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Matthew 19:1-15 - Marriage, Hardness of Heart, and Children

20 min read

Before anyone asks Jesus about divorce, Matthew tells us that He “healed them there.” The controversy enters a place of healing. Men ask how broadly a husband may dismiss his wife; Christ speaks of the Creator, one flesh, and what God has joined. The disciples then imagine that avoiding marriage might be easier; Christ speaks of a gift that cannot be demanded from everyone. Finally, adults bring children who have no standing in the debate, and Jesus refuses to let His disciples become their barrier.

The whole passage exposes the hardened self: the part of us that turns covenant into permission, vocation into convenience, and the vulnerable into interruptions. Christ answers that hardness as Physician and King. He restores embodied life to self-offering: fidelity within marriage, freely received celibacy for the kingdom, and patient care that brings the small near to Him.

What God has joined together (Matthew 19:1-6)

1 Now it came to pass, when Jesus had finished these sayings, that He departed from Galilee and came to the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. 2 And great multitudes followed Him, and He healed them there.

3 The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him, and saying to Him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?”

4 And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”

“When Jesus had finished these sayings” closes the teaching of Matthew 18, where He placed a child in the midst, warned against scandal, taught correction aimed at gaining a brother, and commanded forgiveness from the heart. Now He leaves Galilee and begins the approach toward Jerusalem. The crowds follow, and He heals them. His words about marriage will be severe because the wound is severe, but they come from the same Lord whose authority restores bodies and receives sinners. He uncovers hardness in order to call human communion back toward life.

The immediate literary continuity sharpens that diagnosis while keeping the subjects distinct. Matthew 18 ends with Christ’s warning that forgiveness must be “from his heart”; Matthew 19 soon names “the hardness of your hearts” in a dispute about marriage. Matthew does not tell us that this is deliberate wordplay. The sequence itself is enough to search the reader: when compassion received from the King does not reach the heart, covenant can be reduced to permission, self-protection, and another person’s disposability.

The Pharisees’ question is a test, and its wording reveals the pressure point: may a man divorce his wife “for just any reason”? The Greek phrase is broad, literally “for every cause.”1 Later Jewish tradition preserves disagreement over Deuteronomy 24:1, ranging from a grave sexual offense to a husband’s displeasure over a meal. That later text illuminates the field of debate, though it does not prove that the men before Jesus belonged to one particular school.2

Jesus refuses to begin with the largest permission a husband might claim. “Have you not read” returns His questioners to the Torah they are trying to interpret. He joins Genesis 1:27 to Genesis 2:24: the Creator made male and female; the man leaves father and mother; he cleaves to his wife; the two become one flesh. Each phrase narrows the room for self-rule. Marriage asks a man to leave an old household, give himself to one woman, and receive a shared life that can no longer be treated as two unrelated private interests.

The conclusion is stronger still: “what God has joined together.” God is the acting subject. The Greek verb can carry the image of being yoked together, which gives bodily force to the union without changing the approved translation.3 The spouses truly consent and truly act, yet Christ teaches them to see their communion as God’s work and gift. A contract protects defined interests. One flesh creates a belonging in which the good of the other can no longer be dismissed as someone else’s problem.

In The Holy Matrimony Rite published by Saint Bishoy Coptic Orthodox Church, Matthew 19:1-6 appears as the Gospel reading.4 That placement receives Christ’s return to creation as the word proclaimed over a marriage. The crowning rite blesses a man and woman for a life in which love takes the form of fidelity, prayer, repentance, bodily honor, shared burdens, and sacrifice. The crowns are joyful, and they are costly. Marriage is received before the altar as a communion to be guarded, healed, and offered to God. This citation establishes only the witness of that published rite and this passage range; it does not establish broader annual placement or universal service-book authority.

Chrysostom on God’s joining 💎

St John Chrysostom notices that Christ does not rely on a bare prohibition. He gathers creation, cleaving, one flesh, and divine agency into His answer. By saying, “What God hath joined together,” Chrysostom writes, Christ “brought in God also.”5 Separation is therefore more than the ending of an arrangement. It wounds a union whose deepest Author is God.

For our life

The Pharisees’ question can reappear inside a marriage long before anyone mentions divorce. It appears whenever the heart asks only what it is entitled to withhold: how long it may stay silent, how much contempt can remain unconfessed, which secret can be protected, or how little tenderness duty requires. Christ changes the question. What does faithfulness require of me toward the person God has entrusted to my love?

