S152P8 – Our saintly duty: purge the leaven
1 Cor. 5:6-8
Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? 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. 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.
A man I know was talking to me about rat poison. He lives on a farm, and he has had to use it a number of times to take care of pesky pests. He told me that it does not take a lot of poison to reach the desired effect. Even when used on a larger animal, or even if ingested by a full grown adult, a little goes a long way. What really surprised me about rat poison is the fact that it can be so powerful even though most of the product is not poison at all. Most of the powder in that box is a non-toxic substance labeled as an inactive ingredient. It only takes a small amount of actual poison mixed in with that powder to make the entire batch deadly.
There is a reason why communion is taken with a bread that is unleavened. The leaven represents sin, which did not exist in Christ. Leaven is another agent that spreads into the whole batch even though it is used in only a small amount. This speaks to the pervasiveness of sin and how it spreads like wildfire when we keep it in our lives. It is not possible to partake of just a little sin. There are no degrees of evil to be measured. To remain in sin in one respect is to remain in sin. For the Christian, the goal is not to become mostly Christlike. We are simply called to become Christlike. That takes us actively removing the sin from our lives as the Spirit changes us.
It is true that we are imperfect and must seek forgiveness for our sins regularly. It is true that none of us can be perfect here because we all have sinned already. It is true that the likelihood we will sin again is high. However, that does not mean that we settle for living with our sin or that we become resigned to our sinful behavior as a necessary evil. We can rid ourselves of the leaven as God makes a way out from under temptation, which He does every time. That is the choice we must make daily. Father, thank You for the forgiveness that washes us clean of our sins, and help us to rid ourselves of every last bit of leaven.