By Joey Carroll
Last week, we opened up a can of worms. We were considering the immoral man of 1 Corinthians 5 and how the church was supposed to deal with him. The church in that day did what many churches in our day do with immorality – simply look the other way. As the Church of the living God, we are supposed to model the character of Jesus before a lost world. So, the more we look like the world, the less impact we have on the world. It’s really simple math.
As born again Christians, we have been rescued from the punishment of sin. When Jesus came, even though He never sinned, He took our sin upon Himself and died on the cross in our place. The punishment that we deserve because of our sin fell on Him, and we are therefore rescued from judgment and death.
This was the greatest rescue God accomplished for His people in the Bible. But this great deliverance was foreshadowed in the Old Testament through the Passover. In the Passover, God rescued Israel from their slavery to the Egyptians by having them slaughter a lamb and mark the doors of their home with the blood from the lamb. When the angel of death came at midnight, if he saw the blood, he would know that death had already occurred in that home, and he would pass over them. But where there was no blood on the doorposts, no death had occurred. The angel would enter and put to death the firstborn in that home.
This great event was to be commemorated year after year by the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Beginning on the 14th day of their month until the 21st day of the same month, no leaven was to be found in their homes. They were to throw out all of the leaven used for baking bread. This seems like a strange way to commemorate such an event, and if it were not for Paul’s writings in 1 Corinthians 5, we would not be certain of the significance of the leaven.
“Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate 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, NASB).
If you have ever baked bread, you know how leaven works. A small pinch of that sourdough has an effect on the entire loaf of bread. And so that little bit of fermented bread becomes an illustration for how sin affects the whole body. We all know how remaining sin in our lives affects our entire lives from our thoughts and dispositions to our crafty ways of keeping others from finding out. It has the very same effect on a church body.
When a church chooses to do nothing to address the unrepentant and open sin in the life of one of its members, it has made the choice to allow sin to affect the entire church body. That is not a matter of opinion; this is how God has designed the body (see 1 Corinthians 12:12).
If you or someone you know has ever participated in the sin of pornography, you understand how powerfully sin affects the whole life. Lying and hiding their sin becomes necessary. Conviction (if they are a believer) is a regular experience in their hearts. It changes their very attitude and countenance. And if left unrepentant, it can ruin their lives and their witness in every way. In the very same way, adultery or sexual immorality that remains undealt with by the church, will ruin so much in the church. If you ever find a church that has had several divorces from marital unfaithfulness, more than likely you have found a church that refuses to face those issues in the church when they arise. Unrepentant sin is just like leaven. It will eventually affect and change the appearance of the entire church.
This article originally appeared in The Clarion Newspaper.
Corinth Baptist Church 