Living together before marriage may be a cultural norm. To practice anything else may seem strange and old-fashioned. Yet the way of Jesus is countercultural. Resisting cohabitation is born out of love for and trust in the God who created you to pursue what’s better: genuine marital intimacy built on a foundation of commitment and covenant.

College life is finally over. You and your partner have started attending a new church. You love it there. The preacher opens the Bible every week. He walks through a passage of Scripture and applies it to your life. This new church reminds you a lot of the church back home where you grew up.

So after attending for several months, you and your partner feel compelled to commit and become more involved. You sign up for the four-week membership class, eager to take this next step. In the first week, a pastor teaches all about the church’s history and mission, which excites you. In the second week, you’re refreshed and reminded of key Christian doctrines and of this church’s place in a fellowship of churches. But in the third week’s class, when the pastor begins to review the membership covenant, you get uncomfortable.

“Members affirm Scripture’s call to purity and commit to refrain from sexual activity outside of marriage.”

You and your significant other have been living together since you left the college dorms. You have only vague plans to marry sometime in the future. You glance awkwardly at your partner. Does this mean we’re . . . sinning against God?

It’s conventional wisdom today that a key step between dating and marriage is for a young man and woman to “test-drive” their relationship by living together, sharing the same house and almost always the same bed. According to a recent Barna poll, 65 percent of American adults believe cohabitation is a good idea. Even many evangelicals are ambivalent about living together and having sex before marriage, and as a recent report by Christianity Today observes, many pastors struggle to respond.

So what’s right? Is living together a healthy trial run for marriage? Is it a good way for two people to see if they’re compatible enough to make a lifelong commitment? If not, why?

Obey Jesus with Your Body

To understand this issue, it’s important to first listen to Jesus’s words. He said that to follow him means committing our whole selves, body and soul: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matt. 16:24).

Consider Jesus’s words to his disciples before he went to the cross: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). Or Paul’s words when he urged God’s people to “present [their] bodies as a living sacrifice,” a form of “spiritual worship” (Rom. 12:1).

Unlike the popular refrain “My body, my choice” that frames a lot of conversations about sexuality, Scripture says our bodies were crafted with care by a loving Creator (Gen. 1–2) from the moment of conception (Ps. 139). It also says that God’s redeemed people have bodies that serve as the “temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 6:19–20). We cannot separate actions in the body from actions of the heart and soul.

So what does God say about our bodies when it comes to sexuality?

God’s Design for Sex

First, the Bible tells us what sexuality is for. God, after all, is the One who created our bodies and human sexuality. From the beginning, he reveals his purpose for sex. Genesis says, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). This means sex is designed to be a part of a one-flesh union, a commitment made between a man and woman before God in the covenant of marriage. Both Jesus and Paul affirmed this (Mark 10:7–9; Eph. 5:31–33). 

Paul says marriage is a sign and a symbol embedded in creation to point to Christ’s love for his church. Not only is God’s design for our sexuality good for our flourishing, but it has cosmic implications. Our willingness to reserve our bodies for the one to whom we’ve committed our lives makes a statement to the world about Christ’s committed love for his Bride.

This is why Scripture considers sex outside of a marriage between one man and one woman always to be sin. Consider Ephesians 5:1–3: “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints.”

Or Hebrews 13:4: “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.”

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