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Your boasting [over the supposed spirituality of your church] is not good [indeed, it is vulgar and inappropriate]. [a]Do you not know that [just] a little leaven ferments the whole batch [of dough, just as a little sin corrupts a person or an entire church]? [b]Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new batch, just as you are, still unleavened. For Christ our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with leaven of vice and malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and [untainted] truth.(A)

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Footnotes

  1. 1 Corinthians 5:6 See note 3:16.
  2. 1 Corinthians 5:7 Paul is using the Passover celebration as an analogy. Leading up to the Passover meal was the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Ex 12:17-20), during which the Israelites were to remove all leaven from their homes to symbolize the removal of sin from their lives. Leaven (yeast) was often used as a symbol of spiritual corruption.

Your boasting is not good.(A) Don’t you know that a little yeast(B) leavens the whole batch of dough?(C) 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.(D) Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread(E) of sincerity and truth.

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