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.
Marriage and Divorce
65-0221M §61
...hy! She does it because she's made that way! She don't realize that she's a instrument in the hands of Satan! That's what she is. Even in our schools today they're teaching sex acts. Our rotten world of woman worship! I know they don't want to believe that. Stand and sing some kind of hymn, and so forth, on one day and out with women, running around all night long. See? All right. When in God's sight, the Word, she is the lowest of all animals that God put on the earth. Watch!
Questions and Answers, Part 3
64-0830M §189
I want to see somebody put him in there now and say it wasn't the serpent's seed. It wasn't recognized in the genealogies of God's, or neither the genealogies of the human race, the genealogies of Adam, any of the rest of them. Is that right? How many believes it, say, "Amen!" Sure. He was not; he was the serpent's seed and not Adam's seed! She said that was Adam's son. It was not Adam's son. She said, "I got it from God." And she had to, it was a seed. It was a seed, but it was serpent's seed, see. And he'd had to...
The mark of the beast
56-0715 §48
Now, listen closely, before closing. "How can I escape it, Brother?" Neither male or female is excepted or dispelled. You're all one in the site of God when it comes to this. How do you do it? Your heart is a womb. You know what I'm speaking of, women and men? Your heart is a womb, and the womb holds the seed. And the seed is the Gospel. Now, the seed alone, in its heart---no matter how many Gamaliel's you sit under; no matter how great your pastor is and how much you've read the Bible---it'll never take life until...
Marriage and Divorce
65-0221M §41
Now, you see where Satan went? See? But still she has... She's the one that's got the power to say "yes" or "no." See? Depends on where she wants to hold herself. See? Now, here we can see plainly the serpent's seed, where it come in. There's only one place he could go to. If that wouldn't nail it down, somebody's blind. See, see? It had to go to that. Notice, the reason animals couldn't do it, a female animal, they were in the original creation, but the woman was not in that original creation. Now, we're going bac...
An Ensign
62-0119 §66
...hat don't know what makes these people cry, and shout, and dance; and how it makes these women let their hair grow out, and quit wearing them old dirty clothes, and looking sexy out before men, and things like that, that old evil spirit gone out of them... Don't tell me ... you might be as pure as a lily to your husband; but when you come to the judgment bar, you're going to answer for committing adultery. That's right. The Bible said, Jesus said, "Whosoever looketh upon a woman to lust after her has committed adul...