Do you have to wait until marriage if you have already started having sex with the person you intend to marry?

Question:

If I’ve been with him twice, how is it better now? Should we abstain from sex until we get married? We’ve been together for a year and we have at least three more years until I finish college. He believes that God has already given us His consent, since our love is sincere and we are faithful to each other. I explained to him that we gave our consent alone, without Him, because we didn’t get married so that we can take what belongs to us in peace and not in secret. I’d like some advice to help us both from now on.

Sexual relations are permitted by God only in marriage

You said it right when you explained to your boyfriend that you took your own agreement without God and stole what He prepared to give you at the right time and legally, through marriage. Marriage is the forming of the marriage covenant. God created the sexual relationship and the only legal framework for it is marriage between a man and a woman, between a husband and his wife. This is one of the first truths presented by God in the Bible:

“For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.” (Genesis 2:24 NASB)

Any sexual relationship outside of marriage is sinful

In the Epistle to the Hebrews God says:

“Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers.” (Hebrews 13:4 NASB)

By having begun sexual relations while unmarried, you have dishonored and defiled your bed, i.e. your future marital relationship, and brought God’s judgment upon you. To continue to have sexual relations without being married is to insist on your fornication and thus further dishonour your marriage and marriage as a divine institution.

Beware of fornication

God urges all Christians thus:
For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in lustful passion, like the Gentiles who do not know God; (1 Thessalonians 4:3-5 NASB)

It is not an excuse for fornication that you have known each other for a year or that you have three more years until you graduate from college. If you fear God and care about the future of your marriage and your children, then you should stop having sex until marriage. It is your choice to get married now or wait until you graduate from college. Just beware of fornication. May God help you.

Translated by Aliona Soltan