What does the Bible say about sexual purity?
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The Bible calls believers to sexual purity as a holy response to God’s grace, honoring him with both body and heart and trusting Christ for forgiveness and strength. Scripture urges us to flee sexual immorality, since our bodies belong to the Lord (1 Corinthians 6:18), and to pursue holiness by learning self-control rather than following sinful desires (1 Thessalonians 4:3-5). Jesus exposes lust as a matter of the heart (Matthew 5:28), while Hebrews 13:4 upholds marriage as the proper covenant context for sexual intimacy. Though temptation is real, God faithfully provides help and a way to endure it (1 Corinthians 10:13). In union with Christ, believers are called to put sin to death and live under grace (Romans 6:11-14; Colossians 3:5).
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- 1 Corinthians 6:18
Flee sexual immorality! "Every sin that a man does is outside the body," but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.
- 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5
[3] For this is the will of God: your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality, [4] that each one of you know how to possess himself of his own vessel in sanctification and honor, [5] not in the passion of lust, even as the Gentiles who don't know God;
- 1 Corinthians 10:13
No temptation has taken you except what is common to man. God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted above what you are able, but will with the temptation also make the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
- Hebrews 13:4
Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the bed be undefiled: but God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers.
- Psalms 119:37
Turn my eyes away from looking at worthless things. Revive me in your ways.
- Matthew 5:28
but I tell you that everyone who gazes at a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.
- Romans 6:11-14
[11] Thus also consider yourselves also to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. [12] Therefore don't let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. [13] Neither present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God, as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. [14] For sin will not have dominion over you. For you are not under law, but under grace.
- Colossians 3:5
Put to death therefore your members which are on the earth: sexual immorality, uncleanness, depraved passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry;
- Galatians 5:19-21
[19] Now the works of the flesh are obvious, which are: adultery, sexual immorality, uncleanness, lustfulness, [20] idolatry, sorcery, hatred, strife, jealousies, outbursts of anger, rivalries, divisions, heresies, [21] envyings, murders, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these; of which I forewarn you, even as I also forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God.
- 1 Thessalonians 4:3
For this is the will of God: your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality,
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