God Created Men and Women Equal

 The Pharisees asked Jesus why Moses allowed a man to put away his wife. For the pious Jews, the law was the perfect standard, but for Jesus the law was not perfect.

Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. Mt 19:8 NIV

For Jesus, something was even higher than the law.

    For Jesus, the law was holy, but for him there was a higher principle, God's order in creation before sin entered the world.

“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’
and said,
(Genesis 2:24) ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? Mt 19:4–5 NIV

We are familiar with these words, but we do not know how totally radical this statement really is.
In the biblical stories we read only once that a man left his parents, married a woman and stayed with the woman.

That was Jacob, who found his wife with his uncle but then she returned with him to his family. Also with Abraham and later with the Jews under the law, the woman had to leave her family and then she belonged to her husband's family.

Even the law given by God did not restore God's original order.
What was God's order for man and woman before the Fall?

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. Gen 1:26–27 NIV

In the beginning, God showed his authority as Creator. Spiritual authority is creative.
God created both man and woman in his image. Both express God's nature and character, the man no more than the woman.

God gave man and woman the quality of fertility, the ability to transmit life, people who would also have God's nature.

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” Gen 1:28 NIV

God gave the man and the woman authority over the earth. He did not give the man authority over the woman and he did not give the woman authority over the man.

God's guiding principle from the beginning was partnership.

Some say God gave men authority over women in Genesis 3.16.

To the woman he said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labour you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” Gen 3:16 NIV

Was painful childbirth part of God’s plan in creation? Of course not. It was the bitter fruit of sin. So too the domination of men over women was the tragic result of sin. Jesus died on the cross to free us from the curses of sin, including male domination.