Sex before marriage

We're really not supposed to have affairs. It doesn't work that way. The primary problem with affairs is that the people who have them never seem to stop with just one. I can understand, if there's really no venue (court) then they have to just personally between themselves go ahead and agree, we're together, in love married, kids. There haven't always been nations. There was no Israel when Joseph was sold into Egypt, there weren't even ten commandments, so how could there have been? But if you and that person get in bed and have an affair, warning, God knows about that. God probably even thinks you're married and owe each other a relationship, if you two carry it on long enough.

Something I haven't seen said here yet is this. Marriage is intended to be a picture or figure of Christ's relationship with the Church. The Church is the Bride of Christ, and her role is the same as the wife's role in Scripture to her husband, and vice versa.

Christ, the Husband, leads, provides, protects, directs, and has spiritual authority or headship.

The Church, the Bride, loves, serves, honors, obeys, and submits.

Just as marriage is a picture of Christ and His Bride, so fornication is a picture of heathen idolatry and self satisfaction.

There is also the "one flesh" aspect which some of you have mentioned. It's a mystery how exactly this works but man and wife become one organism together. "What God has joined let no man put asunder."

I heard - in my youth - an evangelist one time say that nothing stands between a person and God like sexual sin. This is because all sexual sin is a perversion of spiritual reality, a broken and lying image, if you will.

Fornication - on a purely practical level - is destructive to the nuclear family and a future marriage as well. Why? Well, if someone has a few dozen partners prior to marriage, they might truly love their spouse but they may have memories of better sex with someone else. Comparing and envying leads to dissatisfaction. If you save yourself for marriage, sex within the boundaries of marriage will be a unique experience that will be incomparable to any other experience. The more you play around before marriage, the more you are dulling the pleasures of marriage later on.

Not to mention the issues with exes that may suddenly become available again down the road, leading to sexual temptation, etc. etc.

Take what is good and leave what isn't for you?

I appreciate your intereaction on these forums

Thank you so much for your encouragement. There isn't much of that that goes on, here, so I encourage you to do that more and more! Encouraging others and building them up is a Work of the Holy Spirit, thus, it is critical that you continue to do so as it will demonstrate, to yourself, that you are a True Child of God.

As for taking and leaving that which is good and that which is bad . . . I like to think and believe that I do that. At other sites, oh boy, I would get bent out of shape over bizarre attacks against my person. These days, now that I've incurred a low-level form of cancer, I've learned to not let it affect me. I love my life; I'm happy with who I have become and what others think of me only describes and defines them.

Thanks again, Mii!

I'f 2 people are committed to each other and no one else living together with out a paper. Why couldn't they say they are married. Papers are just so the government knows who is married to who

Think of it this way. When you are intimate with someone you are connecting with them so if you go from person to person it's going to be different between people and when you decide to get married it will hurt your connection with that person because you will be judging on previous times and that isnt good for a relationship. Who also wants children by different people anyway

As soon as two people are intimate, they are married before the Lord. Thus, even without a worldly marriage license, the moment we become intimate with another person, we have committed adultery.

How can it be married (not sin) to adultery (sin). The papers don't get sent to God to tell him who's married. Our actions and heart would say it. Unless God looks down and sees the papers as they are made

Sorry guys, you are required to be legally married to have sex without it being considered fornication.

Can't just play house with someone and think the Lord is going to accept that.

Also having sex with someone doesn't make you married to that person. It doesn't say that anywhere in scripture that I'm aware of.

Check out the old testament...If a man had sex with a woman before marriage, he had to pay her father the bride's price. After that, the father could allow his daughter to get married to him or not.

I guess that is where the saying if you wanna play then you have to pay came from...maybe

I see where some of these posters are coming from. I agree that "playing house" isn't a marriage. Legal papers do not make a marriage either. Lots of legal marriages that are not godly marriages.

Marriage is a covenant before God, a vow to God to be faithful to one's spouse until death parts them. When this covenant is made, God joins the couple in matrimony.

While I agree that no legal papers are technically required, the husband and wife should live as husband and wife and make it obvious to others that they are husband or wife. And I think there is a responsibility to do this in such a way that meets society's official standards. The papers don't make a marriage, but you should still get them. Wedding bands actually are of pagan origin, but since this is the societal standard, you should still get them. The couple is publicly attesting to their marriage commitment in these ways.

That's the right way of describing it. I agree with that

I agree. Just because someone gets papers doesn't mean that they are married to the right person.

People need to pray and make sure it is the Lord's will before they get married. After that, they need to do it legally and legitimately.

So yeah, rushing off and getting a marriage license just because you want to have sex with someone is definitely not the answer...that will usually end in divorce or a life of trouble and misery.

If it is not God's will for two people to get married a marriage license can do nothing to change that...So people really do need to seek the Lord's will before they get married.

If someone feels that it is the Lord's will for them to marry someone, then there should be no reason that they wouldn't commit to a legal marriage.

Back to the topic of this thread...Fornication, having sex with someone you are not married to is a definite NO, NO. There is no if and's or buts about it.

What jurisdiction legally married Adam and Eve?

So you're saying that I must receive the consent of a judge in order to be considered married before God? And what if that judge is a professed atheist? What if that judge is an active homosexual? Or, what if they're actively engaging in bestiality? Is it reasonable and rational to think that we are required to depend on men and women who have absolutely nothing to do with Christ in order to be justified, in this way, to God?

There isn't a shot in all heck that our Powerful, Almighty God would ever agree with that.

God himself.

That's kind of different though seeing they were the only two people on the earth. And God had made Eve for Adam...So it was pretty evident.

And I suppose Noah was legally issuing marriage rights back in the day?

Anyway, you said it yourself . . . God approved of the Marriage of Adam and Eve and none other. We are to seek the approval of God; not men.

I'm saying you got to follow the word of God. And what does it say... You have to be married. That's not just heading off and having sex with someone. That doesn't make you married to someone.

That's not honorable at all. It's just fornication unless you are married.

I just want to be sure I have this right. The Bible teaches that in order for a Christian to be Married, they must receive permission through men or women that may or may not approve of Jesus. Am I missing something?

I've scoured the Bible word for word and I don't recall ever seeing such teaching. I could be wrong.

They probably didn't have a courthouse back then. But I'm sure Noah was following the law of God and they were actually marrying.

Just look at the Laws of the OT there were many about marriage and sexual sin.

Ever heard of following the Laws of the Land. It's in there I assure you.

How many marriage ceremonies were in the Bible? There are many I can assure you of that. Jesus was turning water into wine at one of them.

So yeah, there was and is a legal way to get married. People didn't just shack up back then because it was and still is fornication.