Bible Verses About Fornication

What does the Bible say about fornication?

This is a topic where many people just totally disregard what God says and do their own will. Every day, we hear about so-called Christians being fornicators. In this world there is so much pressure to have premarital sex, but remember we are to be set apart from the world. A Christian who rebels against God’s Word is not a Christian at all.

There are many benefits of waiting until marriage that the devil leaves out when he is deceiving people. Don’t let others around you influence you. 

It might not be popular, but waiting is the right thing to do, godly thing to do, biblical thing to do, and the safest thing to do.

Keeping your mind on God and not the flesh will save you from death, shame, guilt, std’s, unwanted pregnancy, false love, and you will receive God’s special blessing in marriage.

There are many more benefits than these. Stay away from peer pressure and from the world. Make the right choice today and have sex with your spouse and your spouse only. These fornication verses include translations from the KJV, ESV, NIV, and NASB Bible translations.

Christian quotes about fornication

“Save sex instead of safe sex.”

“You can convince yourself that God doesn’t care if you have premarital sex, but only if you ignore scripture.”

“If you’re having sex and you’re not married, it’s not called dating, it’s called fornicating.”

“Homosexuality is no more right, holy or acceptable today than it ever was in Bible times. Neither is heterosexual fornication, adultery, or pornography-driven lust. It’s not just that sex outside of God’s plan for marriage (which is limited to one man and one woman, per the created intent in Genesis 1 and 2) breaks His law – His rules are given as a gift to keep us from breaking our hearts.” Sue Bohlin

“Marriage is the God-appointed and legitimate union of man and woman in the hope of having children or at least for the purpose of avoiding fornication and sin and living to the glory of God.” Martin Luther

“The monstrosity of sexual intercourse outside marriage is that those who indulge in it are trying to isolate one kind of union (the sexual) from all the other kinds of union which were intended to go along with it and make up the total union.” C.S. Lewis

“Sex has been designed by God for His miraculous work of creating new human beings, each with an immortal soul. The physiology of sex in every detail works to engender new life. The emotions of sex exist to bring a man and woman together to constitute a family. Yes, sexuality is distorted by the Fall, so that lust and fornication can work against God’s purposes and be tainted by sin, but God’s created order remains.” Gene Edward Veith

“God never approves sexual union outside of marriage.” Max Lucado

“Peer pressure accounts for much of the promiscuous sex in high schools and colleges. ‘Conform or get lost.’ Since no one enjoys losing friends or being cast out of his own circle, peer pressure-especially during the years of adolescence-is an almost irresistible force” Billy Graham

“Unless a man is prepared to ask a woman to be his wife, what right has he to claim her exclusive attention? Unless she has been asked to marry him, why would a sensible woman promise any man her exclusive attention? If, when the time has come for a commitment, he is not man enough to ask her to marry him, she should give him no reason to presume that she belongs to him.” Elisabeth Elliot

“God made every one of us a sexual being, and that is good. Attraction and arousal are the natural, spontaneous, God-given responses to physical beauty, while lust is a deliberate act of the will.” Rick Warren

What is the definition of fornication in the Bible?

1. 1 Corinthians 6:13-14 You say, “Food was made for the stomach, and the stomach for food.” (This is true, though someday God will do away with both of them.) But you can’t say that our bodies were made for sexual immorality. They were made for the Lord, and the Lord cares about our bodies. And God will raise us from the dead by his power, just as he raised our Lord from the dead.

2. 1 Corinthians 6:18-19 Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself.

3. 1 Thessalonians 4:3-4 God’s will is for you to be holy, so stay away from all sexual sin. Then each of you will control his own body and live in holiness and honor.

4. 1 Corinthians 5:9-11 When I wrote to you before, I told you not to associate with people who indulge in sexual sin. But I wasn’t talking about unbelievers who indulge in sexual sin, or are greedy, or cheat people, or worship idols. You would have to leave this world to avoid people like that. I meant that you are not to associate with anyone who claims to be a believer yet indulges in sexual sin, or is greedy, or worships idols, or is abusive, or is a drunkard, or cheats people. Don’t even eat with such people.

5. Hebrews 13:4 “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.”

6. Leviticus 18:20 “You must not lie carnally with your neighbor’s wife and thus defile yourself with her.”

7. 1 Corinthians 6:18 “Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.”

8. Ephesians 5:3 “But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints.”

9. Mark 7:21 “For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders.”

10. 1 Corinthians 10:8 “Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand.”

11. Hebrews 12:16 “lest there be any fornicator or profane person like Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birthright.”

12. Galatians 5:19 “Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness.”

13. Acts 15:20 “But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood.”

14. Matthew 5:32 “But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.”

15. Acts 21:25 “As for the Gentile believers, they should do what we already told them in a letter: They should abstain from eating food offered to idols, from consuming blood or the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality.”

