June 21 Click on verses for Full Scripture

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Today's Pathway: I Corinthians 5:6-8 Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

In today's verses Paul continues his rebuke of the Corinthians because of their refusal to deal with sin in the church. They had been filled with pride because of their willingness to overlook the immorality, So Paul tells them that their boasting about this is not good, and he now gives another reason why. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. It doesn't take much leaven to cause an entire loaf of bread to rise. Just that little bit will ultimately permeate through the entire loaf, bit by bit, until the entire loaf has been impacted by it. The same thing is true of sin. When sin is allowed to continue in a church, it will not tend to disappear, but instead it will slowly grow as it influences the other church members. Jack Arnold made these astute comments,

"Paul’s point is obvious: a little evil, by its very nature, defuses itself, spreading its corrupting influence so that which it contacts is corrupted also. A little sin contaminates the whole assembly. One spoiled apple can cause the whole barrel to rot. By keeping this incestuous adulterer in the local church, the whole body could be infested with sexual immorality and other breaches of God’s law. Sin spreads like wildfire. It must be stopped to protect the congregation. Or to put this whole thought in perspective we might use the illustration of cancer. One cancer cell inside a healthy body can spread the disease to the other cells. Only radical surgery on the bad cells can save the body from dying. To discipline an offender is painful but it does have a sobering effect upon the whole church"

Because of this, Paul says in verse 7 that the offender, the "old leaven", needs to be purged out. Once this happens the church will be a new loaf, free from the influence of his sin. In fact, Paul says "as ye are unleavened". The church, assuming that it is made up of saved people as it ought to be, is "unleavened" in its position before God. When we got saved we became new creatures in Christ. Old things are now passed away. We now possess the righteousness of Christ. So Paul is saying that because the Corinthian believers were "unleavened" before God, they ought to be "unleavened" in their practice as well. This would include excommunicating the unrepentant sinner. He then adds that Christ has been sacrificed for us. Because of what Christ did for us on Calvary to cleanse us from our sin, we ought to be cleansing ourselves, and our churches, from sin in our lives. It is interesting that he refers to Christ as "our Passover". First, we know that the blood sprinkled on the doorposts from the sacrifice of the lambs at the original Passover brought freedom from death and captivity to the Jews. This is what Christ's death did for the believer. Second, the Jews, both when their Passover lambs were originally slain and also every year when they celebrated the Passover, were commanded to remove all leaven from their dwellings (Exodus 12:19). So, Paul is telling the believers that, since Christ their Passover has been slain, they ought to give great diligence to removing all that is impure and corrupting from their hearts, and also from their church.

Paul concludes by saying that the Corinthians should "keep the feast". This probably does not refer to the Passover feast, because many in the church were Gentiles. It could refer to the Lord's Supper, which commemorates the death of Christ for the sins of mankind. And we know that the Corinthians had sin problems at the Lord's Table (I Corinthians 11:17-34). It could simply refer to the daily lives of the believers. Whatever it is, they were to get rid of their mean-spirit attitudes towards each other and also their wicked behavior, and instead start living lives of purity and truth. What the Corinthians needed to do then is what all believers need to do today.

How unleavened is your life?