If she were raped, she could be punished. If she were unfaithful, she could be killed.

Meanwhile, her husband could keep concubines without scandal.

In this world, sex was power — and those with none paid the price.

Jesus Didn’t Just Restrain Desire — He Rewired It

Into this world stepped Jesus of Nazareth. He didn’t start a riot. He didn’t run for office. But the culture-shock he introduced was seismic.

He taught that lust in the heart was on par with adultery in action.

He said divorce was a moral failure, not a loophole.

He taught that sex belonged within lifelong fidelity between one man and one woman — period.

Even more radical? These rules applied to everyone. No exceptions for power. No special treatment for men. He held the rich and religious to the same standards as prostitutes and peasants.

In short, Jesus didn’t shame desire — He redefined it. And He did it not to control people, but to honor them.

Jesus and Women: Dignity in a World of Disposability

Jesus not only taught a new sexual ethic — He lived it.

In John 8, He defended a woman caught in adultery from public execution. Not by denying her sin, but by exposing her accusers’ hypocrisy. “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” They all walked away. Jesus said, “Go and sin no more.”

It was grace without moral compromise — utterly unlike the cruelty of Rome.

In John 4, he spoke to a Samaritan woman at a well — a woman with five past husbands and a live-in lover. He didn’t shame her. He offered her “living water.” And she became the first evangelist in her town.

Time after time, Jesus treated “unworthy” women as worthy of conversation, conviction, and calling. It was revolutionary.

Everyone Was Accountable. Everyone Was Honored.

The most disruptive part of Jesus’s teaching wasn’t how hard it was. It was how fair it was.

In a society where men got a pass, Jesus gave them a calling. He didn’t just tell women to be pure.

He told men to stop objectifying them.

His earliest followers carried this forward. Paul wrote that the body “is not your own” but “a temple of the Holy Spirit.” And in Corinth — a city full of brothels — He told Christian men not to unite Christ’s body with a prostitute.

This wasn’t prudishness. It was purpose. It was protection.

Jesus’s ethic wasn’t about repressing sexuality. It was about redeeming it.

A Revolution That Starts in the Heart

Jesus never stormed Rome. But his sexual ethic dismantled it from the inside out.

• It challenged the powerful.

• It protected the vulnerable.

• It required everyone — slave or senator — to treat sex not as conquest, but covenant.

  
  

This was the true beginning of the first sexual revolution.

But it didn’t stop with Him. The early church took Jesus’s vision and turned it into a community.

That’s where we’ll go next.

What do you think?

Was Jesus a moral conservative — or a cultural revolutionary? If His ethics lifted the lowly and challenged the powerful, what would it do in today’s world?

Share your thoughts — especially if you disagree.

© Nathan Cole

Originally published on Medium.