Matthew 19:1-6: Jesus on Marriage, Sexuality, and the Question Nobody Wants to Ask

Sunday message · The Book of Matthew series

Phillip Santillan  ·  Matthew 19:1-6

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Message Summary

Continuing through Matthew, Pastor Phillip Santillan opens Matthew 19:1–6 by asking what freedom feels like. Our culture assumes freedom means defining yourself, and that any outside authority is oppression. But what if self-definition is the heaviest burden of all? Phil offers not a weapon but a compass for real relationships, because the world needs neither Christians who are right and mean nor Christians who are kind but silent.

The Pharisees try to trap Jesus with a question about divorce, knowing the school of Shammai allowed it only for serious sexual indecency while the school of Hillel allowed it for almost anything, even a burned dinner. Their question is about permission, how close to the line they can live, and Phil sees the same instinct in the culture’s insistence that there are no lines. Both ask how much of life we must hand over to God.

Jesus answers men who had memorized the Torah with “Haven’t you read?” and goes back to creation, quoting Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 on God making them male and female and the two becoming one flesh. This is an argument about authority, Phil says, because no one can outrank the beginning. Genesis pictures that union as gluing or welding. In God’s design marriage is not a negotiable contract but a permanent union of a man and a woman, which N.T. Wright calls one of the principal ways God’s image is reflected into the world.

Some say Jesus never addressed same-sex relationships, but in defining marriage from creation he is not silent. Yet Phil refuses to use the text to target one group; it confronts anyone who treats marriage casually or indulges sexual sin. The line Jesus draws is between the creator’s authority and our autonomy, and everyone is on the wrong side of it somewhere. Rosaria Butterfield, in The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, concludes that her sexuality was sinful not because of its kind but because it was not under Christ’s control. The question is whether Christ has authority over our desires.

Many think of a loved one whose life differs from Jesus’ teaching. Phil asks what posture gives the gospel the most access to that heart over time. Jesus ate with sinners while the Pharisees grumbled (Luke 15:2). “His presence was never an endorsement,” Phil says; it was an invitation. Believers may land differently in complicated situations, where conscience matters (Romans 14), but we refuse to abandon either truth or people. Disagreement is not hatred: Jesus disagreed with everyone in this passage and went to the cross for each of them. “Tell the truth and stay in the room,” he urges.

Culture says freedom is self-definition, Phil concludes, but Jesus points back to the creator who designed our bodies, sexuality and purpose, and asks for our trust. Struggles may not vanish overnight, yet Jesus entered our brokenness, carried our sin, rose again and patiently forms us. Phil asks who gets to tell us who we are, and whether we will let the answer be the one who made us, before closing in prayer.