What does the Bible say about sex before marriage / premarital sex? - Podcast Episode 80

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Welcome to the GotQuestions podcast, as you've been listening, you've been noticing, hopefully, that we've been going through the top 20 questions of all time on gotquestions .org,

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and we're going to be covering another one of those today. And so this is right up there, definitely top five.

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So the question today we'll be discussing with Jeff and Kevin, our regulars, is sex before marriage.

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What does the Bible say about premarital sex? Obviously, this is a question that when most people look at it, they tend to think of it as something that young people deal with, as something that a youth pastor covers with teenagers.

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Well, it's not the case. I mean, at GotQuestions, we receive questions from adults who have either been single their whole lives.

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They're in their 30s, 40s, or 50s and are wondering this question. We receive questions from people who are divorced and now dating.

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It's like, well, I've had sex with my husband for 30 years. What's the big deal now?

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I can't get pregnant, blah, blah, blah. So it's not just a question that young people struggle with.

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We want to discuss what the Bible says about sex before marriage, and just cover some of the practical aspects of this, of why does

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God place this restriction, because it's not just a legalistic thing. It's not God being a cosmic killjoy.

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No, there are very good reasons, in addition to honoring God with our bodies, that we should not engage in sex outside of marriage.

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So I hope you'll find our conversation interesting and hopefully edifying. So, Kevin, why don't you start us off?

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What does the Bible say about sex before marriage? Well, the Bible is very clear that sex before marriage, any type of sex outside of the marriage bond is a sin.

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Scripture says this in several places. What's rather disturbing is that so many

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Christians today will try to justify it and say that it's not a sin, come up with all kinds of rationalizations, why in their situation it's okay.

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And it's very common to find people in the church today who are living together, you know, they're part of the church, they claim to be

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Christians, and yet they are living in sin, is what, that's how we used to call it, you know, living in sin, living together and enjoying the benefits of marriage without actually being married.

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In fact, Pew Research Center has a fairly recent survey.

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They did 2020, where the majority of Christians, people who self -identify as Christian, 57 % say that sex between unmarried adults in a committed relationship is sometimes or always acceptable.

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So that's well over half, 57 % of self -professed

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Christians claim that premarital sex is okay. And breaking that down further, they look just at evangelical

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Protestants, and among the evangelicals, it was 46%.

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So almost half of the evangelicals said the same thing, that premarital sex is always or sometimes acceptable.

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And this is disturbing because of what the

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Bible actually says. The argument sometimes is that, well, the Bible says a lot about adultery, and everybody knows that adultery is wrong, but this word fornication, you know, it doesn't necessarily include premarital sex, you know, between people who love each other, people who are committed to each other, just because they don't have a marriage certificate, you know, doesn't mean that they're committing fornication.

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You know, that fornication word is for other sexual sins. Well, the Bible, I think, at least in a couple of different places, is very clear that any type of sexual activity outside of marriage is immoral.

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And the two passages that I have in mind are, first of all, 1 Corinthians 7 and verse 2, which says, but since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife and each woman with her own husband.

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So in that verse, marriage is presented as the cure for immorality.

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Those two things are contrasted. So sexual union within the marriage is set against immorality, this very broad word.

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Thus, any sex outside of marriage, according to 1 Corinthians 7, 2, is considered immoral. That would have to include premarital sex because it's not within the marriage bond.

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The other passage I think is very clear is Hebrews 13 and verse 4, which says, So here we have both adultery and fornication, the sexually immoral, contrasted with what happens in the marriage bed.

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So what happens in the marriage bed is honored by God. That is good and appropriate.

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It's God's design. What happens outside the marriage bed, sexual activity outside of marriage, is condemned as immoral in this passage.

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It's called that, and it even says that God will judge that type of behavior.

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So I'm not sure why so many people in the church today seem to be accepting of this particular sin, saying it's okay, maybe those parts of the

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Bible are outdated or whatever, but again, when you look at scripture, the sexual immorality falls in lists along with a whole lot of other sins.

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You can't just pick one out of that list and say that one's outdated and this sin is okay now.

