1 Corinthians 5:7-8

“Purge out the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ, our Paschal lamb, hath been sacrificed. 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 purity and truth.”

If the figure applied to the incestuous man or to the vicious, the word ἐκκαθάρειν, to purify by removing, would apply to an act such as the: taking away from among (1 Corinthians 5:2), and the: delivering to Satan (1 Corinthians 5:5); and the words: that ye may be a new lump, would signify: that ye may present the spectacle of a Church renewed by the absence of every vicious member. But the epithet old, given to leaven, and 1 Corinthians 5:8 show that leaven is here taken in an abstract sense: “the leaven which consists of natural malignity and perversity.” The exhortation to purging applies therefore to the action of each on himself, and of all on all, in order to leave in the Church not a single manifestation of the old man, of the corrupt nature, undiscovered and unchecked.

The οὖν, therefore, of T. R. ought, according to most of the Mjj., to be suppressed. It only goes to weaken the vivacity of the imperative. It is well known that among the Jews, on the 14th Nisan, the eve of the first and great day of the feast of Passover, there was removed with great care all the leaven (pain levé, raised bread) which could be found in their houses; and in the evening, along with the celebration of the Paschal feast, the sacred week began, during which nothing was eaten but cakes of unleavened bread. Leaven represented, according to the particular ceremonial of this feast, the pollutions of the idolatry and vices of Egypt with which Israel had broken in coming forth from it. As Israel had providentially carried to the desert that night only unleavened bread, the permanent rite had been borrowed from the historical circumstance (Exodus 12:39; Exo 13:6-9). The apostle spiritualizes the ceremony. As the Israelites at every Passover feast were bound to leave behind them the pollutions of their Egyptian life, in order to become a new people of God, so the Church is bound to break with all the evil dispositions of the natural heart, or that which is elsewhere called the old man.

The desired result of this breaking on the part of each one with his own known sin, will be the renewing of the whole Church: that ye may be a new lump. Another allusion to Jewish customs. On the eve of the feast, a fresh piece of dough was kneaded with pure water, and from it were prepared the cakes of unleavened bread which were eaten during the feast. The word νέον, new, does not signify: new as to quality (as καινόν would do), but recent, as to time. The whole community, by this work of purification wrought on itself, should become like a piece of dough newly kneaded. Has not the awakening of a whole Church been seen more than once to begin with submission to an old censure which weighed on the conscience of one sinner? This confession drew forth others, and the holy breath passed over the whole community.

The phrase which follows, as ye are unleavened, has greatly embarrassed commentators, who have explained it as if it were, “ye should be,” which grammatically is inadmissible. Chrysostom thinks of final sanctification, others of baptismal regeneration, meanings equally impossible. In saying, ye are, the apostle thinks of what they are, not in point of fact, but of right; the idea is the same as in Romans 6:11: death to sin and life to God, virtually contained in faith in the dead and risen Christ. For the believer nothing more is needed than to become what he is already (in Christ). He must become holy in fact, as he is in idea.

Grotius has proposed to give to ἄζυμος, unleavened, the active meaning belonging to the adjectives ἄσιτος, ἄοινος (abstaining from bread, from wine); according to him, Paul characterizes the Corinthians as persons who no longer feed on leavened bread (in the spiritual sense). But this term cannot be twisted from the definite meaning which it has in the Jewish ritual, and which is perfectly appropriate. They ought to become individually the organs of a new nature, which is in accordance with their true character as beings unleavened so far as they are believers.

The proof that this is what they are in point of right is given in the sequel.

From the time when the Paschal lamb was sacrificed in the temple, no leaven bread was allowed to appear on an Israelitish table; and this continued during the whole feast. Similarly the expiatory death of Christ, containing the principle of death to sin, there begins with His death in the case of the Church and of each believer the great spiritual Passover, from which all sin is banished, as leaven was from the Jewish feast. Every Christian is an azyme (unleavened one).

The particle καὶ γάρ, for also, has for its characteristic the connecting of two facts of an analogous nature (also), the second of which is the ground of the first (for): this is exactly the case here.

The work πάσχα, strictly speaking, passing, denoted God's passing over Egypt, on the night when He smote the first-born and spared the houses of the Israelites sprinkled with the blood of the lamb. The word was afterwards applied to the lamb itself; in this sense it is taken here.

The words for us, read by T. R., are omitted in the majority of the Mjj.

By the complement ἡμῶν, our, Paul contrasts the Christian Passover with that of the Jews. As the latter began with the slaying of the lamb, ours began with the bloody death of Christ; Χριστός is in apposition to πάσχα. The practical consequence of His death thus understood, and of the new state in which it places believers, is drawn in the following verse.