Building a biblical case to prove that
premarital sex is ethically wrong is more difficult that one might
think. While biological, social, psychological, and relational
arguments abound, even on Christian websites it is difficult to
isolate a purely biblical response to the question of whether
premarital sex is sin.
Before one can attempt to construct a
case against any ethical issue, it is essential to define the issue.
For the purposes of this argument, premarital sex can be defined as
the act of a man and a woman engaging in sexual intercourse at any
point before they are officially married.
Most
Christians take for granted the idea that premarital sex is wrong,
even though they have never seen a specific bible verse condemning
it. When someone does attempt a biblical argument against it, they
usually use the passages below, or ones similar to them, to support
their case.
Flee
from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his
body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. - 1
Corinthians 6:18
But
among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of
any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for
God's holy people. - Ephesians 5:3
You
are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the
meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do
well to avoid these things. Farewell. -Acts 15:29
Although
these may be perfectly clear directions to a mature believer, none of
these scriptures refer explicitly to premarital sex-- only to a
rather vague concept of “sexual immorality”. Although it
may come as a surprise to many Christians, there are no scriptures
that explicitly link sexually immorality with premarital sex.
Therefore, the position of a person attempting to exegete the text is
to find a logical and biblical link between the statement that
"sexual
immorality is wrong" and "having sex before marriage is
wrong."
Perhaps then, the first step should be
to determine what the biblical definition of "sexual immorality"
is and what the writers of the New Testament understood it to be. The
New American Standard New Testament Greek Lexicon transliterates
the word "porneia" and defines it as:
illicit sexual intercourse
adultery, fornication,
homosexuality, lesbianism, intercourse with animals etc.
sexual intercourse with close
relatives; Lev. 18
sexual intercourse with a divorced
man or woman; Mk. 10:11
Throughout the New American Standard
Bible, this word is translated 25 times. Of these twenty-five
occurrences, 17 are translated as immorality/immoralities, and 6 are
translated as “fornication(s)”. The word is translated
specifically as sexual immorality once, and as unchastity once.
An observant reader would still not be
satisfied- since premarital sex is explicitly listed nowhere under
the definition of “porneia”. At this point, the challenge
moves from linking sexual immorality with premarital sex, to linking
an aspect of the biblical definition of sexual immorality to
premarital sex. In more specific terms, now that a link between
sexual immorality and fornication has been uncovered, the challenge
moves towards linking fornication and premarital sex. According to
the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language,
fornication is defined as “sexual intercourse between partners
who are not married to each other.” Since this definition is a
sufficient condition for our definition of premarital sex, we can
then conclude that premarital sex is synonymous with fornication.
If premarital sex and fornication are
synonymous, that provides the appropriate key to link sexual
immorality with premarital sex. The scriptures listed above
established that sexual immorality is forbidden and unethical. After
examining the biblical definition of sexual immorality, we learned it
was synonymous with fornication. Therefore, when the bible forbad
sexual immorality it also forbad fornication. The last step came with
the definition that established that fornication and premarital sex
were synonymous. Therefore, according to the syllogism below,
premarital sex is synonymous with sexual immorality and is forbidden
by the bible.
If the bible forbids sexual immorality
it also forbids fornication
