To He Who Overcomes

1 Corinthians 5:7-8:  “Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? 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. 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.”

The Corinthian church was suffering from major acts of sexual immorality right in their midst. In 1 Corinthians chapter 5, Paul was not only teaching them about purity and abstaining from sexual immorality but also strongly rebuking them for their sins and in fact, was guiding them towards the death penalty (Verse 5 ‘deliver one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh’) for such a sin as incest between a man and his mother (his father’s wife). Clearly Paul condemns such sin on behalf of God’s righteousness and so should we. He goes on to call out their boastful pride in this act. The person (or people) committing such acts were being puffed up – they were actually proud of their actions and Paul is rebuking them sharply. In verse 6 he begins by stating “your glorying is not good” – the Bible is very clear that if we are to glory, we are to glory in the Lord (Jeremiah 9:23-24), but that if we glory in our flesh, or in our sin, God will be against us and he warns us to humble ourselves and to repent of our sins before we bring about our own downfall. God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble (James 4:6). If we’ve put our faith and trust in Jesus, God has forgiven us of all our sins and washed us in the precious shed blood of Jesus Christ, however, if we remain puffed up, if we are proud and even boasting in our sin, God will let us do so but he chastises those whom he loves and the Paul says in 1 Cor 10:12 “Therefore, let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall”. I speak from my own experience, the more we live a double life with one foot in the faith and one foot in the world, God will only let us continue for so long. If you’ve accepted Jesus as your savior, he will only let you continue in sin for a season before a major fall will occur one way or the other – likely when we are at the height of exalting ourselves. We must remain close to God, remain humble and repent of all our sins, unrighteousness, and ask God to continually purify our hearts. May we never remain puffed up but may we come to the foot of the cross daily in brokenness and repentance over our sins.

Paul continues in verse 6, using a phrase he repeats in other epistles and an illustration that Jesus himself employed. Paul says, “Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?”. This is repeated in Galatians 5:9. So, let us first ask what is leaven in this context and why is this illustration a powerful example to us in our day? We can think of “leaven” as anything in our lives today that “fills” us and “puffs” us up. However, Paul here is talking about the leavening agent used in baking. The Jews were very familiar with growing their own food, specifically in this case, wheat used to make bread. They grew the wheat, harvested the grain, ground it into flour, and used that flour to bake beard. If they didn’t work, they didn’t eat. They had to sustain themselves with farming, they could not just go to the store and buy their bread. So, as they baked the bread, they had to “weave” in a leavening agent in order for the bread to rise. In our day, modern bakers have two options, a biological leavening agent such as yeast or sour dough starter or a chemical leavening agent such as baking powder or baking soda. In Ancient times, they had yeast. So, the saying “a little leaven leavens the whole lump” is very accurate because in baking, you need only a very small amount of yeast in order to cause a loaf of bread to rise and become very light, fluffy, and full of air pockets. This gives bread it’s desired texture and makes it pleasant to eat. I looked up the details and for a chocolate chip cookie recipe that makes 100 cookies, you need only a half teaspoon of baking powder – that’s incredible! Such a small amount “leavens” the entire batch of 100 cookies.

In 1 Cor 5:7-9 Paul explains how a small amount of “leaven” in our lives, leavens our entire life. The leaven Paul is taking about is our sin or the sinful worldly pleasures we may be partaking in. Our entire being is impacted by a very small amount of sin. He continues by saying in verse 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.” Paul teaches the Corinthians that they must purge out the old leaven. The old sins, the old habits, the old ways, the old ways of thinking, they must be purged “that you may be a new lump”. Paul in 2 Cor chapter 5 tells us that if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation, old things have passed away, behold, all things have become new.” Here in 1 Cor 5:7, Paul is telling us, “You’ve been made new! why are you still acting in the old ways and partaking of the same old things”? He emphasizes this by saying “since you are truly unleavened” – this means, that as a follower of Jesus, we’ve been washed clean, we have been made new, whole, and have a fresh start in Jesus Christ. That at our truest, basic level, we are “unleavened”, no longer the old, but fully new – it’s what we do, what we see, what we hear, and what we say that leavens us in our lives as we walk with Christ. Something is always “leavening” our lives. The question becomes, what is it for you? What is the leavening agent in your life?

