The Bible clearly condemns sexual sins: adultery (consensual sex between a married person and someone other than his or her spouse) (Proverbs 6:32; cf. 1 Corinthians 6:18 and Hebrews 13:4) and fornication (sexual immorality in general) are specified (Matthew 15:19; Romans 1:29; 1 Corinthians 5:1). Sex before marriage, or premarital sex, is not addressed in that exact term, but it does fall within the scope of sexual immorality.
The Bible teaches that sex before marriage is immoral in a couple of different passages. One is 1 Corinthians 7:2, which says, “But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband.” In this verse, marriage is presented as the “cure” for sexual immorality. Sexual union within marriage, which is commended, is set against immorality, which is to be avoided. Thus, any sex outside of marriage is considered immoral. This would have to include premarital sex.
Another verse that presents sex before marriage as immoral is Hebrews 13:4, “Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.” Here, we have both adultery and fornication contrasted with what happens in the marriage bed. Marriage (and sexual intercourse within marriage) is honorable; all other types of sexual activity are condemned as immoral and bring God’s judgment.
Based on these passages, a biblical definition of sexual immorality would have to include sex before marriage. That means that all the Bible verses that condemn sexual immorality in general also condemn sex before marriage. These include Acts 15:20; 1 Corinthians 5:1; 6:13, 18; 10:8; 2 Corinthians 12:21; Galatians 5:19; Ephesians 5:3; Colossians 3:5; 1 Thessalonians 4:3; Jude 1:7; and Revelation 21:8.
God designed sex, and the Bible honors marriage. Part of honoring marriage is the Bible’s promotion of complete abstinence before marriage. When two unmarried people engage in sexual intercourse, they are defiling God’s good gift of sex. Before marriage, a couple has no binding union, and they’ve entered no sacred covenant; without the marriage vows, they have no right to exploit the culmination of such vows.
Too often, we focus on the “recreation” aspect of sex without recognizing that there is another aspect—procreation. Sex within marriage is pleasurable, and God designed it that way. God wants men and women to enjoy sexual activity within the confines of marriage. Song of Solomon 4 and several other Bible passages (such as Proverbs 5:19) describe the pleasure of sex. However, God’s intent for sex includes producing children. Thus, for a couple to engage in sex before marriage is doubly wrong—they are enjoying pleasures not intended for them, and they are taking a chance of creating a human life outside of the family structure God intended for every child.
While practicality does not determine right from wrong, following the Bible’s instructions concerning sex before marriage would greatly benefit society. If the Bible’s message on sex before marriage were obeyed, there would be far fewer sexually transmitted diseases, far fewer abortions, far fewer unwed mothers and unwanted pregnancies, and far fewer children growing up without both parents in their lives. Abstinence saves lives, protects babies, gives sexual relations their proper value, and, most importantly, honors God. Sex between a husband and wife is the only form of sexual relations of which God approves.
Genesis 2:24
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
Hebrews 13:4
Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.
1 Corinthians 7:2
But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.
Proverbs 18:22
He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord.
2 Corinthians 6:14
Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?
Proverbs 21:9
It is better to live in a corner of the housetop than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife.
1 Peter 3:7
Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.
Proverbs 19:14
House and wealth are inherited from fathers, but a prudent wife is from the Lord.
1 Corinthians 7:39
A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord.
Ephesians 5:25
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.
Genesis 2:18
Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”
Colossians 3:19
Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.
Ephesians 5:33
However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
Proverbs 31:10
An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels.
1 Peter 4:8
Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.
Colossians 3:18
Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.
Mark 10:9
What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.
Matthew 19:9
And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.
Matthew 5:32
But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
Deuteronomy 24:5
When a man is newly married, he shall not go out with the army or be liable for any other public duty. He shall be free at home one year to be happy with his wife whom he has taken.
Unless otherwise noted, all Bible verses are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® Copyright© 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.
Special thanks to OpenBible.info for the data gathered on the most well-known Bible verses.
Unlike English, in which the word love means many different things, Ancient Greek had four words to describe the range of meaning that our word love conveys. The first word is eros, from which we get the English word erotic. Eros was the word often used to express sexual love or the feelings of arousal that are shared between people who are physically attracted to one another. The word was also used as the name of the Greek god of love, Eros (the Romans called him “Cupid”). By New Testament times, this word had become so debased by the culture that it is not used even once in the entire New Testament.
The second Greek word for “love” was storge, which referred to natural, familial love. Storge (a word not found in the Bible) referred to the type of love shown by a parent for a child. The third Greek word for “love” was philia, which forms part of the words philosophy (“love of wisdom”) and philanthropy (“love of fellow man”). This word speaks of the warm affection shared between friends. Whereas eros is more closely associated with the libido, philia is associated with the heart (metaphorically speaking). We feel love for our friends and family, obviously not in an erotic sense, but in the sense of being kind and affectionate. However, philia is not felt between people who are at enmity with one another. We can feel philia toward friends and family, but not toward people whom we dislike or hate.
