1 Corinthians 5:6-13 (WEL) Your rejoicing [in this] is not right. Don’t you know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? 7 Therefore, cleanse out this old leaven so you may be a fresh lump of dough, since you are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed for us. 8 Therefore, let us keep the feast, not with old leaven nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
V6 Your rejoicing [in this] is not right. Don’t you know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough?
Why are they rejoicing? Maybe from a wrong view of our freedom in Christ. They took freedom too far and went beyond the Law of Christ.
A little sin, even just one person’s sin, can affect all the others. Compare Revelation 2:20-23 (v23 children refers to those who have joined and agree with her).
V7 Therefore, cleanse out this old leaven so you may be a fresh lump of dough, since you are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed for us.
The old leaven is what expands and spreads, affecting the whole lump of dough. This sin, any sin, if accepted, will be an excuse for others to sin, for leaven is symbolic of sin.
Our Passover Lamb refers to penal substitutionary atonement. Compare John 1:29.
For us refers not only to the people of Corinth but all those who have believed. Even though this Lamb (Jesus Christ) was a sacrifice for all humans, the effect is conditioned on faith in Jesus alone for salvation. No faith in Jesus, no salvation. Compare Galatians 3:24 and John 3:15-18.
Believer’s Bible Commentary adds:
“Thus they are commanded to purge out the old leaven. In other words, they should take stern action against evil so that they might be a new, in the sense of a pure lump. Then Paul adds: Since you truly are unleavened. God sees them in Christ as holy, righteous, and pure. Now the apostle is saying that their state should correspond with their standing. As to position, they were unleavened. Now as to their practice, they should also be unleavened. Their natures should correspond with their name, and their conduct with their creed.
“For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. In thinking about the unleavened bread, Paul’s mind goes back to the Passover Feast where, on the eve of the first day of the Feast, the Jew was required to remove all leaven from his house. He went to the kneading trough and scraped it clean. He scrubbed the place where the leaven was kept till not a trace remained. He searched the house with a lamp to make sure that none had been overlooked. Then he lifted up his hands to God and said, “Oh God, I have cast out all the leaven from my house, and if there is any leaven that I do not know of, with all my heart I cast it out too.” That pictures the kind of separation from evil to which the Christian is called in this day.
“The slaying of the Passover lamb was a type or picture of the death of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. This verse is one of many in the NT that establishes the principle of typical teaching. By this, we mean that persons and events of the OT were types or shadows of things that were to come. Many of them pointed forward directly to the coming of the Lord Jesus to put away our sins by the sacrifice of Himself.”
V8 Therefore, let us keep the feast, not with old leaven nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
What feast? The context indicates that Jesus is the Passover Lamb who is the deliverer. It is the feast of salvation and remembering His ministry on the cross (1 Corinthians 11:23-26).
Comments:
Bible Knowledge Commentary:
“As the literal yeast was removed from the house during the Festival of Unleavened Bread (Exodus 12:15-20; Exodus 13:1-10), so that which it illustrated, sin, was to be removed from the house of God, the local church, during its “Festival of Unleavened Bread,” a continual observance for a Christian who has found in Christ’s death on the cross the once-for-all sacrifice of the Passover Lamb (cf. John 1:29; Hebrews 10:10, Hebrews 10:14). This was nowhere more true than in the celebration which commemorated that sacrificial act, the Lord’s Supper, the quintessential act of fellowship for Christians. Probably Paul meant to exclude the unrepentant Christian from this meal in particular.”
Constable: “The feast of Unleavened Bread began the day after Passover. The Jews regarded both Passover and the feast of Unleavened Bread as one festival (cf. Exodus 23:15; Exodus 34:18; Deuteronomy 16:6). As believers whose Pascal Lamb had died, it was necessary that the Corinthians keep celebrating the feast and worshipping God free of leaven that symbolically represented sin. The old leaven probably refers to the sins that marked the Corinthians before their conversion. Malice and wickedness probably stand for all sins of motive and action. Sincerity and truth are the proper motive and action with which we should worship God. This verse constitutes a summary exhortation.”
David Guzik: “Christ, our Passover: Paul’s connection between the purity of Passover and the Christian life is not a strange stretch. Jesus is in fact our Passover Lamb, whose blood was shed that the judgment of God might pass over us. So, we are to live in the purity that Passover speaks of.
“i. Our Christian lives are to be marked by the same things which characterized Passover: salvation, liberation, joy, plenty, and purity from leaven.”
We learn:
- God wants holiness, not sin.
- Sin corrupts.
- Sin taints the Lord’s Supper.
Questions:
- Have you sinned?
- Have you asked for forgiveness?