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It used to be bad, but now it doesn't even make any sense to be picking and choosing out of the lists of sins that the

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Bible has. So I think we just need to get back to scripture and stick with what the

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Bible says. Exactly, Kevin, and when

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I look at some of these passages in scripture, there's several different Greek words that are used to refer to sexual immorality, but the most common one is actually the

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Greek word porneia, from which we get pornography. But in the biblical

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Greek, it means any sort of sexual deviancy, any sort of sexual immorality.

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It's a very generic, broad term. Well, if it's sexual deviancy is referring to, well, what is it deviating from?

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And so the Bible is very clear that the standard of sex between a husband and his wife in marriage is

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God's intention for sex. So any sort of porneia, any sort of deviance from that, that's when it turns into immorality.

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So the people who will make the argument, and trust me, you've gotten the question many, many times, the Bible never specifically talks about sex before marriage.

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It talks about, like you said, adultery, it talks about perversion, those sorts of things.

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But perversion of what? You have to have a standard in order for there to be a perversion of that standard.

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And clearly the standard that God has set for us for sex is within marriage.

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There's another issue that we run into where a lot of the things that we're talking about here, we hear people within the church who are trying to brush away and excuse these things.

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And sometimes it's worth pointing out that all truth is God's truth. And for some people, that's a controversial statement.

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But it basically means reality is what reality is. And when we do things that are contrary to reality, we see consequences.

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And one of those areas that we see that is with issues like premarital sex. God's intention for us was not to do those things.

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And when we do, we see some of the consequences of those. So even from a secular standpoint, we can see that there are risks associated with premarital sex.

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There's risks of unintended pregnancy. There's risks of sexually transmitted diseases, causes a lot of hurt feelings, a lot of relationship issues, feelings of shame, feelings of regret.

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And it also is about an expectation. A society that embraces premarital sex is one that doesn't treat each other.

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And the human body is something that's sacred. It becomes a pressure. It becomes an expectation. It makes it easier for men to pressure women into certain things because there isn't this ground level assumption that that's something that requires commitment, that absolutely needs to come with that.

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It becomes something that's just casual and meaningless. And it's not the kind of argument that's going to automatically sway anybody, but it's at least worth pointing out that if we had a society where we drastically reduced the prevalence of premarital sex, there are a lot of things that are difficult in our society that we would not be struggling with the way we are now.

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That would include, for example, things like sexually transmitted diseases. In a sense, those exist because of premarital sex.

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If two persons have never had any contact with anyone or anything until they've been married, there's nothing there usually to create those issues.

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It certainly wouldn't be the kind of all encompassing problem than it is today. Unintended pregnancies.

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It's difficult for women to be in that circumstance. Society puts all sorts of pressures on them, whether that's the abortion industry or whether that's the hardships of raising children.

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And one of the reasons God intended sex for marriage is because that is precisely biologically what sex does and that's what it's for.

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And engaging in premarital sex is a way of treating women in particular like they're objects, like they're just there for a man's pleasure and that's all they're there for.

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A healthy understanding of sex involves the idea that it's meant to be something more than just recreation.

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And that's not to say it's not supposed to be recreational. There's a lot of places in the Bible to talk about the joy that men and women experience when sex is being used the right way and in the right context.

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So I think when we're taking a look at these things, we don't just have to try to rely on Greek wording and phrasing and stuff.

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Those are all there and they mean what they mean. You can see that in scripture that when it talks about fornication, it's including all these different things.

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But we also have this particular issue is something that does stand out. We can see all of the problems that do come from that risk taking that happens.

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And if we were to remove that from our culture, if we remove that from our behavior and our patterns, we would see a lot of benefits.

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So you really can't argue against the idea that there would be a lot of benefits personally and culturally if we did not engage in premarital sex.

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All you can really do is just justify all of the shrapnel and the fallout as being worth it in order for people to continue doing what they're doing.

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Yeah, I love that point, Jeff. Just imagine a world where this is not occurring and imagine all the benefits of the world.

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And I like your use of the word shrapnel of unintended damage.

