1 Cor 5:7   Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast--as you really are.

 

The newness of the Christian faith is expressed in a whole variety of ways in the New Testament. Yeast in the Bible is symbolic of sin. Just before this verse Paul has said, “Your boasting is not good. Don't you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough?” (v.6). In other words he is saying, you may think boasting is a minor thing but it works through the whole of your lives like the leaven or yeast does in bread. After today's verse he adds, “Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth.” (v.8). The Festival he refers to is the Feast of Unleavened Bread which follows Passover. Passover is all about salvation and deliverance, and the Feast of Unleavened Bread about living out a holy life with God.

 

Thus Paul is saying, in this new life we must not let anything, any attitudes or behaviour from the old life, remain. There is no room for pride or malice or wickedness – or indeed conscious sin of any kind. The picture of dough being formed into bread says that we are being formed into the new life and it will take time, effort etc. to form in us what God is making us. We are like a ‘new batch' when we first come to Christ, that is going to be formed into new bread to feed the world with the life of God - but we must be bread that is free from yeast, lives free from sin, lives full of ‘sincerity and truth.'