Remove The Yeast
REMOVE THE YEAST
1 CORINTHIANS 5:6-8
Paul sees removing the yeast (leaven) as an illustration of keeping purity in the church.
This portion gives important insight into the nature of the Christian life in Paul’s teaching. The setting has already been fixed by the preceding incident, and Paul’s rebuke (5:6) is well made. Not only had the church dealt in a lax way with a moral crime; by its attitude it also showed a grave ignorance of the real meaning of the Christian life.
The illustration Paul uses is drawn from the Passover in which unleavened bread played a significant role. Before the days of the feast, a ceremony was—and still is in the homes of faithful Jews—performed to search out and destroy all traces of yeast or any kind of fermenting material. In old editions of the Passover service-book a picture of an old man with a candle is sometimes placed as a frontispiece; and at the close of the search, on the eve of Passover, a solemn declaration is made that if any leaven has been inadvertently overlooked in the kitchen or house, it is pronounced null and void!
When Passover begins, in the Jewish calendar on Nisan 14, the use of leaven is forbidden and unleavened bread is the diet. A symbolic value was attached to this, for the rising of the dough is an apt picture of the swelling of pride, and the Jews must be reminded that they were a poor and servile people when the Lord redeemed them from Egypt (Deuteronomy 7:6-11; 26:5-9).
Against this background the Corinthians are called to (1) clear out every trace of (moral) evil (5:7) by dealing with the presence of arrogant sin in their midst (5:13); (2) recall that they are the New Israel of God, summoned to be a holy people to the Lord and redeemed by the Paschal Lamb himself (typified by the lambs of Exodus 12:3-7); and (3) celebrate the Christian Passover (5:8) which lasts, not for seven to eight days as in the Jewish rite, but for a lifetime, because the entire Christian life is a festival of joy and gladness as we are continually reminded of the new life of freedom from sin’s tyranny, to which God in Christ has called us (1 Peter 1:14-19). It is to a reaffirmation of this high calling that we are called every time we gather at the Lord’s table and commemorate the new exodus and take the Passover “dishes” of bread and wine (11:23-26).