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In a sense, it's not specifically a biblical argument, but it's a very practical argument, a very true argument of how much better the world would be if God's intent for sex within marriage was followed.

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And Kevin mentioned something earlier about how sex reform marriage is increasingly being accepted by Christians, even evangelical

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Christians. And a friend told me a story that he had applied. Actually, he was serving as a pastor of a church.

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And he discovered that one of the young women serving on the worship team was living with her boyfriend.

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And he confronted her with someone along with him, of course, about I don't think it's appropriate for you to be serving on the worship team while you're living with your boyfriend.

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And the firestorm that erupted at that church. And he said, basically, the parents of this young woman who were very influential in the church basically came to him and said, my daughter is more in love with her boyfriend than any married couple

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I've ever known. So who are you to say that their relationship is not just as good as a marriage?

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And he was like, God is the one saying that the

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Bible makes it very clear. And just as good as a marriage is not a scriptural concept.

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No, there's a very clear distinction in scripture. You are either married or not married.

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If you're married, sex is wonderful. It is designed for pleasure. It is intended to be a thrilling, awesome, amazing aspect of marriage.

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If you're not married, it's sin. It's wrong. It's immoral. There's no in between.

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We get questions from people who are like, I'm engaged. Is it OK to have sex now?

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Well, how many engaged couples, we're as good as married, is their logic. Well, how many good as married couples end up breaking up?

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And then you have the added pain of knowing you gave yourself fully to a person who you're no longer with.

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So the scripture is so clear on this. There's no reason Christians should be abandoning the biblical teaching on this issue.

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And as Jeff was talking about, it's not only what the

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Bible says, honoring God with our bodies and the way we view marriage and sex within marriage.

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It's the damage that's done to ourselves and to others by not following God's plan for sex within the confines of marriage.

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I think what you were alluding to there, Shea, is that it really just comes down to, are we going to obey

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God or are we going to go with what culture says is appropriate? Are we going to go with the flow here in this world?

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Are we going to take that course of action? Or are we going to just listen to what God says and trust

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His wisdom, trust His goodness, and stick with what He has clearly said in His word?

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Now, one of the excuses that I've heard, I don't know if you guys have heard this excuse before, but that those commands against premarital sex in scripture, sexual immorality before marriage, was for that day and age when the

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Bible was written, because back then people got married very young. And so today people are getting married later in life.

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And so it's harder today. It's much more difficult. There's much more temptation today because we're waiting longer to be married.

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And that argument sounds good on the face of it, kind of sounds like it might work.

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But isn't it really just saying that the basis of what is acceptable and not acceptable is really how hard it is to say no?

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The amount of temptation is what dictates right and wrong. We don't want to go down that path because there are a whole lot of sins that are hard to say no to for some people.

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Some people have a hard time with stealing things.

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Some people feel compelled to tell lies. So should we say, well, that's acceptable for that person because it's so hard for them to say no?

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Or do we go back to what Scripture says and trust God's wisdom and trust

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His goodness? I think it's also worth pointing out when you say that people would argue that it's hard, it's difficult to resist something like premarital sex.

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For me, in the conversations that I've had with people, my response to something like that is to say, you're right.

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Why? Why? It's because as a culture, as a society, we turn that into an expectation.

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We treat it like it's not that big of a deal. There have been cultures in our history where things like public drunkenness or rampant drug abuse were not especially tempting to people because they were not something that society generally thought of as normal and healthy and good.

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And that changed, at least when it came to alcohol. And you can see that we've actually had more problems with alcohol after prohibition, for example, in the

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United States than we did beforehand because when people decided to start celebrating it, then all of a sudden it just became a norm and it became a much greater temptation.

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You can see the same thing with premarital sex. When we say, you're right, it is very difficult. It is more difficult now than it would have been in other cultures.

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That doesn't mean that it's good. That's just another indictment of the society that we're living in.

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I also think people need to remember that God gives us these instructions for reasons.

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We don't always necessarily understand them. We can pick out some pieces and parts of those.

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One of the ones that I see is that premarital sex really does cause issues within an eventual marriage.

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It does cause stress and problems within the marriage. I've seen news articles.

