Relationships and family
What does the Bible say about sex before marriage?
Scripture consistently reserves sex for marriage and calls us to flee sexual immorality, while offering full forgiveness to anyone who comes to God.
What Scripture says
1 Corinthians 6:18-20
“Flee sexual immorality! “Every sin that a man does is outside the body,” but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.”
1 Thessalonians 4:3-5
“For this is the will of God: your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality, that each one of you know how to control his own body in sanctification and honor, not in the passion of lust, even as the Gentiles who don’t know God,”
Hebrews 13:4
“Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the bed be undefiled; but God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers.”
Galatians 5:16
“But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you won’t fulfill the lust of the flesh.”
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Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. See all Bible questions or verses by topic.