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The Greek term for fornication is “porneia” and according to Thayer is “properly of illicit sexual intercourse in general.” Included in the letter of the apostles and elders of the Jerusalem church was that the Gentile Christians should keep themselves from fornication (Acts 15:20,29; 21:25). Thayer also says marriages “within prohibited degrees and the like are to be rejected.” Fornication is also used metamorphically of the worship of idols in Revelation 14:8; 17:2,4; 18:3. Another term used often in the Bible is “Adultery” which is the Greek “Moicheia” which means “to have unlawful intercourse with another’s wife”. It likewise metamorphically is used of idolatrous practices on the part of God’s people who are spiritually speaking married to God. There are a number of ways that fornication can be committed all of which are condemned in the Bible. 1. Sex between unmarried people is fornication. The people who today just move in with one another and start living together as if they were husbands and wives are in fornication. In John 4 the Lord identified the woman at the well as being in this situation by saying, “Thou hast had five husbands: and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband” (John 4:18). The wrongness of this relationship is shown in Hebrews 13:4: “Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.” In Revelation 21:8 it is stated that “whoremongers” among other sinners “shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.” God wants people to marry before they engage in sex. He wants them to vow to forsake all others, cleave to one another, and take on obligations of being true to one another physically, emotionally, materially, and in all other facets of life. Yes, it is honorable to be married. It is also dishonorable to be “live-ins” without marriage. There may be many excuses people make for their “live-in” situations but it doesn’t change things before God. 2. Homosexual relations are also fornication. In Jude 7 we read, “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." These cities were notorious for Gay activities and Sodomy. God was so displeased that he rained fire and brimstone down upon them. Likewise in Romans 1:26-28 it is stated that such activity causes God to give up these kinds of people. They sometimes argue that God made them gays, but this is just not so. God would not make anyone like this and then give them up. They have developed this sinful fornicating activity within themselves, along with the help of the devil, and are condemned before God. 3. Certain marriages are nothing more than relationships of fornication or adultery. God gave only one scriptural cause for divorce and that is “fornication “ which would be sexual intercourse of one’s husband or wife with another person (Mat. 19:9). If one puts away husband or wife for any other cause they would cause them to commit adultery (Mat. 19:9). If one puts away his mate without the scriptural cause of fornication and then marries another he also commits adultery which is the same as fornication (Mat. 19:9). The plea of incompatibility or being mean to one another is not a scriptural reason for divorce and it certainly does not give a right for remarriage to another. The laws of the land are not the laws of God. It is God that we have to give an account for in judgment and not men. People need to clear themselves of any wrong relationships while they live here if they expect to go to heaven. Remember that otherwise it will be the lake of fire and brimstone (Rev. 21:8). 4. Not considering themselves to be live-ins but having sex on occasion with one another is still fornication or adultery. Such are still condemned before God. “Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body." (I Cor. 6:18). 5. Then there is the spiritual side of making images or idols and worshipping them instead of God. This is spiritual fornication. In religion today many who call themselves of the “Christian Religion” are worshipping images and so are wrong before God. “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (I John 5:21). To avoid fornication let every man have his own wife and every woman her own husband (I Cor. 7:2).
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