If you crack open a red-letter Bible and start hunting for a direct quote where the Nazarene mentions sexual orientation, you’re going to be looking for a very long time. He never says the word. Not once. In the entire biographical record of the four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—there isn't a single sentence where Christ explicitly condemns or even mentions same-sex attraction. That’s the starting point. It’s a bit of a shock to people who grew up in heavy-handed religious environments where this topic felt like the center of the universe.
So, why the massive debate? Why does it feel like every time you ask what does jesus say about gays, you get pulled into a hundred-year-long shouting match?
The reality is that we’re dealing with a "silence" that speaks differently to different people. For some, the silence is a green light. For others, Jesus’s silence is interpreted through the lens of his Jewish context, implying he didn't need to mention it because the law was already clear. But let's actually look at the ink on the page. We have to dive into what he did say about marriage, what he said about outcasts, and how he handled the strict moral codes of his era. It's complicated. It's nuanced. Honestly, it’s probably more interesting than the talking points you see on social media.
The Marriage Definition in Matthew 19
When people argue that Jesus was implicitly against same-sex relationships, they almost always point to Matthew 19:4-6. It’s the "standard" proof text. In this scene, some Pharisees are trying to trap him with a question about divorce. Jesus responds by quoting Genesis. He says, "Haven’t you read that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?"
Conservative scholars, like those at The Gospel Coalition or Dallas Theological Seminary, argue this is a definitive statement. By affirming the "male and female" binary of creation, they suggest Jesus was setting a boundary. If he defines marriage as X, then by default, he’s excluding Y. It’s an argument from design. To this line of thinking, Jesus didn't need to say "don't do this" because he had already stated "this is what it is."
But wait.
Progressive theologians, such as the late Rachel Held Evans or Dr. David Gushee, look at that same passage and see something else entirely. They point out that Jesus wasn't giving a lecture on sexual orientation. He was answering a specific, legalistic trap about men abandoning their wives. In a culture where women had zero power, Jesus was protecting the vulnerable party from being tossed aside on a whim. To use this as a "clobber passage" against a committed same-sex couple feels, to many, like a stretch of the original intent.
The Silence and the "Clobber" Verses
People often get Jesus confused with Paul. It’s an easy mistake if you didn't grow up reading the New Testament. Paul is the one who wrote the letters to the Romans and the Corinthians. Paul is the one who uses words like arsenokoitai, which modern Bibles often translate as "homosexuals," though the translation of that specific Greek word is a battlefield of its own.
Jesus stayed in the Gospels.
His silence is meaningful. Think about it. He went after the religious elite for their greed. He flipped tables over exploitative banking practices in the Temple. He talked about adultery, lust, and divorce constantly. He was obsessed with the heart. If same-sex behavior was the "ultimate sin" some modern denominations make it out to be, his total omission of the topic is curious.
Did he assume his audience knew the Levitical law? Probably. He was a Jewish Rabbi, after all. He said he didn't come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it. However, he also spent his entire career breaking the "spirit" of the law to show mercy. He touched lepers. He ate with tax collectors. He defended a woman caught in the act of adultery when the Law literally demanded she be stoned to death. His pattern was consistently one of inclusion of the marginalized.
The Eunuchs and the "Born This Way" Connection
There is one weird, fascinating moment in Matthew 19:12 that often gets overlooked. After talking about marriage, Jesus mentions "eunuchs."
He says: "For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven."
In the first century, "eunuch" was a bit of a catch-all term for people who didn't fit the standard reproductive mold. It included castrated men, sure, but also people born with different sexualities or physical conditions that made them "unfit" for traditional marriage. By saying some were "born that way," Jesus acknowledges a category of people who exist outside the male-female marital norm. He doesn't condemn them. He doesn't tell them to get "fixed." He validates their place in the kingdom.
Some LGBTQ+ Christians see this as the closest Jesus ever got to acknowledging them. It’s an recognition of a "third way" that doesn't fit the binary.
Why the Context of 1st Century Judea Matters
You can't understand what does jesus say about gays without understanding that "sexual orientation" is a modern concept. The idea that someone has an internal, fixed romantic attraction to the same sex wasn't how people thought in 30 A.D. Back then, sex was often about power, status, and procreation.
