What Failing to Deal with Sin in a Church Reveals, Part 3...

This week, we are looking at a section of a letter written by a man named Paul to a group of Christians who were acting unchristian that reveals how failure to deal with sin through church discipline reveals four things about that church. We have seen that failure to deal with sin in a church reveals an arrogant acceptance of sin amongst its members and a lack of leadership in that church.

Paul then shows us how a churches failure to deal with sin that is occurring within the membership of the church reveals a third thing about that church:

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

1 Corinthians 5:6-8

In verse 6, Paul confronts the members of the church at Corinth by explaining that their prideful acceptance and approval of this sinful behavior is not good. Paul then provides the reason for the necessity of church discipline by bringing the members of the church back to the Jewish festival of Passover. Paul begins with the statement “Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump”?

Leaven was a piece of fermented dough, that when mixed into a batch of dough, would cause it to rise. Paul is reminding the church that a little leaven will mix through and spread through the rest of the dough and ferment the entire dough. In the Bible, leaven is often used as a word picture for sin; so what Paul is communicating to the Corinthian church, and us today is “do you not know that a little sin in the church will mix its way through the entire church and infect the entire church with sin”?

Paul here is revealing for us the reality that failing to deal with sin in the church reveals our misunderstanding of sins power. In verse 7, Paul then commands the church at Corinth to clean out the old leaven. But what does that mean? To understand Paul’s point here, we first must understand what a Jewish person would do in order to prepare for the Passover Feast.

In preparation for the Passover feast, every Jewish person would go through their home and search for any leaven. This leaven, which was a picture of sin, was to be swept out of the home, so that the home would be in the right condition in order to celebrate the feast. Before a Jewish person and their family could worship God through the celebration of Passover, their houses needed to be free from sin. Paul was taking this Old Testament tradition and applying it to the New Testament situation in the church at Corinth by commanding the members of the church of Corinth to sweep away their attitude of tolerance and approval of sin from their church in the same way a Jewish person would remove the leaven prior to celebrating the Passover feast.

Paul then explains that by conducting church discipline, the church would be a new lump, just as in fact you are already unleavened. For Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed. Paul is bringing the members of the church back to the reality that the Jewish nation celebrated Passover every year to commemorate their deliverance from slavery in Egypt. During Passover, every Jewish family took an unblemished lamb and killed it at twilight. They would then take the blood of the lamb and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel, which was the piece of wood that formed the top of the door frame. That evening, the Lord went through the land of Egypt and struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, but He passed over all of the Jewish homes who had marked their doors with the blood of the lamb.

Paul’s point here is that as Christians, their previous selfish and sinful nature had been overcome through faith in Christ, who was the ultimate Passover lamb who allowed Himself to be treated as though he lived our selfish and sinful lives so God the Father could treat us as though we lived Jesus perfect life. And because of the reality that Christ is the ultimate Passover lamb, in verse 8 Paul calls the members of the church of Corinth to come together as a community that is not marked with the negative attitudes that marked their life prior to becoming Christians, or with a lifestyle of wickedness or a lack of moral and social values that that mark a selfish and sinful life. Instead, Paul is directing the members of the church of Corinth to be Christians who act Christian through a lifestyle marked by purity and truthfulness to Christ and His teachings.


So, what is your view of sin? Do you understand the impact and influence that selfishness and sin can have on those around you? Do you think that churches understand the infectious power that sin can have among their members?