1 Corinthians 5:6-8
Christ the Passover Lamb calls His people to a life cleansed from the leaven of sin.
6 Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole lump?
7 Purge out the old yeast, that you may be a new lump, even as you are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed in our place.
8 Therefore let’s keep the feast, not with old yeast, neither with the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
Christ the Passover Lamb calls His people to a life cleansed from the leaven of sin.
Paul rebukes the Corinthians for boasting while tolerating sin and calls the church to remove moral corruption just as Israel removed leaven during Passover.
This passage continues Paul’s correction regarding the immoral situation described in 1 Corinthians 5:1–5. The apostle now explains why the church must act decisively: tolerated sin spreads and corrupts the whole community. Drawing from the imagery of Israel’s Passover and the removal of leaven during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Paul illustrates the necessity of moral purification within the church. The theological center of the argument appears in verse 7 where Christ is identified as the Passover sacrifice. This connection grounds ethical correction in the redemptive work of Christ. The passage therefore moves from disciplinary instruction to covenant identity and gospel-shaped holiness.
Paul addresses a congregation influenced by cultural pride and moral tolerance. The church had failed to recognize how unrepentant sin could influence the entire community. Paul draws upon Jewish Passover imagery familiar to early Christians to illustrate the need for communal purification.
Purge the Evil, Keep the Feast, and Guard the Holiness of the Church
Because Christ our Passover has been sacrificed and the church is called to be a holy people, believers must not tolerate unrepentant, scandalous sin in the body but must exercise disciplined holiness for the purity of the church and the possible restoration of the sinner.