Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 1 Corinthians 5:7

Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:

7. Purge out therefore the old leaven ] Reference is here made to the Jewish custom of searching for leaven, which is mentioned in the Talmud, and which probably existed in the Apostles’ time. Because Scripture speaks of ‘searching Jerusalem with candles,’ Zep 1:12, they used to carry out this custom of searching for leaven with great strictness, taking a candle and “prying into every mousehole and cranny,” as St Chrysostom says, so as to collect even the smallest crumb of leavened bread, which was to be placed in a box, or some place where a mouse could not get at it. This ceremony, as Lightfoot tells us ( Temple Service, ch. xii. sec. 1) was prefaced by the prayer, “Blessed be Thou, O Lord our God, the King everlasting, Who hast sanctified us by Thy commandments, and hast enjoined the putting away of leaven.” The custom exists among the Jews to this day. The scrupulous care in removing the smallest particle of the bitter substance adds force to St Paul’s injunction. Not the slightest trace of bitterness and vice and wickedness was to be left among Christians, since they kept continual feast upon the Flesh and Blood of the Paschal Lamb, even Jesus Christ. See the discourse in St John 6, itself delivered before a Passover.

that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened ] as ye are ( called to be) unleavened, i.e. purged free from ‘vice and wickedness’ ( 1Co 5:8), “so be also in fact.” See note on ch. 1Co 1:2, and Rom 6:3-4. The Christian community was to be a ‘new lump,’ because it was placed among men as a new society a society, the object and aim of which was to keep itself free from the defilements of the rest of the world. The word translated lump signifies properly a mass of dough, from a verb signifying to mix, knead.

Christ our passover ] Meyer here remarks that St Paul regards Christ as having been slain on the day of the Paschal Feast. We may add that he also explains how the Last Supper was called by Christ a Passover (St Luk 22:15). For in truth it was a real Passover, though not the Passover of the old, but of the new Law, a standing witness to the fact that Christ has become our continual food (cf. Aquinas, Lauda Sion, cited by Dean Stanley, “Novum Pascha nov legis”). Christ was the Passover, (1) because He was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Rev 13:8), of which the Paschal Lamb was a type (cf. St Joh 19:36); (2) because His Blood, sprinkled on the soul, delivers us from the destroying angel; (3) because we feed on His Flesh and Blood (St Joh 6:51-57), and are thereby nourished for our escape from the ‘land of Egypt, the house of bondage.’ This is why we are to purge out the old leaven, because Christ, the Paschal Lamb, has been slain, and we are bidden to keep perpetual feast on Him. It is not improbable (see ch. 1Co 16:8) that this Epistle was written about the time of the Passover. On this point consult Paley, Horae Paulinae in loc.

is sacrificed ] Literally, was sacrificed, i.e. once for all. Cf. Heb 7:27; Heb 9:25-26; Heb 10:10. The more literal translation of the passage is, for our Passover was sacrificed, even Christ.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

Purge out therefore … – Put away; free yourselves from.

The old leaven – The apostle here takes occasion, from the mention of leaven, to exhort the Corinthians to put away vice and sin. The figure is derived from the custom of the Jews in putting away leaven at the celebration of the passover. By the OLD leaven he means vice and sin; and also here the person who had committed the sin in their church. As the Jews, at the celebration of the passover, gave all diligence in removing leaven from their houses – searching every part of their dwellings with candles, that they might remove every particle of leavened bread from their habitations – so the apostle exhorts them to use all diligence to search out and remove all sin.

That ye may be a new lump – That you may be like a new mass of flour, or dough, before the leaven is put into it. That you may be pure, and free from the corrupting principle.

As ye are unleavened – That is, as ye are bound by your Christian profession to be unleavened, or to be pure. Your very profession implies this, and you ought, therefore, to remove all impurity, and to become holy. Let there be no impurity, and no mixture inconsistent with that holiness which the gospel teaches and requires. The apostle here does not refer merely to the case of the incestuous person, but he takes occasion to exhort them to put away all sin. Not only to remove this occasion of offence, but to remove all impurity, that they might become entirely and only holy. The doctrine is, that Christians are by their profession holy, and that therefore they ought to give all diligence to remove everything that is impure.

For even Christ … – As the Jews, when their paschal lamb was slain, gave great diligence to put away all leaven from their dwellings, so we Christians, since our passover is slain, ought to give the like diligence to remove all that is impure and corrupting from our hearts – There can be no doubt here that the paschal lamb was a type of the Messiah; and as little that the leaven was understood to be emblematic of impurity and sin, and that their being required to put it away was intended to be an emblematic action designed to denote that all sin was to be removed and forsaken.

