Sin Contaminates Pt 2

1 Corinthians 5:6–8 ESV

6 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.

The Corinthian church was full of “boasting”. Boasting is mentioned 11 times in the NT. Out of this number 6 times it is found in 1 & 2 Corinthians.

Boasting: act of taking pride in something or that which constitutes a source of pride

Leaven

Leaven. Any substance that produces fermentation when added to dough.

A fermented substance that causes dough to rise.

The leaven used in ancient Palestine was just a piece of fermented dough kept from a previous baking. The lump of leftover dough was either dissolved in water in the kneading-trough before the flour was added, or it was put into the flour and kneaded along with it, as described in one of Jesus’ parables (Matt 13:33). Bread made in this way was distinguished from unleavened bread, which did not rise. Leaven was supposed to be removed from Israelite houses during the Feast of Unleavened Bread (e.g., Exod 12:15, 19; 13:7). It was also forbidden in grain offerings (e.g., Exod 23:18; Lev 2:11).

The figurative uses of leaven in the New Testament sometimes imply that leaven was viewed as a corrupting substance (Matt 16:6). Paul twice says that “a little leaven leavens the whole batch of dough” (1 Cor 5:6; Gal 5:9). However, Jesus uses it once in a positive way, referring to the change caused by the kingdom of heaven (Matt 13:33).

The significant aspect about leaven is its power, which may symbolize either good or evil. Usually, though not always, leaven was a symbol of evil in rabbinical thought. Jesus referred to leaven in the adverse sense when He used the word to describe the corrupt doctrine of Pharisees, Sadducees (Matt. 16:6, 11–12), and of Herod (Mark 8:15). Like leaven that works its way into fresh dough, spreading out through the bread until its effects are evident in the entire batch, the ideas of Herod, the Pharisees, and Sadducees were gradually infiltrating people’s minds.

Leaven. Not yeast (which was uncommon in the ancient world) but fermented dough, a little of which would be left from the previous week to be added to a new lump of dough. By analogy, when publicly known sin in the church is not subjected to church discipline, it will silently spread its destructive consequences throughout the whole fellowship.

Crossway Bibles. (2008). The ESV Study Bible (p. 2197). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

The most obvious characteristic of leaven, or yeast, is that it permeates the dough, making the whole batch of dough rise when baked. Paul uses leaven here as a symbol for sin.

Keener, C. S. (1993). The IVP Bible background commentary: New Testament (1 Co 5:6–8). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.