1 Cor 5: 6-8 - Part 2 - The Great Escape

6-8 Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? 7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 8 Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Paul brings up the teaching of Christ, the Passover Lamb, as foreshadowed in the meal before the last plague of Egypt (the killing of the firstborn) when they were freed from the Pharaoh’s tyranny and released to worship God in the wilderness. If only this was a study in Exodus then all the rich prefigurations and types of the exodus period could be visited and savoured here. But Paul does not go into it because his purpose here is pastoral in the strictly corrective sense.

Nevertheless it’s worth surmising in passing that Paul’s hearers are expected to know not only that the exodus took place, but the meaning of the symbols and figures contained in actual history, as they apply in the present gospel age. We often forget that the only scriptures that Paul and the very early church had, and that they used as their source of authority to explain the gospel in all its fullness, were the Hebrew canon that we now call "The Old Testament".

The Hebrew scriptures point to Christ everywhere, from the proto-gospel of Genesis 3:15 to the prophesies of Malachi 3:1. Not only this, but they contain pictures and types and prefigures of spiritual realities - though they were written by the sovereign finger of God in the affairs of men by means of actual historical events. Not only this, but the recording of them was inspired by God the Holy Spirit, through the writings of Moses and the prophets. They wrote freely exactly what God purposed that they should write. God moved their will to record the treasures of Christ in the history, poetry and preaching of the scriptures.

It doesn’t seem likely to me, therefore, that Paul would mention the Passover lamb unless he expected them to make the association of the prefigurement of Christ in it. The bread baked without leaven is precisely on topic for the points that Paul is making. The bread itself does nothing to deliver them from Egypt; it is the Passover lamb that is slain and the blood of that lamb applied to the entrance(s) of the house that delivers from the angel of death.

But the Israelites were instructed to eat unleavened bread when they served the Passover lamb. Part of the reason seems to have been the need for haste. Dough takes time to rise. Yet we must not make too much of the spiritual lesson by making the figure say more than it actually does. Paul’s point utterly ignores the rising time of dough and cuts to the chase by speaking the spiritual truth behind the concept of the leaven. It represented human self-deceit, pride and self-justification - from which spring manifest hypocrisy and error.

All leaven was to be eschewed. None was to be found in the matzo bread. There can be no room for any human boasting in association with the deliverance that is the gift of God. Salvation is of the Lord (Jonah 2:9) and it is of the Lord alone. It is a gift not to be mixed with any human work. Faith itself must not be made into a work, but must be regarded, along with repentance, as a part of the gift itself. God grants and gifts these things - as the gospel makes clear in numerous places in Acts, Ephesians and Timothy.

There is nothing clearer in Paul’s illustration then that any leaven whatsoever comes from evil. Because he calls it "old" leaven we might be tempted to think that there is a corresponding "new" leaven that we are to take up. No. The counterpart in gospel theology for old leaven is no leaven at all.

This perfectly illuminates the state of the nature of the natural man, and the way all of his thoughts, deeds and actions are tainted by what he is, due to the fall. He sins because he is a sinner. Every imagination of the thoughts of his heart are only evil continually (Genesis 6:5). Nothing good, holy or acceptable according to God’s perfect standard can arise from a fallen heart. The only answer is a new heart - a heart inclined to good through the doing of God’s will; a heart made willing to believe God.

We can even go beyond this and see that Adam’s leaven - the fallen nature that arose from his sin - has leavened the whole lump of mankind. All of his descendants are sinners. The whole race is fallen. No one is righteous, no not one - there is none that seeks after God - they are all together gone out of the way. We were born in sin, and in sin did our mothers conceive us. We were sinners in the womb from the moment our existence began.

It can be no surprise then that all of our thoughts and attitudes are corrupt. We think in circles. Like arrows shot at the sun even our best intentions fall back to earth. We are dust. We are already on the scrap heap of eternity until God reaches down to us. We are refuse. In one sense, God simply hates what we are. He hates the wicked every day (Psalm 7:11 etc) and we are all wicked but...


...if we are in Jesus Christ we have reason to celebrate the Passover. We have escaped the corruption that is in the world and have been regenerated by the Spirit of God because Christ our Saviour left the glory of heaven, and humbled Himself unto death on a cross to take the penalty for all of our sins. We are no longer under condemnation because we have been freed from the penalty of sin. And we are now being freed from the power of sin in our lives through mortification of the flesh - until we are finally freed from even the presence of sin in that moment when we are called into His presence for our final glorification.

The Passover was shared by many who never saw the promised land. All Israel was freed from Egypt, but not all Israel reached the promised kingdom rest. Paul tells us in another place that they are not all Israel who are descendants of Israel, but only those who are children of the promise. Though the blood of the lamb was sufficient to deliver all the firstborn from the angel of death it was ultimately only efficient in delivering into the promised those who truly believed and persevered; these were, in type, Joshua and Caleb, for they saw the promised land and believed God would give it into their hand. In the same way, the blood of Jesus Christ is sufficient for the whole world, would they but repent and believe. Yet they will not, apart from the operation of the Holy Spirit upon their heart, making them willing, and keeping them unto the end.

And we who believe in this gospel age are both saved and kept by the power of God through the blood of Jesus Christ. There is power in the blood! It is Wonder working power in the precious blood of the Lamb! But do you see how God does it? Though God alone saves and keeps us, we are made participants in the "keeping" through the means God has ordained. Prayer, fellowship, the preaching of the word, the operations of law and grace upon the heart. We hear commands (even in the new testament) and these convict us of our sin and our powerlessness over it but, because we belong to Christ and the Spirit is in us working, we come to God for the grace in Christ to overcome and to persevere. Yet neither is our coming or our perseverance something in which to boast because it is a work of God from start to finish.

And this is the means used to create experiential holiness in us. Note I say "create" and not "discover". God always creates in the same way - He speaks and the Spirit applies power to bring order out of chaos. He spoke the world into existence. He spoke mankind into existence. He speaks His new creation in Christ into existence. He speaks and it is so, and all that he creates is good. Yet we are never absolved of the responsibility before God to be holy. As believers, our guilt is gone, but our responsibility to obey remains. We now learn to find power for our obedience in God, and not in ourselves.

God uses purity to bring us to purity - truth to bring us to truth. It is these things in Christ that are the Divine spark of the new creature in us whereby is added more to what we have. Our hearts are renewed in righteousness and we grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. We must strive to grow by abiding in Christ and resting in Him. We must strive. But only God gives the increase, and God alone put that desire in our hearts.