Our passover – Our paschal lamb, for so the word pascha usually signifies. The sense is, We Christians have a paschal lamb; and that lamb is the Messiah. And as the Jews, when their paschal lamb was slain, were required to put away all leaven from their dwellings, so we, when our paschal lamb is slain, should put away all sin from our hearts and from our churches. This passage proves that Paul meant to teach that Christ had taken the place of the paschal lamb – that that lamb was designed to adumbrate or typify him – and that consequently when he was offered, the paschal offering was designed to cease. Christ is often in the Scriptures compared to a lamb. See Isa 53:7; Joh 1:29; 1Pe 1:19; Rev 5:6, Rev 5:12.

Is sacrificed for us – Margin, Or slain ( etuthe). The word thuo may mean simply to slay or kill; but it is also used often in the sense of making a sacrifice as an expiation for sin; Act 14:13, Act 14:18; 1Co 10:20; compare Gen 31:54; Gen 45:1; Exo 3:18; Exo 5:3, Exo 5:8,Exo 5:17; Exo 8:8, Exo 8:25-29; Exo 13:15; Exo 20:24; 2Ch 15:16, where it is used as the translation of the word zaabach, to sacrifice. It is used as the translation of this word no less than 98 times in the Old Testament, and perhaps always in the sense of a sacrifice, or bloody offering. It is also used as the translation of the Hebrew word Taabach, and shaachat, to slay, to kill, etc. in Exo 12:21; 1Ki 11:19; 2Ki 25:7; 2Ch 29:22, etc.; in all in eleven places in the Old Testament. It is used in a similar sense in the New Testament, in Mat 22:4; Luk 15:23, Luk 15:27, Luk 15:30; Joh 10:10; Act 10:13; Act 11:7. It occurs no where else in the New Testament than in the places which have been specified – The true sense of the word here is, therefore, to be found in the doctrine respecting the passover. That that was intended to be a sacrifice for sin is proved by the nature of the offering, and by the account which is everywhere given of it in the Old Testament. The paschal lamb was slain as a sacrifice. It was slain in the temple; its blood was poured out as an offering; it was sprinkled and offered by the priests in the same way as other sacrifices; see Exo 23:18; Exo 34:25; 2Ch 30:15-16. And if so, then this passage means that Christ was offered as a sacrifice for sin – in accordance with the numerous passages of the New Testament, which speak of his death in this manner (see the note at Rom 3:25); and that his offering was designed to take the place of the paschal sacrifice, under the ancient economy.

For us – For us who are Christians. He died in our stead; and as the Jews, when celebrating their paschal feast, put away all leaven, so we, as Christians, should put away all evil from our hearts, since that sacrifice has now been made once for all.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

1Co 5:7-8

Purge out therefore the old leaven.

The old leaven

I. Its nature and operation.

II. The imperative necessity of its removal. By repentance. That ye may be a new lump.

III. The means and motive–that we may enjoy Christ–our true passover–sacrificed for us. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

Leaven

represented 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 (Exo 12:39; Exo 13:6-9). The apostle spiritualised the ceremony. As 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 a 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. New does not signify quality, but time–recent. 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 draws forth others, and the holy breath passed over the whole community. (Prof. Godet.)

Old leaven to be purged

There is a test point about you somewhere. Perhaps it is pride; you cannot bear an affront; you will not confess a fault. Perhaps it is personal vanity, ready to sacrifice everything to display. Perhaps it is a sharp tongue. Perhaps it is some sensual appetite, bent on its unclean gratification. Then you are to gather up your moral forces just here, and, till that darling sin is brought under the practical law of Christ, you are shut out from Christs kingdom. (Bp. Huntington.)

All sin to be removed

If a physician were called to see a patient who had a cancer on his breast, the only thing to be done would be to cut it out from the roots. The physician, might give palliatives, so that the patient would have less pain, or he might make his patient believe it was no cancer, or forget that he had a cancer near his vitals; but if the physician were to do this instead of removing the evil, he would be a wicked man and the enemy of his patient. The mans case was such that the only favour which could be conferred upon him would be to cut out the cancer. Now all agree that sin is the great evil of the soul of man. Nothing can make man more spiritually happy here, or fit him for happiness hereafter, but the removal of sin from his nature. Sin is the plague-spot on the soul, which destroys its peace, and threatens its destruction unless removed. It is therefore certain that if the love of God were manifested towards man, it would be in turning man from sin which produces misery, to holiness which produces happiness. (J. B. Walker.)

The leaven of malice to be purged

It is said of the serpent, that he casts up all his poison before he drinks. It were to be much desired that herein we had so much serpentine wisdom as to disgorge our malice before we pray, to cast up all the bitterness of our spirits before we come to the sacrament of reconciliation.

