abstinence
What does the Bible say about abstinence? These are the passages readers found most helpful — tap any citation to read it in context.
12 passages · most helpful first
3For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from fornication, 4that each one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor,
4May marriage be honorable in every way, and may the marriage bed be immaculate. For God will judge fornicators and adulterers.
2But, because of fornication, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband.
18Flee from fornication. Every sin whatsoever that a man commits is outside of the body, but whoever fornicates, sins against his own body.
22So then, flee from the desires of your youth, yet truly, pursue justice, faith, hope, charity, and peace, along with those who call upon the Lord from a pure heart.
11Most beloved, I beg you, as new arrivals and sojourners, to abstain from carnal desires, which battle against the soul.
19Or do you not know that your bodies are the Temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?
7And so, after many days, his mistress cast her eyes on Joseph, and she said, “Sleep with me.” 8And without consenting at all to the wicked act, he said to her: “Behold, my lord has delivered all things to me, and he does not know what he has in his own house. 9Neither is there anything which is not in my power, or that he has not delivered to me, except you, for you are his wife. How then can I do this evil act and sin against my God?” 10With such words as these, throughout each day, the woman was pestering the young man, and he was refusing the adultery.
5Therefore, mortify your body, while it is upon the earth. For because of fornication, impurity, lust, evil desires, and avarice, which are a kind of service to idols,
19Now the works of the flesh are manifest; they are: fornication, lust, homosexuality, self-indulgence, 20the serving of idols, drug use, hostility, contentiousness, jealousy, wrath, quarrels, dissensions, divisions, 21envy, murder, inebriation, carousing, and similar things. About these things, I continue to preach to you, as I have preached to you: that those who act in this way shall not obtain the kingdom of God.
30Charm is false, and beauty is vain. The woman who fears the Lord, the same shall be praised.
13Let us walk honestly, as in the daylight, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in promiscuity and sexual immorality, not in contention and envy.