Different from all of these is the fourth Greek word for “love,” agapé, typically defined as the “self-sacrificing love.” This is the love that moves people into action and looks out for the well-being of others, no matter the personal cost. Biblically speaking, agapé is the love God showed to His people in sending His Son, Jesus, to die for their sins. It is the love that focuses on the will, not the emotions, experience, or libido. This is the love that Jesus commands His disciples to show toward their enemies (Luke 6:35). Eros and philia are not expressed to people who hate us and wish us ill; agapé is. In Romans 5:8, Paul tells us that God’s love for His people was made manifest in that “while we were still sinners [i.e., enemies], Christ died for us.”
So, moving from the base to the pure, we have eros, storge, philia, and agapé. This is not to denigrate eros as sinful or impure. Sexual love is not inherently unclean or evil. Rather, it is the gift of God to married couples to express their love for one another, strengthen the bond between them, and ensure the survival of the human race. The Bible devotes one whole book to the blessings of erotic, or sexual, love—Song of Solomon. The love between a husband and a wife should be, among other things, an erotic love. However, a long-term relationship based solely on eros is doomed to failure. The “thrill” of sexual love wears off quickly unless there are some philia and agapé to go along with it.
Even though there is nothing inherently sinful with erotic love, it is in this sphere that our sinful nature is easily made manifest because eros focuses primarily on sensuality and self. Storge, philia, and agapé focus on relationship and others. Consider what the apostle Paul tells the Colossian church: “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry” (Colossians 3:5). The Greek word for “sexual immorality” is porneia (the root of our word pornography). This essentially covers the gamut of sexual sin (adultery, fornication, homosexuality, bestiality, etc.).
When shared between husband and wife, erotic love can be a wonderful thing, but because of our fallen sin nature, expressions of eros too often become porneia. In dealing with eros, human beings tend to go to extremes, becoming either ascetics or hedonists. The ascetic completely eschews sensual or sexual love. The hedonist sees unrestrained sexual passion and all forms of sensuality as perfectly natural and to be indulged. The biblical view is a balance between these two sinful extremes. Within the bond of heterosexual marriage, God celebrates the beauty of sexual love: “Let my lover come into his garden and taste its choice fruits. I have come into my garden, my sister, my bride; I have gathered my myrrh with my spice. I have eaten my honeycomb and my honey; I have drunk my wine and my milk. Eat, O friends, and drink; drink your fill, O lovers” (Song of Solomon 4:16—5:1). Outside of biblical marriage, eros becomes distorted and sinful.
Many in the modern culture (the west) have declared that sexual morality is dead, that abstinence isn’t realistic, but it is instead old-fashioned and outdated. Is abstinence before marriage even reasonable in today’s “hook-up culture”?
God designed sex to be enjoyed within a committed marital relationship. When God brought Adam and Eve together in marriage, He established the “one flesh” relationship. Genesis 2:24 tells us that a man will leave his family, join to his wife, and become “one flesh” with her. There are numerous verses that declare sex before marriage to be sin (Acts 15:20; 1 Corinthians 5:1; 6:13, 18; 10:8; 2 Corinthians 12:21; Galatians 5:19; Ephesians 5:3; Colossians 3:5; 1 Thessalonians 4:3; Jude 7). The Bible commands complete abstinence before marriage. Sex between a husband and his wife is the only form of sexual relations of which God approves (Hebrews 13:4).
God’s truth is eternal—not old-fashioned or unrealistic. However, God’s truth isn’t always easy! Sexual abstinence before marriage is often difficult and requires commitment, self-control, and some strategy. In a sense, it requires a person to be a rebel in a “sexually enlightened” culture.
In reality, the sexual enlightenment philosophy has brought our culture a lot of negative things—porn addiction, sexually transmitted diseases, emotional damage, and abortion on demand. Many in today’s culture say that a “hook-up” is the goal of the night. Singles bounce from club to club looking to hook up with a stranger for casual sex. But that’s not how God designed sex to work.
Blogger Matt Walsh describes this well: “Describing sex as ‘casual’ is like describing the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel as a ‘nice little doodle.’ . . . The people who diminish and cheapen sex are the ones who get to pass themselves off as ‘sexually enlightened.’”
Perhaps you are in a committed relationship, maybe even engaged to be married. For you, sex would not be “casual”; even so, God wants you to wait for the marriage relationship before you have sex. Saving this special, God-given intimacy until marriage will deepen your relationship and prevent future regrets.