Purging out the old leaven

A friend once described to me this process as he saw it in a carpenters shop in Nazareth. The carpenter would not allow him to witness the search in the house lest his presence should defile the home; but he allowed him to enter the shop and witness the search there. The man went about the work with a will; he was evidently thoroughly in earnest; he girded up his loins as if he had a days work before him, and then proceeded to search with the utmost zeal. Carefully and conscientiously he turned over every board, he moved all his tools, he swept out the whole place, he opened every drawer, looked into every cupboard; there was not a crevice or a cranny in the wall that was not inspected lest there might be a tiny crumb of leaven anywhere in the shop. As he drew towards the close of his search my friend suddenly heard him utter an exclamation of horror, and looking round he saw him standing as though he had seen something most alarming. If he had found a viper or a cockatrice he could not have been more horrified than he seemed to be. What was it? In the last corner that he had visited, under some shavings, he had come across a little canvas bag, and in this little bag there were a few crumbs of leavened bread; one of the workmen had left it on some former occasion. It was enough; it defiled the whole place. With the utmost possible gravity and solemnity, and with a most anxious expression of countenance as though it were a most critical and important business, the man took hold of two pieces of wood, and using them as a pair of tongs he raised up the bag, and holding it off at arms length, marched out of the shop and dropped the leavened crumbs, bag and all, into the centre of a fire that he had burning outside ready for such a contingency, and so he purged out the old leaven. (W. Hay Aitken, M. A.)

For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: therefore let us keep the feast.—

Christ our passover

I. The inference.

1. That sin has the true qualities of leaven.

(1) Offensive sourness. Nothing is so distasteful to God; indeed nothing can displease Him but sin. How can it be otherwise when it is professedly opposite to Divine justice? Even the conscience, which is Gods taster, finds it abominably loathsome: how much more God! Did God find sin in His angels? He tumbles them down out of heaven. Did He find sin in our first parents? He hurls them out of paradise. Yea, did He find our sins laid on the Son of His love? He spares Him not (Isa 53:5). The more loathsome we find our sins the nearer we come to the purity of the Holy One of Israel (Psa 45:7). What shall we say, then, to those who find no savour in anything but their sins? Let us, then, bate sin (Psa 97:10) and take heed of being leavened with it.

(2) Diffusiveness. It began with one angel and infected legions. It began with one woman and infected all mankind. Let it take hold of one faculty and it will infect soul and body. Let it seize on one person in a family and it will corrupt the whole house. From thence it spreads to the neighbourhood, and taints whole cities and regions (2Ti 2:7). Since, then, our wickedness is of so spreading a nature–

(a) How careful we should be to resist its very beginnings! It is much easier to keep the floodgates shut than to drain the lower grounds when they are once overflown.

(b) How wary we should be of joining the society of the infectious, whether in opinion or manners (1Co 5:11; Tit 3:10).

(c) How much it concerns all public persons in Church or State to improve their authority to the utmost for the prevention of vice, and the expurgation of leavened persons (Psa 71:4, Hebrews).

2. This leaven must be purged out if we would have any interest in Christ our passover. In vain should any Jew talk of keeping a passover to God if he would eat the lamb with leavened bread. In vain should any Christian talk of applying Christ to his soul while his heart willingly retains any of the leaven of any known sin (Psa 26:6).

II. The proposition.

1. That Christ is a passover. The word is taken from the time of the solemnity (Act 12:4); for the sacrifices offered in the solemnity (Deu 16:4); for the act of Gods transition (Exo 12:11); for the lamb to be offered and eaten (2Ch 35:11, and here).

(1) The lamb is the passover. Which may appear far-fetched. Here was a double passing over–that of the angel over Israel, that of Israel out of Egypt: both were acts, one of God, the other of men. The explanation is that the thing signed is usually put for the sign itself (Gen 17:13; 1Co 10:4). Now what a mercy was it for God to pass over Israel when He slew the Egyptian firstborn. For this they were indebted to the blood of the paschal lamb sprinkled on their doorposts. Had they eaten the lamb and not sprinkled the blood they had not escaped. The reality of this figure is that by Christs blood sprinkled on our souls we are freed from the vengeance of the Almighty. As then Israel were never to eat of the paschal lamb, but they were recalled to the memory of their deliverance, so neither may we ever behold this sacramental representation of Christs death but we should bethink ourselves of the infinite mercy of God in saving us.

(2) That Christ is that Paschal Lamb in regard to–

(a) Choice as to, first, nature. A lamb is noted for innocence and gentleness. Christ is the Lamb of God. What perfect innocence and admirable meekness He displayed (Isa 53:7). Secondly, quality. Any lamb would not serve: it must be a lamb without blemish. Could Christ have been capable of the least sin, so far from ransoming the world, He could not have saved Himself.

(b) Preparation in respect to, first, killing. The lamb to make a true passover must be slain: so there was a necessity that Jesus should die for us (Luk 24:25-26). Secondly, sprinkling his blood. Thirdly, roasting. So did the true Paschal Lamb undergo the flames of His Fathers wrath for our sins.

