Immoral (4203) (porneuo from pornos = literally the purchasable one, the one you buy, the harlot, the prostitute) means to prostitute one's body to the lust of another, to give oneself to unlawful sexual intercourse. To commit fornication. Used as a Hebraic sense as a figure of speech to describe one who worships idols rather than the living God. Note in the uses of porneuo in the Septuagint (see below), Israel was pictured as a woman (God's wife - Jer 31:32, Isa 54:5) who was unfaithful and like a wife who became a prostitute, figuratively committed acts of immorality against God. However as worship of idols is often associated with literal immorality in Scripture, the OT uses of porneuo surely picture both literal and figurative fornication. See Idolatry and Immorality - the relationship and the antidote. Porneuo is in the present tense - the one who continually prostitutes himself (or herself). Porneuo - 8x in 7v - NAS renders porneuo as act immorally(1), commit...immorality(2), committed...immorality(3), did(1), immoral(1). 1 Corinthians 6:18 Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. 1Corinthians 10:8 Nor let us act immorally, as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in one day. (See below as NAS somewhat obscures the two uses of porneuo) 1Co 10:8YLT neither may we commit whoredom, as certain of them did commit whoredom, and there fell in one day twenty-three thousand; Revelation 2:14-note 'But I have a few things against you, because you have there some who hold the teaching of Balaam, who kept teaching Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit acts of immorality. Revelation 2:20-note 'But I have this against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads My bond-servants astray so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols. Revelation 17:2-note (Babylon the great! Re 17:5) with whom the kings of the earth committed acts of immorality, and those who dwell on the earth were made drunk with the wine of her immorality." Revelation 18:3-note "For all the nations have drunk of the wine of the passion of her immorality (Babylon the great - Re 18:2), and the kings of the earth have committed acts of immorality with her, and the merchants of the earth have become rich by the wealth of her sensuality." Revelation 18:9-note "And the kings of the earth, who committed acts of immorality and lived sensuously with her, will weep and lament over her when they see the smoke of her burning Porneuo - 17v in the non-apocryphal Septuagint (LXX) - Dt 23:17; 1Chr 5:25; Ps 73:27; 106:39; Je 3:6, 7, 8; Ezek 6:9; 16:15, 34; 23:19; Hos 3:3; 4:10, 14, 18; 9:1; Amos 7:17 1Chronicles 5:25 But they acted treacherously against the God of their fathers and played the harlot (KJV = went a whoring. Hebrew = zanah = to fornicate or prostitute and most often used for women; Lxx = porneuo) after the gods of the peoples of the land, whom God had destroyed before them. Psalm 73:27 For, behold, those who are far from You will perish; You have destroyed all those who are unfaithful to You (KJV = "go a whoring". Hebrew = zanah = commit adultery; Lxx = porneuo). NET Psalm 106:39 They were defiled by their deeds, and unfaithful in their actions. (or "they committed adultery in their actions." = they were unfaithful to the LORD. Lxx = porneuo) Jeremiah 3:6-8 Then the LORD said to me in the days of Josiah the king, "Have you seen what faithless Israel did? She went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and she was a harlot (Lxx = porneuo) there. 7 "I thought, 'After she has done all these things (Lxx adds "committed acts of fornication" = porneuo) she will return to Me'; but she did not return, and her treacherous sister Judah saw it. 8 "And I saw that for all the adulteries of faithless Israel, I had sent her away and given her a writ of divorce, yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear; but she went and was a harlot (Lxx = porneuo) also. Ezekiel 6:9 Then those of you who escape will remember Me among the nations to which they will be carried captive, how I have been hurt by their adulterous hearts which turned away from Me, and by their eyes which played the harlot (Lxx = porneuo) after their idols; and they will loathe themselves in their own sight for the evils which they have committed, for all their abominations. Comment: Beloved, one who has been bought with the costly price of the infinitely priceless blood of Christ, does this passage not grieve your heart. The gracious and loving God's was hurt but their adultery. Let this be a warning and a motivation to us to continually flee immorality in every form. Hosea 9:1 Do not rejoice, O Israel, with exultation like the nations! For you have played the harlot (Lxx = porneuo), forsaking your God. You have loved harlots’ earnings on every threshing floor. Sins (264) (hamartano) means to miss the mark (and so not share in the prize) err, esp sin, offend, sin, trespass, to act contrary to the will and law of God. A "sinner" is one who keeps missing mark in relation to God. Here are three "Scriptural definitions" of sin... (1) Sin = lawlessness = rebellion of creature’s will against his Creator's will 1Jn 3:4 (2) Sin = not only do what wrong but failure to do what you know is right Jas 4:17 (3) Sin = Whatever