Sincere and True...

“Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep 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, NKJV

Paul wrote the above regarding the Corinthian church's response to their member who had his father's wife. Instead of being grieved by this sin, they condoned and even paraded it, actually glorying in something that should have brought them shame. Jesus, in His parables, used leaven to represent sin. Paul continues that metaphor here. A little bit of leaven (yeast) leavens the whole lump of dough. Any sin in the midst of the "lump" of the church leavened the whole church with sin, hindering their relationship with the Lord and sabotaging their witness in the world. Since the Corinthians were truly unleavened because of Christ's sacrifice on their behalf, Paul urges the church to purge out the old leaven - the deeds and practices of their old, sinful natures - and walk in the Spirit. They needed to put away from themselves the "evil person" (vs. 13), and repent of their own sin of glorying in shame and rejecting the law of God. Then they, as a church, would be keeping Jesus' Passover feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Taking sin out of your life takes away duplicity, deceit, double-mindedness, hypocrisy, facades, manipulation, and everything that is untrue or insincere (not genuine). A believer who is walking in the Spirit (that is, under the influence of and in obedience to the word of God) is very different in character from a nonbeliever, or even from a believer who has allowed the old leaven of sin to once again permeate his life. Someone keeping Christ's Passover knows the truth and lives his life according to it. Because of this practice, he is also what we would describe as "real": genuine, what-you-see-is-what-you-get, graciously honest, forthright, straightforward, honorable, and undeceiving. Sincere and true - that's the kind of person I want to meet or associate with; that's the kind of person I want to be. But the only way I can become that kind of person is if I immerse myself in the word of God, receiving it with meekness and allowing the Spirit of God to energize its application in my life. May God grant each of His children the grace to do so.

by Rebecca...