(c) Eating. Note, first, it was to be eaten with bitter herbs to teach us that we may not hope to partake of Christ without sensible disrelishes of nature, without true contrition. Secondly, the whole lamb must be eaten. Many a lamb did the Jews eat in the course of the year besides; these were halved and quartered as occasion served. Whosoever would partake of Christ must take the whole Christ. There are those who will be sharing and quartering Christ; one will allow His humanity, but not His Deity; another His prophetic character, but not His priesthood, &c. In vain do these partake of Christ while they thus set upon Him by piecemeal. (Bp. Hall.)

Christ our passover

I. The antecedent.

1. What is meant by Pascha? (Exo 12:26.) Passing over is, of itself, a thing indifferent; it is good or bad according to what passes or is passed over. If any good pass over us we are the losers; if any danger the gainers. Again, if we pass from better to worse it is a detriment; if from worse to better a benefit. This is a benefit. Evil–the destroying angel–passed over Israel. They passed out of Egypt well, but the Egyptians ill.

2. What is this to us? We live in a world of which Egypt is but a corner and was a type; our Pharaoh is the devil; Gods wrath is the destroying angel; death is our Red Sea through which all must pass, some well, some ill. Our abode is as dangerous as theirs; we need a Pascha to escape Gods wrath and to pass well over death. Their passover, again, was nothing to ours. Theirs was but the deliverance of one poor nation from a passing bodily danger; ours frees all mankind from the destruction of body and soul, and that for ever. And what comparison is there between Canaan and heaven whither Christ shall make us pass?

3. Who is it? A sacrificial lamb–the figure of Christ, the Lamb of God, who became our passover when He was offered to bear the sins of the world. What is sin but a transgression or passing over the duty set before us in the Law of God? But for it no destroyer would have power over us: Christ was a passover from first to last. His birth was a passing over from the bosom of His Father to the womb of His mother: His resurrection a passing over from death to life; His ascension a passing over from the world to the Father. But in His death God took over our sins from us and laid them upon Him.

II. The consequent. Let us keep the feast. A fast rather, one would think; but by His resurrection we know that Christ is well passed over, and so we may keep our feast with joy. And a double feast it is. By His death He made the destroyer pass over us; by His resurrection He makes death passable by us. In the sacramental feast we–

1. Remember Him our Sacrifice.

2. Apply the sacrifice to our salvation. (Bp. Andrewes.)

Christ our passover

I. We are in danger of destruction. The angel of wrath has commission to destroy all the workers of iniquity. This destruction is certain, fearful, and will come in the darkness at an hour we look not for it.

II. There is no other means of escape. We cannot bar our doors or windows against this minister of wrath. We cannot propitiate or resist him, or bear up under his avenging stroke.

III. Escape is provided by the blood of Christ.

1. This is the only means.

2. The efficacious means. The angel entered no door sprinkled with the blood.

3. It must be applied. It is not enough that it has been shed.

4. The application of this blood gives not only security, but a sense of safety.

Doubtless all degrees of confidence were felt by the Israelites. Some slept without anxiety; others trembled at every sound; others pressed their firstborn to their bosoms and longed for the morning. So with sinners sprinkled with the blood. All are secure, but the measure of their confidence is very different. The want of confidence arises from the want of faith.

IV. The passover secures entrance into Canaan. Christ not only delivers from death, but gives an abundant entrance into heaven.

V. The passover was to be commemorated as long as the old economy lasted. The death of Christ is to be commemorated till He come.

VI. The passover was celebrated with everything indicative of separation from Egypt. The old leaven was purged out. So the death of Christ binds us to holiness. What would have been thought of a Hebrew who, after such a deliverance, had clung to his fetters? (C. Hodge, D. D.)

Christ our passover

I. Christ is typified here under the paschal lamb. Read Exo 12:1-51. Note–

1. The victim–the lamb. No other creature could so well have typified Him who was holy, harmless, &c., and a sacrifice for sin.

(1) It was a lamb without blemish. And was not Jesus Christ even such? Born of the pure Virgin, begotten of the Holy Ghost, His soul was pure, and His life was the same. In Him was no sin. Ye who have known the Lord, say, can ye find any fault with your Saviour?

(2) A male of the first year. Then it was in its prime. And so our Lord had just come to the ripeness of manhood when He was offered. He did not give Himself to die for us when He was a youth, for He would not then have given all He was to be, nor in old age, when He was in decay. And, moreover, at His death, He cried with a loud voice, &c., a sign that His soul was strong within Him. And does not the thought rise up–if Jesus gave His all to me, should I not give my little all to Him?