Paul says we are “unleavened” and references Jesus as our “Passover”. Without getting too deep into a history lesson from the Old Testament, what we need to know is that the Jews knew all about unleavened bread and about keeping the Passover feast. This was a law in the Torah (Law of Moses) and in order for them to keep their religion of works going, they had to keep the Passover which, in part, meant eating unleavened bread for 7 days. Unleavened bread is made the same as regular bread, just without the leavening agent. It becomes flat, thin, and very crunchy like a cracker. It’s not that appetizing and by eating it for 7 days during the Passover feast, it was a sign of the Jews humbling themselves before God to remember what God did for them as they were rescued from the Land of Egypt (Passover is established in Exodus chapter 11 just before the 10th plague: the death of the first born – we don’t have time to get into the significance and the picture of Christ’s love and sacrifice for us in the Passover right now). Paul is teaching the Corinthian church and us that Christ is our Passover, has made us new under the new covenant and because he was sacrificed for us, therefore, by default, we are unleavened and should live an unlevened life. Now, in verse 8 he starts by saying “therefore let us keep the feast”. This is not Paul teaching us that we still have to keep the feast of the Passover as modern day Jews still under the law do. We are no longer under the law but under Grace (Romans goes in depth on this) and we are no longer under the Levitical priesthood but under the priesthood of Jesus Christ (read the book of Hebrews).Therefore, he’s not saying this as a command of the law but wants our attention drawn to what comes next, he continues “Not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malic and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Paul in Galatians speaks of “putting off the old man, and putting on the new” we are no longer to live in the “leavened” life of the flesh which is malic and wickedness, but we are to live in the “unleavened” life of sincerity and truth keeping the Passover feast through not what we eat for 7 days, but through the example and testimony of our lives in Christ. Sincerity implies humble integrity. Doing the right thing even if no one is looking because we want to do the right thing, not because we are forced to or commanded to or have to follow some legalistic set of rules from the church but that We want to follow Christ and love Christ and no longer sin in our old habits and ways because of the love of Christ that he first showed us. We should want to live in the truth, no longer in a world of manipulation and lies. Why? Because we are new creations and “unleavened”. But we must ask ourselves the title of this study “What is leavening your life” If you are living in the darkness, partaking of the things of the world, potentially even being puffed up and boasting within yourself or to your friends of how you are getting away with things or how you’ve got things “figured out” to where you can continue in your sin and “play the system” to not be caught, and still be part of the God’s people because “God and I are good, he knows I love him, and his grace covers me, so I can do what I want, I’ll repent someday before it’s too late” – My friend, take heed lest you fall!

Let’s now see what Jesus has to say about leaven and what we choose to leaven our lives with. In Matthew 16:6 Jesus says to his disciples “Take heed and beware the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees”. If you know this passage, you know the disciples had no idea what he was talking about. They actually thought he was talking about bread due to his reference to leaven! But no, he was talking about the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees. That we must take heed to the things we hear; the things being taught to us by the world and the world’s standards of living. We must be set apart from the world. We are part of it, living in this life, but we must remain separate, not partaking of the things of the world. We must beware the leaven of the pharisees! Let’s bring this into our day and age – we must beware the leaven of drugs, alcohol, smoking, gambling, ungodly movies, TV shows, and ungodly music. We must beware the leaven of pornography and lust and adultery (even if it’s just with our eyes), we must beware the leaven of politics and putting too much emphasis on the news and things in the world, we must beware the leaven of YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Ticktock as well as all other forms of social media. We must beware the leaven of technology and the internet, of video games and simply being on our phones mindlessly. We must beware the leavening agents in our lives. We must guard our hearts and minds against all the things that want to steal our attention away from God and away from living the unleavened life.

However, Jesus doesn’t want us to remain unleavened, that’s just the default starting point. He wants us leavened all right, but as the new man or new woman, leavened with things of God! In Matthew 13:33, Jesus speaks this parable: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like Leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened”. So, we have Jesus and Paul using the idea of “A little leaven leavens the whole lump” both on the world side and on the Kingdom of Heaven side. Clearly Jesus is teaching us in this parable that we are to be leavened with the things of the Kingdom of Heaven! As we spend time one on one with Jesus, in Prayer, reading his Word, in studying his Word, in fellowship with believers, in corporate worship and hearing his Word taught at church, we are being leavened for the Kingdom of God! Any time we abstain or remove one of the worldly leavening agents I listed above, it makes room to replace it with something wholesome, healthy mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and we are then being leavened by God himself and no longer by the world. If you go outside for a walk, spending time one on one with Jesus, meditating on him, his glory, his free gift of salvation, his life, death, and resurrection and his finished work on the cross, every time you choose not to sin, every time you ask to be filled with the Holy Spirit and you walk in the spirit, you are being leavened and as we’ve seen above, “a little leaven leavens the whole lump” – So ask yourself today: what is leavening my life? Am I being filled with darkness from the world or with Light from the Kingdom of Heaven?

Psalm 139:23-24 says: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me, and know my anxieties; And see if there is any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting”

Come to Jesus today, ask him to fill you with the Holy Spirit. Ask him to show you if there is any wicked way in you and when he does show you those things in your heart, take the action required (sometimes it takes aggressive action against our sin!), to cast out the old leavening agent in your life. Then, make purposeful choices to replace the old things with new leavening agents from the Kingdom of Heaven and you will, one day at a time, be molded into the image of Jesus Christ.

Love in Christ, Ryan.