“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 Cor. 5:8-9
As we come out of the Easter season, I find my heart wishing it had just began. And especially in light of the quarantine, things seem a little anticlimactic. But God wants us to live in the glories of Easter all the time!
In the first letter to the Corinthians, Paul was seeking to deal with many of the problems and sin issues that the church was facing.
In particular, they had allowed sin to continue uncorrected by a member of the church. For this reason, Paul calls them to send that person out of the church for the sake of his repentance.
However, in the midst of this section, Paul explains that purity in the church is the result of the purity that has already been provided by Christ.
Christ Our Passover
Paul’s statement about the church’s purity is related to the sacrifice of Christ. The church is pure (‘unleavened by sin’) because Christ has been sacrificed for us. All our sins have been ‘passed over’ once and for all.
For that reason, we may celebrate the feast - that is, the feast of Passover, our Good Friday - every day. In fact, Paul’s command is to celebrate that your sins have been passed over each day! For Christians, Easter is a daily joyful occurrence.
But how?
The great question is, “HOW is this true?” Every day doesn’t seem much like Easter during quarantine when even Easter doesn’t seem like Easter.
So how are we to celebrate this daily? The answer is to believe what Paul wrote. Christ HAS been sacrificed for us! When we believe that, as Paul was when he wrote it, then we can celebrate what He has done.
And the result of that faith will be putting away sins like malice and wickedness, and walking in sincerity and truth.
Only by believing what Jesus has done, and what it means for us, will we have the joy and power that God intends Easter to bring!