Many see abstinence as unrealistic because no one has shown them how to live it out. If someone just shakes a finger and says, “Don’t have sex before marriage,” but doesn’t give the tools to live that message, abstinence becomes a lot more difficult. Here are some tips from those who have faced the temptations and walked the path of abstinence:
Abstinence is more than not having sex before marriage. Strive for sexual purity in all areas of your life—in thoughts, in words, in actions. If you think about or talk about sex a lot, you’re going to have a lot harder time not doing it.
Whether the culture says abstinence is realistic or not doesn’t change God’s truth. He has established sex to be limited to marriage, and He will equip you to honor Him through abstinence. First Corinthians 10:13 says, “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.”
Is abstinence realistic? Yes. Is abstinence always easy? No, but, with God, it is possible.
Note: Perhaps you’ve already lost your virginity. Please know that God is in the business of second chances. He wants you to come to Him in repentance, and He will forgive your sins and heal your heart. It’s not too late to make the choice to live righteously and in ways that are pleasing to Him.
It is true that sexual relations is the ultimate fulfillment of a couple becoming “one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). However, the act of sex does not equal marriage. If that were so, there would be no such thing as premarital sex—once a couple had sex, they would be married. The Bible calls premarital sex “fornication.” It is repeatedly condemned in Scripture along with all other forms of sexual immorality (Acts 15:20; 1 Corinthians 5:1; 6:13,18; 10:8; Galatians 5:19; Ephesians 5:3; Colossians 3:5; 1 Thessalonians 4:3; Jude 7). The Bible promotes abstinence before marriage as the standard of godliness. Sex before marriage is just as wrong as adultery and other forms of sexual immorality because they all involve having sex with someone other than your spouse.
If an unmarried couple has sex, does that mean they are married? The Bible gives us no reason to believe this to be the case. The act of sexual relations may have made them for a moment physically joined, but that does not mean God has joined them together as husband and wife. Sex is an important aspect of marriage, the physical act of marriage. Sex between unmarried people, though, does not equal marriage.
he term “one flesh” comes from the Genesis account of the creation of Eve. Genesis 2:21-24 describes the process by which God created Eve from a rib taken from Adam’s side as he slept. Adam recognized that Eve was part of him—they were in fact “one flesh.” The term “one flesh” means that just as our bodies are one whole entity and cannot be divided into pieces and still be a whole, so God intended it to be with the marriage relationship. There are no longer two entities (two individuals), but now there is one entity (a married couple). There are a number of aspects to this new union.
As far as emotional attachments are concerned, the new unit takes precedence over all previous and future relationships (Genesis 2:24). Some marriage partners continue to place greater weight upon ties with parents than with the new partner. This is a recipe for disaster in the marriage and is a perversion of God’s original intention of “leaving and cleaving.” A similar problem can develop when a spouse begins to draw closer to a child to meet emotional needs rather than to his or her partner.
Emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, financially, and in every other way, the couple is to become one. Even as one part of the body cares for the other body parts (the stomach digests food for the body, the brain directs the body for the good of the whole, the hands work for the sake of the body, etc.), so each partner in the marriage is to care for the other. Each partner is no longer to see money earned as “my” money, but rather as “our” money. Ephesians 5:22-33 and Proverbs 31:10-31 give the application of this “oneness” to the role of the husband and to the wife, respectively.
Physically, they become one flesh, and the result of that one flesh is found in the children that their union produces; these children now possess a special genetic makeup, specific to their union. Even in the sexual aspect of their relationship, a husband and wife are not to consider their bodies as their own but as belonging to their partner (1 Corinthians 7:3-5). Nor are they to focus on their own pleasure but rather the giving of pleasure to their spouse.
This oneness and desire to benefit each other is not automatic, especially after mankind’s fall into sin. The man, in Genesis 2:24 (KJV), is told to “cleave” to his wife. This word has two ideas behind it. One is to be “glued” to his wife, a picture of how tight the marriage bond is to be. The other aspect is to “pursue hard after” the wife. This “pursuing hard after” is to go beyond the courtship leading to marriage, and is to continue throughout the marriage. The fleshly tendency is to “do what feels good to me” rather than to consider what will benefit the spouse. And this self-centeredness is the rut that marriages commonly fall into once the “honeymoon is over.” Instead of each spouse dwelling upon how his or her own needs are not being met, he or she is to remain focused on meeting the needs of the spouse.
As nice as it may be for two people to live together meeting each other’s needs, God has a higher calling for the marriage. Even as they were to be serving Christ with their lives before marriage (Romans 12:1-2), now they are to serve Christ together as a unit and raise their children to serve God (1 Corinthians 7:29-34; Malachi 2:15; Ephesians 6:4). Priscilla and Aquila, in Acts 18, would be good examples of this. As a couple pursues serving Christ together, the joy which the Spirit gives will fill their marriage (Galatians 5:22-23). In the Garden of Eden, there were three present (Adam, Eve, and God), and there was joy. So, if God is central in a marriage today, there also will be joy. Without God, a true and full oneness is not possible.
