What Does the Bible Say About Sex Before Marriage?
1) Direct answer
Sex before marriage is sin. The Bible calls it fornication. God reserves sexual intimacy for a man and a woman joined in the covenant of marriage. Anything outside that covenant brings judgment, not blessing.
2) Scriptural explanation
- Marriage is honorable... and the bed undefiled, but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge (Hebrews 13:4).
- Flee fornication... he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body... your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost (1 Corinthians 6:18-20).
- This is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication (1 Thessalonians 4:3-5).
- To avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband (1 Corinthians 7:2).
- Fornicators... shall not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9-10).
- A man shall cleave unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh (Genesis 2:24).
- Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart (Matthew 5:28).
3) Simple clarifying logic
Now notice, God joined “one flesh” to a covenant, not to casual desire. You see, love keeps God’s Word; lust breaks it. Engagement, feelings, or promises do not replace the marriage covenant. The Spirit doesn’t say “experiment and see”; He says “flee fornication.” Our bodies belong to the Lord; intimacy is holy when the vow makes two one. Outside that vow it wounds the soul, the body, and the testimony.
4) Reinforcing statement
There is mercy. If you’ve fallen, repent and turn from it now. The blood of Jesus cleanses when we confess and forsake our sin (1 John 1:9). Walk clean, guard your heart, and honor God’s pattern: purity before marriage, faithfulness within marriage.
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What did the Laodicean Church Age (our age) Angel (- messenger) Say about this?
Ranked passages from the local William Branham sermon and Church Age Book database. Relevance is relative, not a statement of doctrinal certainty.
Questions and Answers
59-0628E §107
.... a woman that's unmarried cannot commit adultery, because she has no husband to commit adultery against. It's uncleanliness for her. She has to confess that to her husband before they are married if she's did that. If not and her husband finds it out later, he has a right to put her away, because she took a false vow. For the Bible said, "Be it well..." or, ritual says, "Be it well known to you (I have it in mine) if any couples are joined otherwise than God's Word does allow, their marriage is not lawful. I will...
Father, the hour has come
56-1002A §21
...us Christ said, "Whosoever looketh upon a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart"? Does anybody know that? And if you dress yourself sexy like, no matter how modest you think it is, and go out on the street, and some old sinner looks at you to lust after you, at the judgment bar you'll be guilty of committing adultery with that man when he answers for it. Why is it? It was you was the one done it. You presented yourself that way, so you are the guilty one. And you, no matter...
Questions and Answers
61-1015M §80
QUESTION: "Brother Branham, I was married to a woman that had been married before. We divorced, and she has been married twice since. The Bible states that if we desire to marry ... if we desire to marry, to turn to ... first wife. Now, could I turn to her who has been married before or could I be free? Well, now, my brother, here's the only way that you could do it. Now, this is a great subject, and someday I want to---if the church ever gets organized and straightened up into the place where it should be, or... I...
Marriage and Divorce
65-0221M §71
...ndred wives, Solomon with his thousand; and Solomon is the son of David in the natural, which represents Jesus Christ, the Son of David in the spiritual. But that's natural sex life; this is going to be spiritual created life, created. That's the way it was at the beginning, but not now in this life we live in now. Notice! (Don't fail this now; take it all down in your hearts.) But not one of those women could even have one more husband. He's the original creation, not her. Not one of those women could have one mor...
Marriage and Divorce
65-0221M §86
...he cannot put Him away. He did it, and proved it, in the days when Luther, Wesley, and in Pentecost, when they refused to become the further part of Him by having spiritual sexual affair to become pregnated with further part of the Word. You understand? She refused... The Lutheran church refused for Christ to have any more desire with her. Luther refused it. And let me say this (going to call me something anyhow), so is it today with every one of them! They fail to take that Word! They refuse Christ! And any woman...