Licentiousness (sometimes including other vices)
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aselgeia names unrestrained sensuality, licentiousness, debauchery, or shameless moral excess. In the New Testament it appears among sins that proceed from the heart, public patterns that belong to darkness rather than daylight, unrepented conduct that grieves apostolic care, works of the flesh, Gentile patterns believers have left behind, and a hardened surrender to impurity.
Reader summary
Full entry for ἀσέλγεια (G766) · Open the biblical lexicon
aselgeia names unrestrained sensuality, licentiousness, debauchery, or shameless moral excess. In the New Testament it appears among sins that proceed from the heart, public patterns that belong to darkness rather than daylight, unrepented conduct that grieves apostolic care, works of the flesh, Gentile patterns believers have left behind, and a hardened.
The BSB source-word alignment has 10 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include debauchery (4), [and] debauchery (1), [to the] sensual (1), a license for immorality (1), depraved (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Mark 7:22. Its strongest book concentrations include 2 Peter (3), 1 Peter (1), 2 Corinthians (1), Ephesians (1).
Aselgeia names unrestrained sensuality, licentiousness, debauchery, or shameless moral excess. In the New Testament it appears among sins that proceed from the heart, public patterns that belong to darkness rather than daylight, unrepented conduct that grieves apostolic care, works of the flesh, Gentile patterns believers have left behind, and a hardened surrender to impurity.
The word should not be treated as a merely private struggle or as a vague insult for people outside the church. It names desire and conduct that have thrown off the restraint of God's holy order. Pastorally, aselgeia calls for honest repentance, Spirit-led self-control, and a clear distinction between the old life and the new life in Christ.
Aselgeia gathers several New Testament warnings about debauchery, sensuality, and shameless moral excess. These anchors show the word in Jesus' heart diagnosis, Paul's call to daylight conduct, Corinthian repentance, the works of the flesh, hardened Gentile futility, and the believer's break with the old pattern of life.
Greed, wickedness, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, arrogance, and foolishness.
Jesus places debauchery among the sins that come from within. The word belongs to heart defilement, not merely visible scandal.
Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy.
Paul contrasts debauchery with daytime conduct. aselgeia is part of the darkness believers must cast off.
I am afraid that when I come again, my God will humble me before you, and I will be grieved over many who have sinned earlier and have not repented of their acts of impurity, sexual immorality, and debauchery.
Paul grieves over unrepented debauchery. The term calls for repentance, not concealment or normalization.
The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery;
Galatians lists debauchery among the works of the flesh. The word is set against life led by the Spirit.
Having lost all sense of shame, they have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity, with a craving for more.
Paul describes a surrender to sensuality and impurity. aselgeia shows what hardened futility produces.
For you have spent enough time in the past carrying out the same desires as the Gentiles: living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing, and detestable idolatry.
Peter treats debauchery as part of the former life. The gospel gives believers a clear break from old desires.
ἀσέλγεια appears in the LXX only in the Apocrypha (Wisdom 14:26; 3 Maccabees 2:26), always in contexts of moral collapse associated with idolatry. It has no direct Hebrew equivalent in the canonical OT, which means its weight in the NT is drawn primarily from its Greek moral tradition: the person who has abandoned all restraint, who acts without shame before God or other people.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Greek word. Wanton excess in sexual conduct and shameless disregard for moral restraint or decency.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpusGreek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
9 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
wantonness, lewdness
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Read verseFull New Testament corpus: 260 chapters, 7,957 verses, 140,628 tokens. Data source: honza/textus-receptus (data only), with authority check against byztxt/greektext-textus-receptus.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
This word appears as a noun across 4 case and number patterns. The form changes show how the word functions in a sentence; they do not change the basic lexical meaning by themselves.
Verse guides are not available for this word yet, so verse references remain plain evidence markers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 2 selected witnesses from 10 lexical occurrence verses.
ἀσέλγεια is built from this root:
Defines the error as ethical corruption. Grace is being weaponized to excuse rebellion.
Identifies the nature of the distortion, grace is being twisted into permission for unholy living.Jude 1:1–4
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Aselgeia is not a small word for social impropriety. It names a willful looseness in which desire refuses God's boundary and begins to defend what should be confessed. Jesus places it among the sins that proceed from the heart. Paul sets it against daylight conduct and Spirit-shaped life, grieves when it remains unrepented, and shows how hardened thinking gives itself over to impurity.
Peter says believers have spent enough time in such former desires. A sermon on aselgeia should therefore be truthful without voyeurism, specific without needless detail, and hopeful without softening the warning. Christ does not call sinners to rename debauchery as freedom, but to repent and walk in the holiness His Spirit produces.
Eph.4.19
Aselgeia may be rendered debauchery, sensuality, licentiousness, or wantonness. The word carries more than isolated desire; it often signals shameless excess that has stopped listening to holy restraint.
The biblical storyline repeatedly contrasts holiness before the Lord with desires that cast off covenant restraint. The New Testament applies that moral contrast to those who now belong to Christ and are called to walk by the Spirit.