2. The place where this lamb was to be killed. The first passover was held in Egypt, the second in the wilderness; but there were no more until Israel came to Canaan. And then (Deu 16:5) God no longer allowed them to slay the lamb in their own houses, but appointed a place for its celebration, viz., Jerusalem. In Jerusalem our Lamb was sacrificed for us; it was at the precise spot where God had ordained that it should be. If that mob at Nazareth had been able to compass His death, type and prophecy could not have been fulfilled.

3. The manner of its death. It was to be slaughtered, and its blood caught in a basin. Next it was to be roasted, but it was not to have a bone of its body broken. Now nothing but crucifixion can answer all these three things. Crucifixion has in it the shedding of blood–the hands and feet were pierced. It has in it the idea of roasting, which signifies a long torment. Moreover, not a bone was broken, which could not have been the case with any other punishment.

II. How we derive benefit from Him.

1. By having His blood sprinkled on us for our redemption. Note that the blood of the paschal lamb was not sprinkled on the threshold, but on the top of the door, on the side-post, for woe unto him who trampleth under foot the blood of the Son of God! tits blood must be on our right hand to be our constant guard, and on our left to be our continual support. It is not alone the blood of Christ poured out on Calvary that saves a sinner; it is that blood sprinkled on the heart. It is not enough to say He loved the world, and gave His Son; you must say, He loved me, and gave Himself for me. There is an hour coming when God will say, Angel of death, thou knowest thy prey. Unsheath thy sword. If we have the blood on us, when we see the angel coming, we shall smile at him. Bold shall I stand in that great day, &c.

2. Christ is not only a Saviour for sinners, but He is food for them after they are saved. We must live on Christ as well as by Christ. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Christ our passover

I. A lesson of safety.

1. Emerson says, Commit a crime and the earth is made of glass. It seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground such as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge and fox and squirrel and mole. You cannot recall the spoken word. You cannot wipe out the foot-track. You cannot draw up the ladder so as to leave no inlet or clue. That is no news. Be sure your sin will find you out is written in the Bible of the moral nature and in the Scriptures.

2. But man wants to know something more than Emersons philosophy can teach him. This is mans passionate question–Is there nothing which can come between himself and the doom of sin? The passover was Gods answer in type; Christ is Gods answer in reality. There was one hindrance on that fatal night that the death-angel could not pass–the blood of the lamb on the door-posts. The barrier which wards off the penalties for sin is the blood of Christ.

3. Only there must be personal appropriation of the atonement. It was not simply the lamb slain in general sacrifice that brought safety. And this involved faith in what God had said, and obedience correspondent to the faith. The application is evident.

II. A lesson of strength

1. Look at those Israelites. Their staffs are in their hands; their loins are girded, &c. Before them an exhausting march, behind them a sleepless night. But God has provided that they be strengthened. The slain lamb must be eaten. The Christian life is a pilgrimage. It is under burdens; it must meet conflict. But Christ is our passover for strength; we must subsist on Him. Thus in Christ shall there be strength for us. (Hom. Monthly.)

Christ our passover

We shall–

I. Trace the allusion. Note–

1. The victim.

(1) It was a lamb–the most gentle of creatures of the type.

(2) A male of the first year–that is, in its highest state of physical perfection. And Jesus was led to the altar in the flower of His age.

(3) Without blemish (Heb 9:13-14).

(4) The paschal lamb was previously selected and set apart four days before it was slain. The service required forethought and preparation, which suggests that the Lamb of God verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, and actually entered Jerusalem four days before He suffered.

(3) The point of dissimilarity is that the lamb was unconscious of its approaching fate. But Jests saw the end from the beginning. Yet He pressed forward with unbending resolution until He could say, It is finished.

2. The appropriation of the blood.

(1) The means of protection to Israel was the blood. Without this they had been equally exposed with the Egyptians. And what is it that affords security to the sinner against the more fearful judgments of the Almighty but the blood of the heavenly Lamb which was shed upon the Cross?

(2) But the blood of the paschal victim afforded no protection till it was sprinkled with a bunch of hyssop. And here we are reminded of the necessity of a believing application of the gospel remedy.

(3) The blood sprinkled answered the end of its application because of the Divine ordination. If the sacrifice of the Cross were merely the device of man, it would possess no virtue, but because it is of Divine origin and appointment it will ever prove the wisdom of God and the power of God.

(4) The blood of the victim was not to be cast upon the threshold, to be trodden under feet as a thing of nought. And beware how you treat the gospel remedy (Heb 10:28-29).

3. The ceremony of eating it.

(1) The flesh of the lamb was designed for food. And what says Christ? (Joh 6:53-57.)

(2) The whole lamb was to be eaten. And Christ must be received in all the extent of His official character and relations.