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We're recording this podcast here in February of 2022, and I've seen articles talking about studies fairly recently in 2020, 2021.

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They're finding out that there is a causal link between premarital sex and divorce, and they're using all the statistical methods they can to try to find out if there's some other factor that's involved.

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And they just keep coming down to that's one of the things that's a partial factor in predicting the breakup eventually of a marriage.

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And I can understand reasons for that. You're talking about causing comparisons between your spouse and somebody else that you've been with, your spouse making comparisons between you and somebody else that they've been with, with having frustrations about differences and insecurities.

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And there's such a long list of things that that brings in there that can cause those problems.

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So God gives us these instructions, not just like I think Shay, you were saying, not just to be a cosmic killjoy, because it actually means something.

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It's a reflection of our understanding of his purpose for sex and his purpose for us.

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And if our culture doesn't have that right understanding, we're going to treat things like premarital sex like it's not a big deal.

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And we're going to pressure people and push people into all these things that God never intended. And that's how we wind up with a lot of these consequences.

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That we see, and they're not just societal, they're personal. And even in the best circumstances, they can cause problems.

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Doesn't mean that everything is going to be bad from that point forward, but it is something that we have to recognize creates risk in even a good relationship.

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You know, any discussion of this subject, I think really needs to include a focus on the forgiveness of God.

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This is a sin that a lot of people fall into. A lot of people deal with memories of this in their past.

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And I love that Scripture presents Jesus as the one who saves us from our sin and forgives us from our sin.

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We have wonderful promises in Scripture. First John 1 -9 comes to mind. If we confess our sins,

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He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

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And one of the things I love about that verse, it does not make any exceptions to any sin. All sins are covered.

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If we confess it, He is faithful, He is just, He will forgive,

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He will cleanse. And then we have passages like Psalm 103, verse 12, as far as the

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East is from the West. So far, He has removed our transgressions from us.

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And so, we may be able to dredge up those memories again. But from God's point of view, those sins are gone.

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Those sins are covered by the blood of Christ. Those sins have been taken care of, and we can start anew.

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We can trust God's goodness in His forgiveness, and we can move on from this day forward.

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And the forgiveness we have in Christ is a beautiful thing. Yeah. I think earlier,

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Jeff was mentioning the shrapnel, the damage it's done.

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And one thing we don't want to minimize is the emotional damage you can do to yourself.

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By engaging in premarital sex and having that relationship broken. Because sex is the ultimate act of two becoming one flesh.

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There's a bond that occurs in sex that doesn't occur in any other aspect of a human relationship.

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So that's another reason why it's intended to be marriage -only, because it draws two people closer together than any other physical act can.

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And then when that relationship is then broken, it does more damage. It's always painful to break up with a boyfriend or girlfriend.

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But when sex has become part of the relationship, that breakup becomes even more damaging.

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Some people struggle with this for a lifetime, guilt over it. And like Kevin was saying, that's not something you have to struggle with.

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Forgiveness is available in Christ. But the regret, the shame, the guilt, a lot of people really struggle with overcoming that in their

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Christian lives. Just from, I really wish I had never done that. I can see what it did to me.

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I can see how, like Jeff was saying, it's made my marriage a little less than it could have been if we'd both saved ourselves for each other only.

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So let's not minimize that. But then as Kevin said, let's remember that Jesus died for all of our sins.

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And when we accept Him, trust in Him by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone as our

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Savior, all of our sins are forgiven. And we are cleansed from all those. We don't need to feel guilt and shame.

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Regret, though, I think that's something that I struggle with. There's a lot of sins in my life

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I wish I had never engaged in. But that doesn't have to be.

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There are good reasons why God is so clear and so consistent in Scripture that sex is to be reserved for marriage.

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And so I hope our discussion today has revealed both the biblical reasons, the theological reasons, and then the practical reasons why following God's pattern for marriage is best.

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So Jeff and Kevin, thank you for joining me for the conversation today. Hope it's been edified and encouraging to you.

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This is the Got Questions podcast. Got questions? The Bible has answers. We'll define them.