virginity before marriage

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

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, ⁵not in passions of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God, ⁶and that no one should overwhelm or circumvent his brother in business. For the Lord is the vindicator of all these things, just as we have preached and testified to you. ⁷For God has not called us to impurity, but to sanctification. ⁸And so, whoever despises these teachings, does not despise man, but God, who has even provided his Holy Spirit within us.

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.

¹⁶If a man has led astray a virgin not yet betrothed, and he has slept with her, he shall pay her dowry and have her as a wife. ¹⁷If the father of the virgin is not willing to give her, he shall pay money according to manner of a dowry, which virgins are accustomed to receive.

⁸But I say to the unmarried and to widows: It is good for them, if they would remain as they are, just as I also am. ⁹But if they cannot restrain themselves, they should marry. For it is better to marry, than to be burned.

¹⁸Flee from fornication. Every sin whatsoever that a man commits is outside of the body, but whoever fornicates, sins against his own body. 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? ²⁰For you have been bought at a great price. Glorify and carry God in your body.

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.

¹⁸Flee from fornication. Every sin whatsoever that a man commits is outside of the body, but whoever fornicates, sins against his own body.

¹And so, I beg you, brothers, by the mercy of God, that you offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, with the subservience of your mind. ²And do not choose to be conformed to this age, but instead choose to be reformed in the newness of your mind, so that you may demonstrate what is the will of God: what is good, and what is well-pleasing, and what is perfect.

¹Therefore, as most beloved sons, be imitators of God. ²And walk in love, just as Christ also loved us and delivered himself for us, as an oblation and a sacrifice to God, with a fragrance of sweetness. 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, ⁴nor any indecent, or foolish, or abusive talk, for this is without purpose; but instead, give thanks. 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. ⁶Let no one seduce you with empty words. For because of these things, the wrath of God was sent upon the sons of unbelief.

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.

²⁰But if what he has claimed is true and virginity is not found in the girl, ²¹then they shall throw her down, outside the doors of her father’s house, and the men of that city shall stone her to death, and she shall die. For she has acted wickedly in Israel, in that she fornicated in her father’s house. And so shall you take away the evil from your midst. ²²If a man sleeps with the wife of another, then they shall both die, that is, the adulterer and the adulteress. And so shall you take away the evil from Israel.

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.

⁹Similarly also, women should be dressed fittingly, adorning themselves with compunction and restraint, and not with plaited hair, nor gold, nor pearls, nor costly attire,

³For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from fornication,

²For I am jealous toward you, with the jealousy of God. And I have espoused you to one husband, offering you as a chaste virgin to Christ.

¹And so, I beg you, brothers, by the mercy of God, that you offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, with the subservience of your mind.

²⁴For this reason, God handed them over to the desires of their own heart for impurity, so that they afflicted their own bodies with indignities among themselves. ²⁵And they exchanged the truth of God for a lie. And they worshipped and served the creature, rather than the Creator, who is blessed for all eternity. Amen. ²⁶Because of this, God handed them over to shameful passions. For example, their females have exchanged the natural use of the body for a use which is against nature. ²⁷And similarly, the males also, abandoning the natural use of females, have burned in their desires for one another: males doing with males what is disgraceful, and receiving within themselves the recompense that necessarily results from their error. ²⁸And since they did not prove to have God by knowledge, God handed them over to a morally depraved way of thinking, so that they might do those things which are not fitting: ²⁹having been completely filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, avarice, wickedness; full of envy, murder, contention, deceit, spite, gossiping;

¹⁶And do you not know that whoever is joined to a harlot becomes one body? “For the two,” he said, “shall be as one flesh.”