Live Unleavened

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. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

1 Corinthians 5:7-8

The Jews ate the Passover meal on the 14th day of the month of Nisan. This meal marked the beginning of the Feast of Unleavened Bread which lasted seven days from the evening of the 14th to the evening of the 21st. Anyone who ate anything leavened during those seven days was cut off from Israel. So, it was very important that on the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Israelites removed all leaven from their homes. Historically, Jews have taken this practice very seriously. In fact, it’s traditional Jewish practice to search every corner of the home with a lit candle to ensure that no bits or crumbs of leaven remain.*

Paul draws on that background to argue that the New Testament church lives (figuratively) during the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Jesus, our Passover Lamb, has already been slaughtered. His death was the Passover celebration that began the Feast in which we now live in. And this Feast of Unleavened Bread will continue until the church age ends and we eat the Marriage Supper of the Lamb when Jesus returns.

Paul argues then that we are called to “continually celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread every day—not just one week out of the year— [but all our lives] by living in a holy way.”** Paul uses leaven as an analogy for sin, and the implication is that we should search out and remove the old leaven of sin from our lives, from our homes, and from our churches. We are to be an unleavened people, kept as pure and uncontaminated by sin as we can until Jesus returns.

Make no mistake, God calls us individuals and churches to live unleavened lives. To seek out and destroy the sin that festers and grows in the corners of our lives and homes and churches.

So, I have to ask... What sin or sinful residue do you need to clean out of your life? Or out of your home? What do you need to get rid of? Purge it from your life and live unleavened, until Jesus returns.

* Jamieson, Robert, A. R. Fausset, and David Brown. Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible. Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997.

** Naselli, Andrew David. “1 Corinthians.” In Romans–Galatians, edited by Iain M. Duguid, James M. Hamilton Jr., and Jay Sklar, X:209–394. ESV Expository Commentary. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020.