The Romans practiced pederasty and exploitative forms of same-sex acts. If Jesus was thinking of "homosexuality," he was likely seeing it through the lens of Roman excess and exploitation, not a loving, egalitarian marriage between two men or two women.
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This is where the debate gets sticky. If Jesus was silent on the topic, was he silent because he agreed with the status quo, or was he silent because the modern concept of a "gay person" didn't exist to him?
The Centurion’s Servant: A Hidden Clue?
There’s a story in Matthew 8 and Luke 7 about a Roman Centurion who comes to Jesus asking him to heal his "servant" (pais in Greek). The Centurion is desperate. The servant is "dear to him."
Some scholars, including the likes of Theodore W. Jennings Jr. in The Man Jesus Loved, have pointed out that the word pais can sometimes refer to a younger male lover in a Roman context. When Jesus hears the request, he doesn't interrogate the nature of their relationship. He doesn't ask for a marriage certificate. He simply says, "I will go and heal him," and later remarks that he hasn't found such great faith in all of Israel.
Now, is this a definitive "Jesus supports gay rights" moment? Most mainstream scholars say no. They argue pais just means servant or child. But the fact that the theory exists among serious academics shows just how much room there is for interpretation in the gaps of the text.
Love as the "Greatest Commandment"
If we can't find a direct quote, we have to look at the "Greatest Commandment." When asked what matters most, Jesus boiled the entire Bible down to two things: Love God, and Love your neighbor.
He followed this up with the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The point of that story was that your "neighbor" is often the person you’ve been taught to hate or exclude. If you follow the trajectory of Jesus's ministry, it almost always moves toward the person on the outside.
- He healed on the Sabbath (breaking religious rules for the sake of a person).
- He chatted with a Samaritan woman at a well (breaking racial and gender taboos).
- He praised the faith of pagans.
If you ask a progressive believer what does jesus say about gays, they’ll tell you he said "Love them as yourself." They see the spirit of his law as one that collapses barriers rather than building them.
The Traditionalist Counter-Argument
On the flip side, the traditionalist view is that Jesus didn't need to be inclusive of "sin." They would argue that while Jesus loved the sinner, he always called them to repentance. "Go and sin no more," he told the woman caught in adultery. To this group, the silence of Jesus isn't a license to change 2,000 years of church teaching. They believe that because Jesus upheld the authority of the Old Testament scriptures, he by extension upheld the prohibitions found in Leviticus.
What This Means for You Today
The search for what does jesus say about gays often leads people to a crossroads. You won't find a "yes" or "no" in the red letters. What you find instead is a radical emphasis on the heart, a fierce critique of religious hypocrisy, and a definition of love that turned the world upside down.
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If you’re looking for a reason to hate, you won't find it in Jesus's words.
If you’re looking for a detailed policy manual on 21st-century gender ethics, you won't find that either.
What you find is a man who was repeatedly accused of hanging out with the "wrong" people. Whether you believe he was the Son of God or just a historical teacher, his primary mode of operation was empathy.
Actionable Steps for Further Exploration
If you're trying to navigate this for yourself or a loved one, don't just take a headline's word for it. The text is deeper than a soundbite.
- Read the Source Material Directly: Start with the Gospel of Mark. It’s the shortest. Look at how Jesus treats people who are socially "unclean."
- Study the Greek Terms: Look into words like porneia (often translated as sexual immorality) and eunouchos (eunuch). Understanding the original language helps peel back layers of modern bias.
- Listen to Both Sides: Read God and the Gay Christian by Matthew Vines for the progressive perspective, and Is God Anti-Gay? by Sam Allberry for a traditional but compassionate conservative view.
- Focus on the Context: Research what life was like in 1st-century Palestine. Understanding the Roman occupation and Jewish purity laws changes how you hear Jesus's parables.
- Check the Fruit: Jesus famously said you can recognize a tree by its fruit. Look at the impact of different interpretations. Does an interpretation lead to life, peace, and love, or does it lead to despair and isolation?
The conversation around Jesus and sexuality isn't going away. But moving past the "clobber verses" and looking at the actual life he lived is a much more productive way to find an answer. He focused on the person standing in front of him. Maybe that's the real takeaway.