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.
Ask a Follow-up Question
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.
We have seen His star and have come to worship Him
63-1216 §34
Now, we find out that the forecast foretells future events before they happen. Strange as it seems, that almighty God foretold, and took the welfare of the baby, Jesus, and revealed it by a dream, what to do. Now that God, in this secondarily way, to His own Son, revealed it to Joseph by a dream. The Bible said He did. Yes, sir. Now, Joseph was a good man, he was the son of David, and he was espoused to Mary. I'd like to pass this on, before we go further. Espousing, in the East, was the same as marriage, is betrot...
Marriage and Divorce
65-0221M §79
...band and lives and she's a blessed thing to the man! If God could have give His Son any better thing than a wife, He would have give that to Him. But she's designed to be a sex act. And no other animal is designed like that; no other creature on the earth is designed like that. That's the reason you see polygamy---because of that. That's what brought it in.
Sirs, we would see Jesus
64-0304 §29
We're looking now. One scripture before we go into something else: Jesus said when He was here on earth, in Luke's book, that "As it was in the days of Sodom, so shall it be at the coming of the Son of man." Now, notice, that "as it was in the days of Noah before the flood..." Now, Jesus was reading the same Bible that you and I are reading, and all those things were shadows. Now, if you want to find out what it was before the day of Noah, go back and read Genesis. He just said they was eating, drinking, marrying,...
Marriage and Divorce
65-0221M §7
Now, I ask our sisters, and I altered some of my words so that I could speak it before them. Billy has in his pocket this morning, out there, some things that could not be said out before a mixed audience, and some that I probably will say, you must understand. Take it as from your brother, to the best that I know. You would sit in a doctor's office and listen to him, he'd have to say very plain words to you. And some of you young ladies and young men, I don't want you to get the wrong impression; I want you to bel...
The junction of time
56-0115 §12
...great turmoil, when men's heart begin to wax cold and away from God, women became such an idol. When the sons of God seen the daughters of men that they were fair, become a sexual order. Look at it today, what we're living in. Not speaking against honorable women, no, sir; they're God's instruments. But those who cared not for themselves, how there's so many on the opposite side, going about marrying and giving in marriage. God said so in the Bible. Jesus said before Noah's time at the end, they were marrying and g...