His command must also be taught as a shelter for the covenant, never as a weapon against the endangered spouse. Violence, sexual assault, coercive control, threats, and child abuse violate the communion Christ defends. Immediate safety, appropriate civil protection, and the care of a priest and, where needed, the bishop belong beside these verses. “Let not man separate” cannot be made to mean “let harm remain hidden.”

Hardness of heart and a gift for the kingdom (Matthew 19:7-12)

7 They said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?”

8 He said to them, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.”

10 His disciples said to Him, “If such is the case of the man with his wife, it is better not to marry.”

11 But He said to them, “All cannot accept this saying, but only those to whom it has been given: 12 For there are eunuchs who were born thus from their mother’s womb, and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He who is able to accept it, let him accept it.”

The questioners say Moses “commanded” divorce. Jesus answers that Moses “permitted” it. The turn is in the verbs themselves.6 Deuteronomy’s certificate addressed life after a rupture; it did not reveal rupture as the Creator’s desire. Christ honors Moses while distinguishing a concession made within human sin from the goodness shown “at the beginning.” Torah is not set against Christ. Christ reads Torah by taking His hearers through its legal accommodation to its own creation account.

This is a dispute within Israel over how Israel’s Scriptures should be read. Jesus argues from Genesis and Deuteronomy; He does not caricature Moses, the Pharisees, or Jewish marital ethics. The later Mishnah preserves more than one Jewish interpretation of Deuteronomy 24:1, not a single cruel position set against Christian mercy.2 The phrase “hardness of your hearts” must therefore examine Christian hearts first. Whenever the Church uses this passage to accuse another people while excusing contempt, coercion, or covenant-breaking among her own members, she repeats the hardness Christ exposes.

Jesus also says, “the hardness of your hearts.” The diagnosis is plural and personal. Hardness is more than anger or incompatibility. It is the inner refusal that makes another person’s pain easy to ignore and one’s own desire feel morally decisive. It can appear as contempt repeated until it becomes normal, cruelty excused as honesty, lust protected by secrecy, money used for control, an apology forever delayed, or spiritual language used to avoid repentance. A certificate can regulate what happens after a marriage breaks. It cannot soften the heart that learned to break communion.

Verse 9 gives covenant-breaking its true moral weight. Divorce followed by another union cannot be treated as morally empty because legal paperwork has been completed. Jesus names adultery because bodies, promises, and persons matter before God. The NKJV text above retains the second adultery clause, “and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.” That clause is absent from many critical texts; the SBLGNT apparatus, for example, records its omission in Westcott-Hort and in the Greek text underlying the NIV, so no conclusion here depends on that disputed clause.7 The explanation rests on the uncontested first clause and on the passage’s own sequence: creation, one flesh, God’s joining, human hardness, and covenant responsibility. The exception “for sexual immorality” acknowledges a grave rupture; the verse must still be read with pastoral and canonical humility. It is not, by itself, a complete Coptic Orthodox policy for every case of separation, divorce, or remarriage. Cases involving betrayal, abandonment, violence, danger, children, repentance, and possible reconciliation require truthful discernment under the Church’s pastoral authority. A wounded person’s history should never be reduced to a slogan spoken by someone who does not know the case.

The disciples hear how fully Christ rejects disposable marriage and answer, “it is better not to marry.” Their reaction is revealing. If marriage cannot be entered with an easy exit, abstaining may look like the safer route for the self. Jesus neither relaxes His teaching nor makes celibacy a universal escape. “All cannot accept this saying, but only those to whom it has been given.” Celibacy for the kingdom is gift before it is achievement. The repeated language of accepting or receiving keeps grace and willing response together.8

Jesus then names three different conditions with the language of eunuchs: some are born so, some are made so by others, and some renounce marriage for the kingdom of heaven. The first two conditions are not chosen. The third is voluntary and directed toward God’s reign. These categories must not be collapsed, mocked, or used to command bodily mutilation. Christ honors a form of bodily self-offering in which marriage is relinquished so that life may be given with undivided freedom to prayer and service. In Orthodox life this vocation shines especially in monasticism, though no unmarried person should be assumed to possess it automatically.

