1Cor 5:6-8 - Part 1 - No Puff Pastry, Please!

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.

It is evident that for some reason or reasons, that the Corinthians have a distorted view of their own condition. They are deceived. They think themselves spiritual. They have great teachers and a philosophical heritage second to none. They have manifest spiritual gifts (as we shall see) and they suppose themselves to be just the bees knees of the new religion of Christianity. But in truth they are like the Laodicean Church of Revelation. They think themselves rich when they are poor. They are rich in outward things but poor in maturity. They are rich in gifts but poor in loving application of them. They are rich in teaching, but poor in understanding. In many ways, they are me.

Humility is perhaps the most elusive of traits. If we think we are humble then that itself is proof that we are not. Humility is not self-abasement, which is actually a form of pride, but unconsciousness of self through the raising up of others in our consciousness. It is looking outward and upward. It takes faith to be truly humble because only faith will look entirely outwards, trusting God to supply what the inward parts need. Our identity and our worth - not to mention all of our other needs - are not supplied by us, by our thoughts and actions and aims and ideals and manipulations (however pious) - but by God alone, as we trust Him while we strive to be found in Him.

Of all people I am not one to speak. How I can know this and yet be such a miserable example of it puts me right in the midst of the dilemma. My humility is so often a false humility that rests upon self abnegation, self criticism and self denial that I am proud of low view I have worked up. The real problem is that this is not Biblical humility. It is Pharisaical hypocrisy. And even saying that is only further self-flagellation. The only way out of this eternal descending spiral is Christ. Hope springs eternal. In the words of the chorus, "My Lord knows the way through the wilderness - all I have to do is follow."

The boasting among the Corinthians is the same disease of pride, but it is manifested in a more accessible way. It is not hidden. And because of this it has a certain amenability to rebuke and correction. Identifying and, by God’s grace, winkling out more subtle forms of pride from the heart can be significantly more difficult. But in Corinth Paul is dealing with a form of pride that misunderstands that God alone is the source of all good things, even when they are manifested in them thorough their willing words and deeds. The fruit of this pride is factions, blind human loyalties, disobedience, and the tolerance of immorality.

So this "leaven" of pride and hypocrisy - the leaven of the Pharisees that Christ warned His disciples about - is unchecked in the church at Corinth and is having its deleterious effects on the whole body. That is how leaven works. A little bit is added to the dough but the whole mass rises. A pint of poison taints an ocean of truth. A church community is hobbled by impurities within.

Now it is obvious that no saint is perfect in this life and so the church is always made up of those who are themselves prone to sin. "The church," someone once said, "Is a hospital for sinners and not a hotel for saints." It is a truism, but there is some wisdom in it. But if that sort of saying becomes a statement that excuses sin, or encourages us to turn a blind eye to it, then it is unhelpful. If, on the other hand it is aimed at abating pride and/or legalistic judgementalism in the church, then there may be some merit in it.

The church is the bride of Christ and every effort must be made to be useful in God’s purifying and keeping her pure. I speak of the experimental side of salvation - sanctification here. We are to be engaged in this process not only individually but corporately. I myself have so concentrated on the individual that I have a poorly developed corporate engagement. However the true picture is that, if anything, it ought to be the other way around. Sanctification of the Spirit is not meant to be something a person is engaged in apart from other believers, but something in which the engagement of other saints is usually necessary.

So the willful and evident sins of members of the body are a poison to the whole, for which a treatment is required. The earlier the treatment the better the prognosis. Some diseases even necessitate the patient being put in isolation so that others are not infected. The church is not merely exhorted but commanded to keep a clean house. This doesn’t speak to personal and private matters, unless help is sought, but to those that are exposed in the fruits of behaviour. The desire is always correction with gentleness and reverence in love. But the means is never weak-willed, compromising or vacillating. We are to regard flagrant and persistent sin in the church as the pollution of Christ’s bride, and to be vigilant and vigorous (even zealous) in confronting it.

We are not, on the other hand, to turn into a community of neighbour-watching witch hunters. That would be a travesty of the teaching and the spirit of the Lord. In any church there will always be those who do not know the difference between a loving and zealous concern for the purity of the Bride and a mean-spirited, holier-than-thou, mischievous and destructive, fifth column informant style of gossipy destructiveness. Thankfully, God has raised godly men in the church and called them to be pastors and elders - and in these is vested the authority from Christ to deal with matters of discipline. If only they would! But in many churches a concern for the purity of the bride has long since caved in to a form of new tolerance that calls discernment "judgementalism".