Fornication
FORNICATION
Fornication means sexual intercourse by people who are not married while rape is the act of forcing sexual intercourse upon another person without their consent or against their will. Any sex act forced by any person upon another person is rape. Fornication is done willingly while rape is carried out on you against your will.
The consensus of modern dictionaries states that fornication is consensual sexual intercourse between people who aren’t married to one another. This encompasses adultery and all forms of pre-marital sex. … In Hebrew, the word transcribed for the sin of fornication is also in the meaning of the words for idolatry.
“Do you not see and know that your bodies are members (bodily parts) of Christ (the Messiah)? Am I therefore to take the parts of Christ and make [them] parts of a prostitute? Never! Never! Or do you not know and realize that when a man joins himself to a prostitute, he becomes one body with her? The two, it is written, shall become one flesh. [Gen. 2:24.] But the person who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him.
(1 Corinthians 6:15-17 AMPC).”
When you have sex with a person, you lose a part of yourself to the person, and the person loses a part of himself to you. In other words, you lose a part of yourself to the person and receive a part of the person, both good and bad. This mutual transfer continues until the two of you become one.
This is why the Lord confines sex to marriage. It is the only legal place in the realm of the spirit for this transfer. You are to give all of yourself to your spouse, not some stranger.
Loss of your virginity is a loss of a part of yourself. You keep on losing a part of yourself with every man you have sex with, until there’s nothing left of you. Your virginity can be lost through two primary ways, namely, fornication and rape.
God is against both fornication and rape. He considers fornication a sin and rapists sinners. The more you engage in premarital sex or force people to have sex with you without their consent or against their will, the more exposed you are to the wrath of God. God Himself supervises the destruction of unrepentant fornicators and rapists.
“Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? (1 Corinthians 6:18-19 KJV).”
“If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.
“(1 Corinthians 3:17 KJV).”
The way out of fornication is to ‘Run from anything that stimulates…lusts.’ (2 Timothy 2:22 NLT). The Bible sets the scene for us: ‘”You’re the one I was looking for! I came out to find you, and here you are! My bed is spread with…coloured sheets of Egyptian linen…Come, let’s drink our fill of love until morning. Let’s enjoy each other’s caresses, for my husband is not home. He’s away on a long trip…and won’t return until later this month”…and enticed him with her flattery. He followed her at once, like an ox going to the slaughter…like a stag caught in a trap, awaiting the arrow that would pierce its heart…like a bird flying into a snare, little knowing it would cost him his life’
(Proverbs 7:15-23 NLT).
Solomon pleads: ‘Listen to me, my sons (daughters)…pay attention to my words. Don’t let your hearts stray away towards her (him). Don’t wander down her (his) wayward path. For she (he) has been the ruin of many; many men (women) have been her (his) victims… Her bedroom is the den of death’ (Proverbs 7:24-27 NLT). In other words: remove yourself from harm’s way before you get in over your head!
Root
c. 1300, from Old French fornicacion “fornication, lewdness; prostitution; idolatry” (12c.), from Late Latin fornicationem (nominative fornicatio), noun of action from past-participle stem of fornicari “to fornicate,” from Latin fornix (genitive fornicis) “brothel” (Juvenal, Horace), originally “arch, vaulted chamber, a vaulted opening, a covered way,” probably an extension, based on appearance, from a source akin to fornus “brick oven of arched or domed shape” (from PIE root *gwher- “to heat, warm”). Strictly, “voluntary sex between an unmarried man and an unmarried woman;” extended in the Bible to adultery. The sense extension in Latin is perhaps because Roman prostitutes commonly solicited from under the arches of certain buildings.
Muslim View
First is the Qur’anic general rule that commands Muslims not to commit zina’: “Nor come nigh to fornication/adultery: for it is a shameful (deed) and an evil, opening the road (to other evils).”
Christian View
Catholicism. Catholicism equates premarital sex with fornication and ties it with breaking the sixth commandment (“Thou shalt not commit adultery”) in its Catechism: Fornication is carnal union between an unmarried man and an unmarried woman.