Fornication

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In modern English, fornication is a term that typically refers to consensual sexual intercourse between two people not married to each other.

English translations of the Bible, the exact translation of (porneia) in the New Testament is not entirely clear; while Vine’s Dictionary of New Testament Words translates it into English as fornication, it may also have the alternate meaning of sexual immorality. In Biblical Greek, the word porneia meant “sexual immorality” or “sexual perversions.” It was often used as a blanket term to encompass all sexual activity and even sexual thoughts (i.e. sexual lust/fantasies) that were considered unrighteous by the Old Testament laws of Leviticus, in particular Leviticus 18, including:  incest, bestiality, homosexuality, and masturbation.

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1 Corinthians 6:13 – “…Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body.”

1 Corinthians 6:18-20 – “Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.”

1 Corinthians 5:9-13 – “I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators: Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go out of the world. But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat.  For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within? But them that are without God judgeth.  Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person.”

1 Corinthians 7:1-2 – “Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.”

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

Jude 1:7 – “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.”

Galatians 5:19-21 – “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these;  Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”

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

Proverbs 9:18 – “But he knoweth not that the dead are there; and that her guests are in the depths of hell.”

Proverbs 22:14 – “The mouth of strange women is a deep pit: he that is abhorred of the LORD shall fall therein.”

Proverbs 23:27-28 – “For a whore is a deep ditch; and a strange woman is a narrow pit.  She also lieth in wait as for a prey, and increaseth the transgressors among men.”

Proverbs 31:3 – “Give not thy strength unto women, nor thy ways to that which destroyeth kings.”

Proverbs 2:17-22 – “Which forsaketh the guide of her youth, and forgetteth the covenant of her God.  For her house inclineth unto death, and her paths unto the dead.  None that go unto her return again, neither take they hold of the paths of life.  That thou mayest walk in the way of good men, and keep the paths of the righteous.  For the upright shall dwell in the land, and the perfect shall remain in it.  But the wicked shall be cut off from the earth, and the transgressors shall be rooted out of it.”

Proverbs 5:4-14 – “But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.  Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.  Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them.  Hear me now therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth.  Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house: Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel: Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours be in the house of a stranger;  And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed, And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof;  And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me!  I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly.”

Proverbs 7:5-27 – “That they may keep thee from the strange woman, from the stranger which flattereth with her words.  For at the window of my house I looked through my casement, And beheld among the simple ones, I discerned among the youths, a young man void of understanding, Passing through the street near her corner; and he went the way to her house, In the twilight, in the evening, in the black and dark night: And, behold, there met him a woman with the attire of an harlot, and subtil of heart.  (She is loud and stubborn; her feet abide not in her house: Now is she without, now in the streets, and lieth in wait at every corner.) So she caught him, and kissed him, and with an impudent face said unto him, I have peace offerings with me; this day have I payed my vows.  Therefore came I forth to meet thee, diligently to seek thy face, and I have found thee.  I have decked my bed with coverings of tapestry, with carved works, with fine linen of Egypt.  I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.  Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning: let us solace ourselves with loves.  For the goodman is not at home, he is gone a long journey:  He hath taken a bag of money with him, and will come home at the day appointed.  With her much fair speech she caused him to yield, with the flattering of her lips she forced him.  He goeth after her straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks; Till a dart strike through his liver; as a bird hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his life.  Hearken unto me now therefore, O ye children, and attend to the words of my mouth.  Let not thine heart decline to her ways, go not astray in her paths.  For she hath cast down many wounded: yea, many strong men have been slain by her.  Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death.”

2 Peter 2:14 – “Having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin; beguiling unstable souls: an heart they have exercised with covetous practices; cursed children:”

1 Thessalonians 4:3-4 – “For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication: That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour;”

Romans 12:1-2 – “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.  And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”

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

2 Corinthians 12:21 – “And lest, when I come again, my God will humble me among you, and that I shall bewail many which have sinned already, and have not repented of the uncleanness and fornication and lasciviousness which they have committed.”

Ecclesiastes 7:26 – “And I find more bitter than death the woman, whose heart is snares and nets, and her hands as bands: whoso pleaseth God shall escape from her; but the sinner shall be taken by her.”