What does the Bible say about sexuality?

Key Bible verses about sexuality

1. Genesis 1:27

   God created man in his own image. In God’s image he created him; male and female he created them.

2. Genesis 2:24-25

   Therefore a man will leave his father and his mother, and will join with his wife, and they will be one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked, and they were not ashamed.

3. Matthew 19:4-6

   He answered, “Haven’t you read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall be joined to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh’? So that they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, don’t let man tear apart.”

4. 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.

5. Proverbs 5:18-19

   Let your spring be blessed. Rejoice in the wife of your youth. A loving doe and a graceful deer— let her breasts satisfy you at all times. Be captivated always with her love.

6. 1 Corinthians 6:9-11

   Or don’t you know that the unrighteous will not inherit God’s Kingdom? Don’t be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor male prostitutes, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor extortionists, will inherit God’s Kingdom. Some of you were such, but you were washed. You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and in the Spirit of our God.

7. 1 Corinthians 6:18-20

   Flee sexual immorality! “Every sin that a man does is outside the body,” but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.

8. 1 Corinthians 7:2-5

   But, because of sexual immoralities, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband. Let the husband give his wife the affection owed her, and likewise also the wife her husband. The wife doesn’t have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise also the husband doesn’t have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Don’t deprive one another, unless it is by consent for a season, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer, and may be together again, that Satan doesn’t tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

9. 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5

   For this is the will of God: your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality, that each one of you know how to control his own body in sanctification and honor, not in the passion of lust, even as the Gentiles who don’t know God,

10. Matthew 5:27-28

    “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery;’ but I tell you that everyone who gazes at a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.

11. Romans 1:26-27

    For this reason, God gave them up to vile passions. For their women changed the natural function into that which is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural function of the woman, burned in their lust toward one another, men doing what is inappropriate with men, and receiving in themselves the due penalty of their error.

12. Ephesians 5:3

    But sexual immorality, and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be mentioned among you, as becomes saints;

Scripture: World English Bible (public domain). Short quotations in the introduction are from the ESV. Read each passage in its chapter for the full context.