Chrysostom on hardness and celibacy 💎

Chrysostom reads Christ’s words about voluntary eunuchhood with both moral seriousness and bodily sanity: “He means not the excision of the members, far from it, but the putting away of wicked thoughts.” He also stresses that Christ did not shut this calling “up in the compulsion of a law.”9 Grace does not coerce vocation. It gives, calls, and strengthens the person who freely receives.

Chrysostom also sees why Christ returns to “the beginning.” The Mosaic concession protected a fallen people from greater disorder, but it could not be mistaken for the first goodness. By naming hardness, Christ turns a dispute about Moses back upon the hearts of the men using Moses to defend their freedom from covenant.10

For our life

Marriage and celibacy meet at a deeper point than marital status. Both ask the body to stop serving appetite as master. The married Christian learns fidelity to a particular person through ordinary acts of truth, patience, sexual faithfulness, forgiveness, and shared prayer. The celibate Christian offers the absence of marriage to the kingdom rather than letting it harden into isolation, resentment, or hidden indulgence. Neither vocation is spiritually superior by label. Both become holy through grace received and love enacted.

For a married person, the urgent question is often smaller and earlier than a legal crisis: where is hardness beginning today? A sharp sentence defended because it was technically true, a secret habit, contempt disguised as humor, refusal to seek help, or the punishment of silence can all train the heart away from one flesh. Confession should name the act plainly. Repentance then takes bodily form: tell the truth, apologize without self-defense, end the secret, seek competent help, and begin again under Christ’s mercy.

For those carrying divorce, betrayal, singleness, widowhood, infertility, or a vocation they did not expect, Christ’s words do not declare a life useless to the kingdom. The Lord who says “to whom it has been given” knows the difference between a gift and a wound. He can meet the person in what was not chosen, protect without shaming, and lead each life toward faithful communion with Him.

Let the little children come to Me (Matthew 19:13-15)

13 Then little children were brought to Him that He might put His hands on them and pray, but the disciples rebuked them. 14 But Jesus said, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” 15 And He laid His hands on them and departed from there.

The final scene begins with other people carrying the children toward Jesus. The children do not argue for access; someone brings them. The desire is concrete: that Jesus would put His hands on them and pray. The disciples rebuke those who come, apparently treating the request as an interruption. They have just heard Christ speak about a union ordered by God and a vocation given for the kingdom, yet they still try to control who may reach Him.

Jesus answers with two commands: let them come, and do not forbid them.11 He is speaking first about actual children. “Of such is the kingdom of heaven” also teaches a pattern of lowliness and receptivity, but it cannot turn the children into symbols and leave real children outside. The kingdom belongs to those without leverage who receive what they cannot manufacture for themselves. Christian maturity is measured partly by whether our strength becomes a safe road by which the dependent can approach Christ.

“And He laid His hands on them.” Jesus answers the request that brought them. His welcome is neither vague approval nor distant sentiment. He gives attention, touch, and blessing. In a parish, love for children must become equally concrete: safe classrooms, patient teaching, adults who keep safeguarding boundaries, worship that makes room for formation, support for weary parents, and servants who remember that a child’s interruption may be the very person Christ is receiving.

The scene also reaches the home. Parents and caregivers bring children to Christ through family prayer, Scripture, the liturgy, repentance that children can witness, and forgiveness that repairs what anger has damaged. A parent forbids a child subtly when Christian words are paired with humiliation, hypocrisy, neglect, or fear. A parent opens the road when Christ’s name is joined to truth, tenderness, boundaries, and the willingness to ask a child’s forgiveness.

Chrysostom on receiving children 💎

Chrysostom reads the disciples’ rebuke as concern for dignity and Christ’s reception as a correction of worldly rank: “Teaching them to be lowly, and to trample under foot worldly pride, He doth receive them.”12 The Lord’s dignity is not protected by keeping the small away. His greatness is revealed in receiving them.

For our life

Matthew has carried us from a man’s question about his right to dismiss, through a vocation no one may demand, to children whom the disciples try to stop. In each scene Christ overturns the rule of the self that grasps control. He names God as the One who joins, celibacy as something given, and the kingdom as belonging to such as these little ones. Communion begins in gift, and faithful authority serves the gift rather than guarding its own convenience.