(3) It was to be eaten with bitter herbs and unleavened bread. The benefits of Christs redemption can only be enjoyed in connection with the exercise of that godly sorrow which worketh repentance. And the old leaven of malice and wickedness must be purged out, that we may keep the gospel feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

(4) It ,was also to be eaten in haste and in a departing posture. Christians, this is not your rest. Ye are strangers and pilgrims on the earth. Stand, therefore, having your loins girded about with truth, &c.

II. Examine the fact. Christ our passover is sacrificed for us–is slain not merely for our good–that we might have the benefit of His example and the confidence arising from His testimony–but in our room and place.

1. This principle characterised the paschal sacrifice. The lamb was virtually and in effect, if not strictly, a substitutionary victim. There was life for life. Herein is typified the death of Christ, by which a way has been opened for our escape from the doom to which we are exposed and our enjoyment of everlasting life. Hence the death of Christ is uniformly represented as the meritorious cause of our redemption. All the blessings of the gospel are ascribed to this as the means of their procurement–the reason of their bestowment–and the consecrated medium through which they flow. Pardon (Eph 1:7). Justification (Rom 5:9). Purity (Heb 9:13-14). Access to God (Heb 9:19). Victory over Satan (Rev 12:10-11). Peace and joy (Rom 5:1-2; Rom 5:11). Final introduction into the presence of God in heaven (Rev 7:14-15).

2. The fact, then, is one of no common character or trifling consequence. For if Christ was not sacrificed for us, I am left without a refuge, with no ground of confidence or of hope when anticipating the transactions of the last great day. But I cannot thus surrender my hope. (Essex Congregational Remembrancer.)

The Christian passover

I. The sacrifice of Christ is–

1. Deprecatory, or designed to ward off threatened judgment. Of this nature was the paschal sacrifice, by which the Israelites were protected from the destroying angel.

2. Expiatory, in which the innocent died for the guilty, and thus offered satisfaction for the sins of the world. On this ground God can justify the ungodly without relaxing the strictness of His law, infringing the truth of His word, or degrading the dignity of His throne.

3. Precatory. Such sacrifices were offered to secure the restoration of forfeited benefits, Hence the sacrifice of Christ is a redemption which not only delivers from merited punishment, but recovers every forfeited good.

4. Vicarious. Christ endured death not merely for our instruction, or that He might seal the truth of His doctrine with blood, and set us an example of the spirit with which we should suffer. No! If He suffered, it was for our sins, the just for the unjust.

5. Eucharistic. In sacrifices of this class the victim was eaten with thanksgivings. Of this kind was the passover; and Christ is the true paschal lamb, who has not only sacrificed His life, but now offers Himself in every promise and ordinance, to be received by penitent faith, as the living bread. This is particularly represented in His last supper.

II. The sacrifice of Christ a passover. Observe the correspondence between the type and antitype more particularly in–

1. The sprinkling of the blood. As the Israelites sprinkled the blood outside the door, it ought to appear that we are inwardly pure by our being outwardly holy.

2. The eating of the lamb, by which the bodies of the people were nourished and supported. The teachings of Christs Spirit satisfy the desire for spiritual knowledge; the joys and consolations of His love satiate the hungry desires after happiness; and the fulness of His spotless mind breathed into our souls meets the vast capacity of our nature; we are strengthened with all the might of God, and grow up into Him in all things.

3. The consequent deliverance.

III. The manner in which we must celebrate the Christian passover. Let there be–

1. Purity. Purge out the old leaven. Every one who would receive Christ as his Saviour, and receive worthily His supper, should put away the old leaven. The leaven of the Sadducees was error, that of the Pharisees was hypocrisy; these must be purged out; so must the old leaven of every besetment and sin.

2. Compunction, typified by the bitter herbs with which the paschal lamb was to be eaten, and which fitly describe the sorrow of a broken spirit. Without eating these bitter herbs we shall never feel the appetite of strong desire which hungers after Christ, nor taste the sweetness of His salvation.

3. Sincerity. We must embrace Christ, not merely that we may escape from future condemnation, but with sincere desire to enjoy Him savingly, to know Him experimentally, to love Him supremely, to submit to Him cheerfully, and devote ourselves to Him entirely.

4. Unreservedness, i.e., Christ must be taken wholly. Every family, under the law, was required to sacrifice a lamb, and that family must use or burn it; not even a bone was to be broken. So every soul needs a full Christ for himself–all His power to save; all His merit to cleanse; all His wisdom to guide; all His grace to invigorate; and all His sacred presence to fill the soul and constitute its heaven.

5. Promptitude. The Israelites partook of the passover in haste, their shoes on their feet, and their staves in their hands. Now, as everything depends on the present moment, receive Christ in haste. Just now, What thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.

