Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. (1 Corinthians 5:7)

What a beautiful word picture of Christ this places before us! He is “our Passover.” What unique light of the glory of Christ does this reveal to us? In context, the apostle Paul, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is dealing with unrepentant immorality in the church at Corinth. The believers there were tolerant of illicit sexual activity (1 Cor 5:1). Interestingly, since only the sinning “brother” is mentioned for discipline, it may even have been a case of sexual abuse. The church had become “arrogant (1 Cor 5:2) and “boasting” about their tolerance, like those today who look down their long pseudo-sophisticated noses on Christians who hold to a high standard of morality. The snide labels of “Victorian” or “Puritan” have become pejorative swipes at biblical teachings.

The apostle Paul thoroughly chastises such attitudes and counsels the church to deal definitively with the sinning individual. Non-judgmentalism (“live and let live” philosophy or “boys will be boys” dismissal) will not work in the church. He reasons this way: If you allow sin, it will affect the whole church. In fact, the whole church there was permeated with sin, as we can see from the plethora of problems Paul addresses in this letter. The Corinthians were a prime example of the truth, “a little leaven [yeast] leavens the whole lump of dough” (1 Cor 5:6). Anyone who has baked bread knows that adding a little yeast permeates an entire batch of dough. In the same way, sin by someone in the church can affect the entire church. In the body metaphor of 1 Corinthians 12, bacteria entering one part of the body makes the whole body sick.

Paul’s Passover metaphor points to the time of Israel’s birth as a nation, when God liberated them from Egypt and gave them a Passover celebration where a lamb was killed to remind them of their redemption. They were to eat unleavened bread, reminding them of their new, different life—a life based on God’s Word, not Egyptian ways. Unfortunately, the Jews kept returning to Egyptian ways and also to their gods. The Corinthians were doing essentially the same thing.

The same truths apply now. Christ is our Passover, in that He provided eternal redemption. We need to leave the old ways of the world behind and conduct ourselves with the highest Christian standards.

Lord, the world has such a strong pull. Please help me resist and to continually leave those things behind.