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unmarried sex

What does the Bible say about unmarried sex? These are the passages readers found most helpful — tap any citation to read it in context.

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4May marriage be honorable in every way, and may the marriage bed be immaculate. For God will judge fornicators and adulterers.

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,

28But I say to you, that anyone who will have looked at a woman, so as to lust after her, has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

5For know and understand this: no one who is a fornicator, or lustful, or rapacious (for these are a kind of service to idols) holds an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.

3But let not any kind of fornication, or impurity, or rapacity so much as be named among you, just as is worthy of the saints,

1Now concerning the things about which you wrote to me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. 2But, because of fornication, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband. 3A husband should fulfill his obligation to his wife, and a wife should also act similarly toward her husband. 4It is not the wife, but the husband, who has power over her body. But, similarly also, it is not the husband, but the wife, who has power over his body. 5So, do not fail in your obligations to one another, except perhaps by consent, for a limited time, so that you may empty yourselves for prayer. And then, return together again, lest Satan tempt you by means of your abstinence. 6But I am saying this, neither as an indulgence, nor as a commandment.

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24For this reason, a man shall leave behind his father and mother, and he shall cling to his wife; and the two shall be as one flesh.

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.

9Do you not know that the iniquitous will not possess the kingdom of God? Do not choose to wander astray. For neither fornicators, nor servants of idolatry, nor adulterers, 10nor the effeminate, nor males who sleep with males, nor thieves, nor the avaricious, nor the inebriated, nor slanderers, nor the rapacious shall possess the kingdom of God.

32But I say to you, that anyone who will have dismissed his wife, except in the case of fornication, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever will have married her who has been dismissed commits adultery.