6. Joy. The Jews kept their passover as a season of great joy, because instituted in memory of their greatest deliverance. So should the Christian commemorate the death of his Lord as the greatest deliverance earth ever saw or heaven ever witnessed. (W. Atherton.)

Christ our passover

I propose to present some of the shapes in which this destroying angel appears, and, by Christ our Redeemer, is dismissed. But, first, I must meet one or two objections. Some may think this passing over, by the destroying angel, of a part of the world–that part, namely, visited by the light and salvation of the gospel–seems partial and unequal. To this I can only answer, God proceeds in His revelation as He does in all His providence. We feel Gods goodness; and for His equity our inmost conviction and highest intuition stands voucher. We might ask why God has made one of His creatures an angel, and another a worm; why He has caused one to dwell under the tropic line, and another at the frozen pole; why He has ordained one to be born of a poor, and another of a prosperous parentage; why, for thousands of years, He delayed discoveries so important to darkened and suffering humanity, such as the press, the compass, the bright sky-marks of a trackless voyage, or the ether-breath under which the piercing knife is painless. Enough that, at length, we have these passovers of the Divine mercy. Enough, above all, that we have in Christ the chief passover of the keenest agonies of the human heart. But this doctrine of the passover, marvelled at by the sceptical, is resented by the proud, fancying they are unwilling to receive such gratuity. They would emancipate themselves from the miseries that assail human life; they would slay the monsters of danger for themselves; nor superfluously accept a heaven they have not earned. Ah! poor pride, empty claim of independence, infatuated denial of that grace of God which is the source of all we have or enjoy! Truly, we should have begun sooner to sign off and separate, if we meant to complain of the free grace and unmerited favour of God. It is too late. We are baptized in goodness and immersed in love from our infancy. For all things, temporal or spiritual, we are beggars, dependent on God. But it is important to observe that this passover is no Contradiction or exemption of true morality. It is no passover for our exertions of virtuous fidelity. It only modifies the character of our virtue to exalt and refine it. For that show of wisdom in will-worship, which the apostle rebukes, it substitutes the at once gentler and holier virtue of that devotion to God, to right and duty, which Christ the passover inspires. Indeed there is nothing immoral or dangerous to character in the doctrine of the text. The passover, at Christs bidding, of the destroying angel, is for no license, but for our sanctity. For the contemplation of that sacrifice, producing this passover, stirs affections in the breast from which flow sweeter virtues and more winning charms of spontaneous worth than all the self-confidence of sages and all the austerities of the stoic. Christ our passover, by His Spirit, stimulates us to leave the bondage of our oppressive sins. Thus, seeing the idea of Christ the passover, not as a mere figure of rhetoric, but, beyond all objections, resting on a foundation of eternal truth, we may consider its practical applications: for we, as much as captive Jew or old Gentile, need the Divine passover. The destroying angel comes in many ways to close in a struggle with our safety and peace.

1. As we meditate in solitude or muse by the wayside he often springs upon us. Sometimes, a gigantic spectre of doubt, he fearfully overhangs our thoughts and duskily obscures our path. He darkly queries with us whether all these spiritual things which we, in our words of fine discourse, make such account of, are not mere imagination and surmise. The shining mansions above fade away into mist and vacuity; and temples and closets, songs and supplications, turn to a vain pretence or a hypocritical mockery. But Christ the passover comes through His Spirit to make the heavenly glory shine again on the world, and gleam through our thoughts by His truth.

2. Again, in the gloomy and menacing shape of remorse, comes the destroying angel. He arrays before us all our wrong-doings and omissions of duty. He throws in our face all the shortcomings of the past, He stings our memory into the recollection of unworthiness we had forgotten. He lifts his ghostly, resistless hand, to cast us down into hopeless dejection over the remaining sin that clings to our nature, and into utter despair of the mercy of God. But Christ appears with His look of kindness; He speaks the pardoning love of God, and the destroying angels condemnation is silenced.

3. In the shape of a mourner, too, as well as a doubter and accuser, comes the destroying angel. He sits by the fireside, at the table, and the grave, when dear objects have gone, and raises a miserable cry that all comfort and joy and reciprocity of affection are gone and lost with them. But Christ comes, and the destroying angel passes over. The Cross of Christ rises in sight. The sepulchre of Christ discloses its broken door. Now grief may do its worst. We are superior to it. It can lay waste the earth, and commit havoc in the abodes of men; but all its desolations are more than repaired. Christ is our passover, for He presents God as our Father. Now no father wishes his children to die; least of all the real Father, the Father of spirits, who hath power to give His children life. Therefore death, the huge but hollow semblance, must pass over. Christ hath taught us that we can love God, and how to love Him. But love is a bond of endurance according to all the ability of both its subject and object; with God it is a bond of immortality. Therefore death, with his mere masque and presumption of tyranny, must pass over. Matter ceases to be all. Knowledge, love, will, becomes all. The vast creation becomes but the theatre, wherein the intelligences which the Great Parent for ever inspires act out their thoughts and affections. (C. A. Bartol.)

