7 Bible Verses Dealing With Fornication

Here are seven Bible verses that can help us resist fornication.

What is Fornication?

Fornication is voluntary sexual intercourse between two people who are unmarried to one another, either of the opposite sex or the same sex. It is essentially, sexual immorality and there is no doubt that God calls it sin. Any sex outside of marriage is breaking the commandment of adultery but God will judge every sexually immoral sin of everyone who refuses to repent and trust in Christ. Here are seven Bible verses that I hope can help you deal with fornication if you are tempted to do so.

Psalm 119:11 “I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.”

This might be the best way of all to deal with the sin of fornication. By storing up, the psalmist like means reading, meditating, and consequently, memorizing Scripture, one can better resist the temptation to fornicate. Jesus quoted Scripture in rebuking the Devil in the Temptation in the Wilderness (Matt 4:1-11). There is a cause-effect relationship in this verse; he stores up God’s Word so that he might not sin. That doesn’t mean he won’t sin but by being in the Word, the Word is in him and he is better able to resist the temptation to fornicate.

First Corinthians 10:13 “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.”

We are not alone in the sense that all of us are tempted and led away by our own lusts. When you are tempted to fornicate, don’t say “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one” (James 1:13) because the truth is that “each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire” (James 1:14) and “desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death” (James 1:15). God will provide a way of escape and that way may be to flee, remember Scripture, or just pray.

Job 31:1 “I have made a covenant with my eyes; how then could I gaze at a virgin?”

Job made a covenant with his eyes like God made a covenant with Abraham. Job’s covenant was with himself. He vowed to not even look at a young woman so that he wouldn’t be tempted to fornicate, or for him, commit adultery. He didn’t say it was wrong to look but he didn’t want to “gaze at a virgin” meaning keep his eyes fixed on her because we can so easily get caught up or lured away and enticed by our own desires and as you read, James says that unchecked desire gives birth to the actual sin.

Matthew 5:28 “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

When Jesus was talking about the commandment to not commit adultery (Matt 5:27) He brought the demands of this law into the heart or internally. In other words, Jesus said that we can lust in our hearts and be committing adultery in our minds, even though the actual act of adultery is far worse. Naturally, it is the same for those who are unmarried which means they can commit fornication in their hearts when they lust after someone that’s not married. People are convicted all the time for premediated crimes like premeditated murder and even if they don’t commit the actual crime of murder, they can be found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, showing that even the intent of mind (premeditation) to commit fornication is fornicating in the heart.

First Corinthians 7:1-2 “Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.”

Paul dealt with a lot of sexual immorality issues with the church at Corinth. He wasn’t suggesting that it’s better to marry but it’s better to marry if a person can’t control their sexual passions and have that lead to sexual immorality. Paul wrote, “to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion” (1st Cor 7:8-9).

Second Corinthians 10:21 “lest, when I come again, my God will humble me among you, and I shall mourn for many who have sinned before and have not repented of the uncleanness, fornication, and lewdness which they have practiced.”

Paul, knowing that fornication and all sorts of sexual immorality were going on in Corinth, wrote that he hoped that they would repent of their practices before he got there. Paul was obviously troubled by this since there weren’t just a few but “many who have sinned before and have not repented.” If they did repent of this before he got there, God would humble him before the Corinthians and he would acknowledge that they did repent and turn away from their fornication and adultery.

First Corinthians 6:18-20 “Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”

These verses consist of an aid to resist fornication (sexual immorality) and an admonition to recognize that believers are the new temple of God where the Holy Spirit lives. We must flee and that might mean leave the situation, get off the Internet, or destroy all the sexually explicit media we have. Run any way that you can because out bodies are not our own anymore for He purchased us with His own blood and as an expression of our gratitude, we should strive to always glorify God in our bodies.

Conclusion

Clearly, God will judge all who live in sexual immorality whether that is fornicating or committing adultery. Paul says that “fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints” (Eph 5:3). God has the final word on this, I don’t. Revelation 21:8 reveals “But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”

Article by Jack Wellman

Jack Wellman is Pastor of the Mulvane Brethren church in Mulvane Kansas. Jack is also the Senior Writer at What Christians Want To Know whose mission is to equip, encourage, and energize Christians and to address questions about the believer’s daily walk with God and the Bible. You can follow Jack on Google Plus or check out his book Teaching Children the Gospel available on Amazon.