By Water & Blood

On fornication

Concerning fornication.

But fornication and every licentiousness we forbid as lawless acts. For we hear the most divine Paul crying out: “But fornication and uncleanness must not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints.” And again: “Let no one be a fornicator or profane like Esau.” “Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but God will judge fornicators and adulterers.” And in the Letter to the Corinthians: “If anyone named a brother is a fornicator, or greedy, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a robber, do not even eat with such a one.” Because of this licentiousness he also handed over the one who had committed fornication to Satan, and he cries out expressly: “If anyone destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which you are.”

For this reason he also orders that they flee licentiousness headlong. “For do you not know,” he says, “that the one who is joined to the prostitute is one body? For ‘the two,’ it says, ‘will be one flesh.’ But the one who is joined to the Lord is one spirit. Flee fornication. Every sin that a human being may do is outside the body; but the one who commits fornication sins against his own body.”

And to the Galatians he also offered the same teaching: “For the works of the flesh are manifest, which are adultery, fornication, uncleanness, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousies, angers, rivalries, divisions, heresies, murders, drunkennesses, revelries, and things like these. Of which I foretell you, as I also foretold, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” But Basilides and Carpocrates and Epiphanes and Prodicus and the other teachers of sensuality and lawlessness read these things, yet introduced an opposite legislation, openly ranging themselves against the laws of the Spirit.

And he wrote things in harmony also to the Ephesians: “For I say,” he said, “and testify in the Lord, that you no longer walk as the rest of the nations also walk in the futility of their mind, being darkened in understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart; who, having become past feeling, have given themselves over to sensuality for the working of uncleanness in greed. But you did not thus learn Christ, if indeed you heard him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus, that you put off, according to the former way of life, the old human being, who is being corrupted according to the desires of deceit”—and what follows these. And a little later: “For this you know, that every fornicator or unclean person or greedy person, who is an idolater, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.”

These things he also wrote to the Philippians: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is solemn, whatever is good, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good report—if there is any virtue and if there is any praise—think on these things, which you also learned and received and saw in me.” And likewise he also writes to the Colossians: “Put to death, then, your members that are upon the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and greed, which is idolatry, on account of which the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.”

And the Old Scripture also has legislated things in harmony with the New. For God himself says: “Become holy, just as I also am holy.” “Do not attend to a base woman; for honey drips from the lips of a fornicating woman, which for a time sweetens your throat, but afterward you will find it more bitter than gall.” And one can find countless other things that accuse this licentiousness. But the all-defiled and ill-named ones even named sensuality a “mystical communion.”