I Corinthians 5:7  Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:
8  Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

True Christianity is not a passive religion. God saves the person. The person must heed the convicting work of the Holy Spirit in order to be saved. After salvation, it is the indwelling Holy Spirit Who works to bring the new saint along in his Christian walk. The saved person must heed that work and humbly respond in obedience to God’s Work in his heart. When the saved person does not want to obey God, he will be chastened by the Lord. That chastening can take many forms.
In our text we see that the local church has an important part to play in that chastening. Unlike the Catholic Inquisition, the true local church does not operate on humanistic false doctrines. The true local church operates under the authority of the true God. The Catholics claimed to have God’s authority, but that is still obviously wrong. There are many groups who claim to have God’s authority. We talked with some people last night who attend a false church where they speak in “tongues”. Their wolf in sheep’s clothing encourages this false doctrine. The people have been trained to take God’s Word out of context and make up their false doctrine.
The pastor of a true church is one who takes II Timothy 2:15 seriously.

II Timothy 2:15  Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

That verse is not just for pastors, but the pastor must show true leadership in the local church. His teaching must be by faithfully and carefully teaching God’s Word. He dare not be a deceiver. He needs to teach the people how to study God’s Word properly. Context is always important. When he takes a verse somewhere to try to help explain what he is teaching, he must note the context and help the people to see that the verse does have application to what he is teaching.
In verse 7 of our text, Paul commanded the saints in Corinth to purge out the old leaven. To purge is to “cleanse thoroughly”. The nation of Israel was taught this many years earlier when they were taught how to prepare for the “Passover”. They needed to remove all leaven from their houses. In our text the saints needed to be reminded that they needed to be a new lump. This was not just for the individual, but in the context it was for the body, the local church. The lost in Corinth needed to see what a true church looks like. Again we are reminded here that the solution was not for the true saints to leave the church. It was for them to clean up the church.
This is not talking of trying to clean up a false church like a Catholic church. There are too many Fundamental Baptist churches that have fallen because a new pastor has come in and taken the church in the wrong direction. The ones that I am familiar with already had problems when the old pastor was there. There were things that he was doing that were not Biblical, but the people accepted it because he had been there for a long time. The saints can never be in neutral. The saints need to be faithful students of God’s Word. They need to be people of prayer. Politics can have no part in the local church. Situational ethics cannot have any part there either. A true church will lose people from time to time. They will be upset by something the pastor has said. They will show who they truly are in those situations. The local pastor needs to be approachable. He needs to be able to give a Biblical answer for what he believes. He needs to lead the way in purging out the old leaven. If he is the problem then the people need to take leadership.
It is possible to have a true church where God is honoured. We have already seen that the church in Corinth was not honouring God. They were not treating the leadership in a Biblical manner. They were obsessed with personalities and neglected important matters.
Paul stated that the true saints are unleavened. They are not passively moved along. They are actively submissive to the Lord Jesus Christ. They need to be reminded of the great cost of their salvation. The purging that took place when a person was saved is due to the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is our Passover.
In the Old Testament, there was the feast of unleavened bread which followed immediately after the Passover. During that week, there was to be no leaven in their houses. That was a picture of the saved life. The saved life is a life. The saved person learns to enjoy the blessing of God’s salvation. The saint has been given a new nature in salvation. He begins his new life in Christ as a babe in Christ. The true saint still has a mind and the devil will try to remind them of the past. The true saint cannot allow the devil to take him back. He needs to draw nigh to God and be strengthened in the inner man. Sins after salvation must be purged. Two sins are mentioned here. That does not mean that is all that needs to be dealt with. These were underlying sins that needed to be dealt with. The Greek word translated as “malice” refers to “depravity, ill will, a desire to injure.” That covers a lot of ground. Wickedness is closely related to malice here. When the saints get right with God, they can see things as they truly are. Their selfish desires get out of the way and they seek to glorify God.
The true saint functions with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. The true saint has been forgiven and made a new creature in Christ Jesus. Sincerity is genuineness. Truth is the absence of error or lies. God’s Word is Truth. Again we see how the perversions cannot be part of a true church. You cannot have books that say different things in the same passage and all claiming to be God’s Word. True saints need to get over themselves and humble themselves before the Lord. There is so much resistance to truth. That is due to the sin of pride. Proud people generally have very active minds and they spend hours developing their false theories. They convince themselves that their deceptive ways are right. They bounce their false ideas off of others and as they find agreement with other proud people, they build themselves up in their sin.
There is no substitute for a true local church. The true child of God must take the Bible seriously. He or she must be faithful in the true local church. The saved person needs the true local church more than anything else. We have mentioned before that the internet can be a useful tool. However, if it is keeping you from being faithful to a true local church, it is out of place. Self-taught “Christians” are not a blessing to the work of the Lord. They are infested with old leaven. They need to purge out the old leaven if they are saved. If they are lost, they need to get saved so that they can see the old leaven and get rid of it.
The apostle Paul shows us that true Christians do not distill the Christian life down to ‘just believe in Jesus, that is all that matters.’ Believing in Jesus is a life changing matter. It is a work that is initiated by the work of the Holy Spirit in the repentant sinners heart. It is a work that is continued on in the saved person’s life. It is not a drudgery for the true child of God. It is a fight for the unsaved person. As we see in our text, the local church must take an active roll in keeping itself pure. This roll is due to the love of God that indwells every true believer. That love seeks to glorify God, not the flesh.
Pastor Bartel