A parish or household should therefore ask a practical question: what makes it easier for a child to come to Christ here, and what makes it harder? The answer may involve a lesson prepared with care, a safer check-in process, patience during worship, support for a child with particular needs, or an adult whose example makes repentance believable. Jesus’ command is simple enough for a child to understand and demanding enough to judge a church: “do not forbid them.”

Spiritual Fruit 🍇

  1. Catch the heart when it starts bargaining with love. The Pharisees ask how broad a permission can be; Jesus returns to what God made and joined. When prayer becomes a search for the minimum you owe a spouse, family member, or person entrusted to you, name that bargaining before Christ. Ask what communion requires, then do one concrete act of fidelity that costs pride or convenience.

  2. Bring hardness to confession before it becomes a settled character. Contempt, secrecy, humiliating speech, financial control, lust, prolonged silence, and refusal to apologize train the heart to treat rupture as normal. Confess the specific act rather than the vague phrase “we have problems.” Where safety permits, pair confession with repair: truth told, help sought, an apology made, and harmful access limited.

  3. Hold covenant truth together with protection of the wounded. Christ gives marriage holy weight and also stands in the passage as the One who heals. Do not use His words to hide danger or shame a person whose story you do not know. When violence, coercion, sexual harm, or child abuse is present, help the endangered person reach safety, civil protection, and responsible pastoral care.

  4. Receive vocation as gift, not rank. Marriage is not permission to despise the single, and celibacy is not proof of spiritual superiority. Offer the vocation actually entrusted to you through prayer, chastity, service, and faithful use of the body. If your path is unclear or wounded, bring that uncertainty to Christ and seek patient discernment rather than forcing a label.

  5. Remove one real barrier between a child and Christ. Jesus commands His disciples to stop hindering actual children. In the home, this may mean beginning a simple family prayer and asking forgiveness for angry speech. In the parish, it may mean improving safety, preparing a lesson well, welcoming a child with particular needs, or treating a noisy family with patience. The small are not interruptions to the kingdom. Christ receives them in our midst.

Footnotes

  1. Matthew 19:3 interlinear, κατὰ πᾶσαν αἰτίαν, https://biblehub.com/interlinear/matthew/19-3.htm ↩

  2. Mishnah Gittin 9:10, https://www.sefaria.org/Mishnah_Gittin.9.10 ↩ ↩2

  3. Matthew 19:6 interlinear, ὃ οὖν ὁ Θεὸς συνέζευξεν, https://biblehub.com/interlinear/matthew/19-6.htm ↩

  4. The Holy Matrimony Rite, published by Saint Bishoy Coptic Orthodox Church, where Matthew 19:1-6 appears as the Gospel reading, https://saintbishoy.ca/wp-content/uploads/Rites_Wedding_Ceremony.pdf. This citation supports only that published ritual witness and passage range; it does not establish broader annual placement or universal service-book authority. ↩

  5. St John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew, Homily LXII, on Matthew 19:4-6, NPNF1 10, CCEL, https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf110.iii.LIX.html#iii.LIX-p14 ↩

  6. Matthew 19:8 interlinear, σκληροκαρδίαν and ἐπέτρεψεν, https://biblehub.com/interlinear/matthew/19-8.htm ↩

  7. The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition, apparatus to Matthew 19:9. The apparatus marks καὶ ὁ ἀπολελυμένην γαμήσας μοιχᾶται as present in Tregelles and Robinson-Pierpont but absent in Westcott-Hort and the Greek text underlying the NIV: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2019%3A9&version=SBLGNT ↩

  8. Matthew 19:11-12 interlinear, χωροῦσιν, δέδοται, and χωρείτω, https://biblehub.com/interlinear/matthew/19-11.htm and https://biblehub.com/interlinear/matthew/19-12.htm ↩

  9. St John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew, Homily LXII, on Matthew 19:11-12, NPNF1 10, CCEL, https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf110.iii.LIX.html#iii.LIX-p44 ↩

  10. St John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew, Homily LXII, on Matthew 19:7-9, NPNF1 10, CCEL, https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf110.iii.LIX.html#iii.LIX-p26 ↩

  11. Matthew 19:14 interlinear, Ἄφετε, κωλύετε, and τοιούτων, https://biblehub.com/interlinear/matthew/19-14.htm ↩

  12. St John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew, Homily LXII, on Matthew 19:13-15, NPNF1 10, CCEL, https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf110.iii.LIX.html#iii.LIX-p59 ↩

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