1 Corinthians 5:6-8 (NIV): Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast–as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 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.
Sin in a Christian’s life is NOT okay! Many teach today that sin is unavoidable, and so must be accepted as normal, even in the life of a Christian. But that teaching never came from the Bible. Even in the Old Testament, the standard for God’s people was 100% conformity to His commands. He never told them that idolatry was fine, it was unavoidable, so they just needed to make sure that they didn’t have more than one or two idols. He never gave the slightest impression that murder and adultery and theft were unavoidable, but that each person just needed to keep them within acceptable limits – maybe only one adulterous affair each year, and one murder every 10 years or so. NO! The standard that God expected was purity, holiness. Even back then, God taught His people that sin was like yeast, in which even a miniscule amount multiplies until it permeates a whole batch of dough. No yeast was ever allowed in the sacrifices made to God, symbolic of the fact that He is a holy God, and His people must be holy as well. Especially at Passover, each house had to be swept clean from even the smallest scrap of yeast, to remind all of them that their homes must be kept holy.
How much more is this so in the New Testament! Jesus, our Passover Lamb, has been slain, His blood has washed all of us clean from every trace of our former sins. He has risen from the dead, and ascended to the highest heaven, from which He has sent the Holy Spirit to live inside all of God’s people, purifying us, guiding us, and giving us power to be holy and to be His witnesses. With that kind of extra power, power that not even Enoch had (Genesis 5:21-24), power that not even Noah had (Genesis 6:9), power that not even Moses, or Elisha, or Daniel, or any of the holy Old Testament saints had, how could we, as God’s people today, not be AT LEAST as holy as they were?
The standard today is the same as it always has been – God’s people are to be holy. Not positionally holy, or holy by imputation – God tells Himself no lies regarding the true state of people’s hearts. We are to be holy as God is holy (1 Peter 1:16) – legitimately, morally pure and holy. And we can be, every one of us, if we will seek to love God and to serve Him with all of our hearts, all of our lives, and if we commit every part of ourselves to God (Romans 12:1-2), so that He can fill us to overflowing with His Spirit, and purify us through and through (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24).
Father, forgive us for presumptuously living so far below Your standard of holiness. Forgive us for excusing our failings, and for accepting such a low standard for ourselves as Your people. Do help us, heal us, purify us, and make us into a true holy nations for Your Name’s sake. Amen.