16. Romans 1:29 “Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers.”

Fornication and the sin of adultery

17. Proverbs 6:32 He who commits adultery lacks sense; he who does it destroys himself.

18. Deuteronomy 22:22 If a man is discovered committing adultery, both he and the woman must die. In this way, you will purge Israel of such evil.

Do not follow the ways of the world.

Don’t allow ungodly friends to persuade you to sin! 

19. Proverbs 1:15 My child, don’t go along with them! Stay far away from their paths.

20. Romans 12:2 Do not be conformed to this world, but continuously be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you may be able to determine what God’s will is—what is proper, pleasing, and perfect.

Reminders

21. 1 John 2:3-4 And we can be sure that we know him if we obey his commandments. If someone claims, “I know God,” but doesn’t obey God’s commandments, that person is a liar and is not living in the truth.

22. Jude 1:4 I say this because some ungodly people have wormed their way into your churches, saying that God’s marvelous grace allows us to live immoral lives. The condemnation of such people was recorded long ago, for they have denied our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

23. John 8:41 “Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God.”

24. Ephesians 2:10 “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

Warnings against fornication

25. Jude 1:7-8 Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.

26. 1 Corinthians 6:9 Don’t you know that wicked people won’t inherit the kingdom of God? Stop deceiving yourselves! People who continue to commit sexual sins, who worship false gods, those who commit adultery, homosexuals, or thieves, those who are greedy or drunk, who use abusive language, or who rob people will not inherit the kingdom of God.

27. Revelation 22:15 Outside are dogs, sorcerers, sexual sinners, murderers, idolaters, and all who lie in what they say and what they do.

28. Ephesians 5:5 “For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.”

The believers in Corinth repented of fornication

29. 1 Corinthians 6:11 Some of you were once like that. But you were cleansed; you were made holy; you were made right with God by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Walk by the Spirit to overcome fornication

30. Galatians 5:16 So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves.

31. Galatians 5:25 Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives.

Avoid the devil’s schemes:

Don’t even put yourself in a position where you can be tempted to sin because you will fall. Ex. Shacking up before marriage.

32. Ephesians 6:11-12 Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

33. 1 Thessalonians 5:22 Abstain from all appearance of evil.

Guard your heart against lust and sexual sins

34. Matthew 15:19 It is out of the heart that evil thoughts come, as well as murder, adultery, sexual immorality, stealing, false testimony, and slander.

35. Proverbs 4:23 Above everything else guard your heart, because from it flow the springs of life.

Advice for Christians

36. 1 Corinthians 7:8-9 So I say to those who aren’t married and to widows—it’s better to stay unmarried, just as I am. But if they can’t control themselves, they should go ahead and marry. It’s better to marry than to burn with lust.

37. James 1:22 But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

Who committed fornication in the Bible?

38. Genesis 38:24 “Now it was about three months later that Judah was informed, “Your daughter-in-law Tamar has played the harlot, and behold, she is also with child by harlotry.” Then Judah said, “Bring her out and let her be burned!”

39. Numbers 25:1 “And Israel abode in Shittim; and the people began to commit fornication with the daughters of Moab.”

40. 2 Samuel 11:2-4 “Now at evening time David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the king’s house, and from the roof he saw a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful in appearance. 3 So David sent servants and inquired about the woman. And someone said, “Is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” 4 Then David sent messengers and had her brought, and when she came to him, he slept with her; and when she had purified herself from her uncleanness, she returned to her house.”

Examples of fornication in the Bible

41. 1 Corinthians 5:1-3 I can hardly believe the report about the sexual immorality going on among you—something that even pagans don’t do. I am told that a man in your church is living in sin with his stepmother. You are so proud of yourselves, but you should be mourning in sorrow and shame. And you should remove this man from your fellowship. Even though I am not with you in person, I am with you in the Spirit. And as though I were there, I have already passed judgment on this man.

42. Revelation 18:2-3 And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.

43. 2 Samuel 11:2-5 It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful. And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness Then she returned to her house. And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.”

44. Revelation 17:2 “With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.”

45. Revelation 9:21 “Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.”

46. Revelation 14:8 “And another angel followed, saying, “Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she has made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.”

47. Revelation 17:4 “And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication.”

48. Revelation 2:21-23 “And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not. 22 Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds. 23 And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works.”

49. 2 Chronicles 21:10-11 “So the Edomites revolted from under the hand of Judah unto this day. The same time also did Libnah revolt from under his hand; because he had forsaken the Lord God of his fathers. 11 Moreover he made high places in the mountains of Judah and caused the inhabitants of Jerusalem to commit fornication, and compelled Judah thereto.”

50. Isaiah 23:17 “And it shall come to pass after the end of seventy years, that the Lord will visit Tyre, and she shall turn to her hire, and shall commit fornication with all the kingdoms of the world upon the face of the earth.”

51. Ezekiel 16:26 “You also committed prostitution with the Egyptians, your lustful neighbors, and multiplied your obscene practice to provoke Me to anger.”