Bible Verse of The Day Wednesday June 7th, 2023

1 Corinthians 5:6-7 Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are.  For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.

The word boasting holds the meaning of glorifying; this would be heaping glory upon us or another human being. Paul tells the Christians at Corinth that their boasting is not Christ-like; it attempts to place the honor and glory on themselves or another human instead of God, where all the credit belongs. Paul uses a term familiar to the Jews, a small amount of yeast leavens the entire batch of bread. The Jews were acquainted with yeast because every year at Passover, they would move all the leavened bread from their homes for that week. The Jews emphasized the word "little" because it would not take much yeast to infect the entire loaf of bread. The leaven here in this verse is symbolic of an evil influence. There was a case of incest in the church that the congregation was tolerating. The message Paul was attempting to get them to understand was that this one case of incest, a small amount of yeast, would infect the entire loaf, the whole congregation.

It only requires one rotten apple in the barrel to render the entire barrel of apples harmful. A small amount of yeast will affect the whole loaf of bread. If we close our eyes and turn our backs on any damaging influence in our body of Christ, we will, in essence, allow Satan to have a free hand in our church. The individual believer and the church have a certain status with God, the same position Christ Jesus has before the Father. The individual believer and the body of Christ live their Christian lives in the light of who they are in God's sight and where they stand with Christ. Every move we make reflects our standing with Christ Jesus. He purified us from our sins, so we live like purified Christ's followers. The followers of Christ at Corinth were happy and pleased to let the sin of the man involved in incest go unnoticed. Their justification for allowing this sin to continue was supposable to show the world their Christian love.

Paul's connection between the spotlessness and wholesomeness of the Passover and the life of a Christian is not a farfetched idea. Our Passover Lamb is, in fact, Christ Jesus, who paid our debt for sin on the Cross of Calvary. Consequently, we are to live in the cleanliness and spotlessness that Passover represents. Our Christian lives should describe what the Passover stands for, salvation; deliverance; love; joy, peace, and separation from the world. Salvation in sin is impossible; we must experience salvation separated from sin.