is not of faith Ro 14:23-note = This means that it is wrong for a man to do anything about which he has a reasonable doubt. If he does not have a clear conscience about it, and yet goes ahead and does it, he is sinning. Wuest notes that in classical Greek hamartano did not have the depth of meaning it has in the Bible noting that... The pagan Greeks used it of a warrior who hurls his spear and fails to strike his foe. It is used of one who misses his way. Hamartia is used of a poet who selects a subject which it is impossible to treat poetically, or who seeks to attain results which lie beyond the limits of his art. The hamartia is a fearful mistake. It sometimes is employed in an ethical sense where the ideas of right and wrong are discussed, but it does not have the full significance of the biblical content of the word. In the moral sphere, it had the idea of missing the right, of going wrong. In the classics, its predominating significance was that of the failure to attain in any field of endeavor. Brought over into the NT, this idea of failing to attain an end, gives it the idea of missing the divinely appointed goal, a deviation from what is pleasing to God, doing what is opposed to God’s will, perversion of what is upright, a misdeed. Thus the word hamartia means a missing of the goal conformable to and fixed by God. It is interesting to note that in Romans the word dikaiosune (word study) which means “conformity to the standard” appears as the opposite of hamartia, a missing of the standard set by God (Ro 6:16, 17, 18-note). The noun hamartia is everywhere translated in the NT, by the word “sin” except in 2Co 11:7, where it is rendered “offense,” since the context speaks of Paul’s relations to the Corinthians. (Wuest, K. S. Wuest's Word Studies from the Greek New Testament: Eerdmans or Logos) (Bolding added) Kay Arthur says that... Because this body is the Lord’s, then when you sin, when you commit immorality, God has got to judge that. (Reference) Vine... There is to be no other course than immediate and decisive dissociation from everything to do with it. Every other sin such as murder, lying, robbery, drunkenness is “without the body,” but fornication stands alone, in that it not only makes the body itself, and so the whole being, the very motive for, as well as the instrument of, sin but it involves the complete destruction of the life and mars the personality of the individual, rendering the living organism, the body, which should be devoted to the service of God, impossible for the fulfillment of the Lord’s design for it. Intended to be only temporary it really forms a permanent bond, to the Lord’s dishonor, sundering union with Him and bringing dishonor, too, upon both the male and the female. Guzik explains that... Paul isn’t saying sexual immorality is worse than any other sin; but he does teach that sexual sin has a unique effect on the body; not only in a physical way, but also in a moral and spiritual ways. Augustine was a Christian who had a lot of trouble with keeping sexually pure. For a long time, it kept him from really following God. He used to pray: “God, make me pure - but not just yet.” But there came a point where he really turned everything over to God. He stopped hanging around with his companions in sexual immorality, and stopped going to the neighborhood where he used to meet them. But once, he had to go there on business, and on the street he met an old flame. She was glad to see him, and started running to him with arms outstretched, saying “Augustine! Where have you been for so long? We have missed you so!” Augustine did the only thing he could do: he started running the other way. She called out to him: “Augustine, why are you running? Its only me!” He looked back, while still running, and said “I’m running because I’m not me!” He was a different man because of Jesus, living a different way. If we have had our lives changed by Jesus, it will show in the desire to flee sexual immorality. Hamilton Smith... The apostle then passes on to speak of that which is not lawful for the body — actual sin. Here we are reminded that the body is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. He reminds us, too, that these bodies are destined for high honour, for even as God hath raised up the Lord, so will He also raise up these bodies by His own power. Moreover, our bodies are members of Christ, and he that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit. The apostle learnt something of this great truth at his conversion, for the Lord said to him, “Why persecutest thou Me?”. To touch the bodies of the saints was to touch Christ. How solemn is all sin, but how specially solemn is sin against the body which is indwelt by the Holy Spirit and belongs to God, and which it is our privilege and responsibility to use for the glory of God. To press upon us the deep importance of holiness, the apostle re-minds us in the course of the chapter that we are washed, sanctified and justified, and, further, that our bodies are for the Lord, joined to the Lord, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, belong to God, and are to be used for the glory of God; and, too, the Lord is for the body, and God will raise it up by His power. (The First Epistle to the Corinthians)