For The Truth's Sake, we must "flee fornication" (1 Cor. 6:18). The sexual capacity is a power for good. Like. all such powers, it can be abused and misused. "Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers (fornicators) and adulterers God will judge" (Heb. 13:4). Women must guard against wicked men, men must guard against wicked women, and all must guard against falling victim to temptation unintentionally. "Flee" suggests something dangerous and dreadful, just as the picture of a skull and crossbones on a bottle of poison.

We should flee fornication for many reasons:

(1) It violates the purpose for which God made the body. God made food for the body and the body to receive food. He supplied an answer to all our normal needs. "Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body . . . .he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body" (1 Cor. 6:1320). 1 Cor. 7:2-6 shows that our sexual needs are to be fulfilled in marriage, with God's blessing. Fornication is rebellion against the purpose for which God made us. This is doubly true for Christians, who have been purchased with the blood of Christ to serve God in all things (1 Cor. 6:20).

(2) It destroys homes. God does not allow divorce and remarriage, except for an innocent party whose mate commits fornication. Jesus said, "What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. . . Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery" (Matt. 19:1-9). Neither can remarry when one puts the other away for some cause other than fornication. In a practical way, fornication destroys homes because it destroys mutual confidence, trust, and love. In addition, within the bounds of God's law, permission is given to break up the home where such infidelity occurs.

(3) It stirs the wrath of God. When many Israelites committed fornication "with the daughters of Moab," God commanded that they be put to death. He said, "Take all the heads of the people, and hang them up before the Lord against the sun, that the fierce anger of the Lord may be turned away from Israel" (Num. 25:15). If the punishment seems horrible, it gives us some idea of how horrible this sin is in God's sight! Today, God is still angered by such sin-He recorded Israel's history as a constant reminder (1 Cor. 10:8-11).

(4) It will cause us to lose our soul eternally. "Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness . . . and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God" ,(Gal. 5:1921). If we would be delivered "from the power of darkness" and translated "into the kingdom of his dear Son," we must be "buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead" (Col. 1:13; 2:12). Christians who become guilty will be lost unless they repent and seek God's forgiveness.

Truth Magazine XXII: 28, p. 450
July 20, 1978