1 Corinthians 5
6 Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?
7 Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was 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.
God wasn’t happy with them and the way they celebrated passover. The apostle Paul inspired by the Holy Spirit reprimanded them sharply because of immorality. Not everyone lived in immorality. In fact it was only one man and woman. He had an affair with his stepmother. But God reprimanded the whole congregation because they tolerated them while they were living in sin. They were on their way to destruction because of these people in their midst whom they tolerated.
This message is sad, and there can be no rejoicing, because God is unhappy. But if God reprimands us it’s a sign that He loves us. If we’re not reprimanded when we do wrong, we’re not true children of God, but illigitimate children.
What does the old leaven represent? It is sin. It is the old life, before you became a Christian. Nothing of the old life should be found in your life. When we look at Jesus, He is blameless, and spotless and there is no blemish or sin in Him, and we must be like Him.
Even if you’re under pressure no irritability must surface in your life. If you allow it to remain it will destroy your spiritual life.
We must be Christians who are converted thoroughly. Jesus wants to deal with every sin in your life, so you might be completely new. God’s Word says we must be sanctified in our whole life – spirit, soul and body.
Jesus said that if your eye causes you to stumble, rather gouge out your eye and enter heaven than entering hell with both eyes. Or if your hand causes you to sin, rather cut it off and enter heaven maimed than enter hell with both your hands.
Fathers who tolerate the sin of their children will influence the whole family to destruction.
There are many people who see things that are wrong and yet do not do anything about it. They keep quiet and so tolerate sin. We dare not even allow evil thoughts. As the Lord Jesus became sin for us and was crucified for us, in like manner sin must be crucified and killed in our lives.
On a daily basis you should take stock of your life and see if there’s anything of the old life that has entered again.
See how Abraham got rid of the old leaven time and again. When Ishmael became a bad influence in Isaac, Abraham listened to Sarai and sent him and his mother away, though he was his son. When there was strife between the herdsmen of Lot and his own, he suggested to Lot that they should rather separate than that there be strife.
When Peter, out of fear for the Jews, dissembled and stopped eating with the Gentiles, Paul reprimanded him publicly. Peter sinned publicly and so Paul reprimanded him publicly. He saw what was wrong and didn’t hide it.
Jesus wants us to be the light and salt of the world, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, it is worthless and only good to be thrown outside.
If you’re a preacher of the Gospel then go through your house, and even into your children’s rooms and see what they have there – the pictures on their walls, the magazines they look at and what they serve. Lest you claim to preach the Gospel but your house is a den.
There is no other way. You must get rid of the old leaven so that nothing of it is found in your life.