The Christian passover

Christ our passover is sacrificed for us. The human mind is never more elevated with joy than in the case of those who have just escaped some great danger. Almost all our strong feelings and perceptions are due to strong contrasts; light is never so bright as when it arises out of darkness; health never so sweet as when it follows upon sickness; and safety never so precious as when realised in the presence of danger. Conceive the children of Israel on the night when the first passover was kept, standing with their staves in their hands and their shoes upon their feet, eating their last meal in the house of bondage. Who was there that did not feel, as on no previous occasion, the blessed security of being in covenant with God? Would not the consciousness of the awful danger that was abroad deepen and solemnise that sense of security? We say, Let us keep the feast. We understand this to be something more than an exhortation. It was a command to the Israelites of the most positive kind. God intended to distinguish them by an act of special mercy from the Egyptians; but this distinction was all made to hinge upon their compliance with the directions about the paschal lamb. If it be possible to conceive an Israelite so infatuated as to neglect those directions, we need not tell you what the consequences would have been. How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation? Oh! beware, I earnestly beseech you, beware of trifling in a case like this! Recollect, it is not a vain thing for you; because it is your life; it is the life of your souls. Shall we put this matter to the proof? We have described the feelings of the Jewish family while keeping the passover: there were mingled feelings–fear of the danger which they knew to be so near, gratitude to God who had spread the shield of His protection over them, and reverence for that mysterious blood which God had appointed as the distinguishing mark between those whom He would protect and those whom He would destroy. Now on this great day of the feast does your state of mind resemble theirs? Have you a sense of the nearness of appalling danger? No one can estimate the greatness of the deliverance wrought who has not felt, personally and deeply, the greatness and the nearness of the danger incurred. What was it that made the feast of the passover, at its first celebration, so intensely interesting to the Israelites? what, but the knowledge that the angel of death was at their very doors? They never kept the passover so heartily afterwards; they never afterwards had such a sense of deliverance from actual and imminent danger. (J. E. Hankinson, M. A.)

Our passover

I. Our passover sacrifice. The death of the paschal lamb saved at least one life in the household, and was the security of them all. Because it died, the firstborn did not die. The blood sheltered and preserved; and the angel passed over the household whose posts were tinctured with the ruby pledge of safety. And so, distinctly and clearly in the apostles mind here, the one conception of Christs death which answers to this metaphor is that which sees in Christs death a death of expiation; though not so distinctly as in other instances, a death of substitution. Because He dies, the destruction and punishment does not fall on the man who is housed behind the shelter of His blood.

II. Our passover feast. The slaying of the lamb provided in the old ritual the material for the feast; and, says Paul, in effect, so it is with us. The Christ who has died as a sacrament is the nourishment and food of our souls. We live on the sacrifice; let us keep the feast. What Paul is thinking about here is the whole Christian life which he compares to that passover feast. And his exhortation, Let us keep the feast, is, in fact, first of all, this–Do you Christian men and women see to it that your whole life be a participation in the sacrifice of the slain Lamb. Except ye eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man, ye have no life in you. And how are we to feed upon a slain Christ? By faith, by meditation, by continual carrying in grateful hearts, in vivid memories, and in obedient wills, the great sacrifice on which our hopes build. Let your minds feed upon His truth, and your love feed upon His love; let your wills feed upon His commandment; let your consciences feed upon His great cleansing sacrifice; let your whole hopes fasten on His faithful promise; and bring your spirits in all their parts into contact with His Spirit, and the life will pass from Him to you. As our Christian life should be all a feast of continual participation in Christ, so it should be all a memorial of Him. The passover was the perpetual calling to mind year by year of that great deliverance. What tenacity of national memory is shown in that continual observance of it till this very day! So should we ever carry in our remembrance the dying of the Lord Jesus, and whether we eat or drink, or whatever we do, do all in memory of Him, moulding all our lives by the pattern and for the sake of His dying love.

III. Our Christian purifying. Purge out the old leaven. Think of the scrupulous Jewish householder the night before the passover, with his lighted candle, searching through every corner of his house, where there was any chance of a bit of leavened matter being concealed. That is the sort of thing we have to do. Better cultivate a conscience that is over-scrupulous than one that is over-indulgent. And, mind, it is you that have to do it. God will do it if you ask Him; God will help you to do it if you will let Him; but God cannot do it without you, and you cannot do it without God. Therefore, two things, a large part of our cleansing must be our submitting ourselves to His cleansing and cultivating the faith which unites us to the cleansing power. Second, a part of our cleansing must be in reliance upon His Divine help, ourselves taking the brush into our hands, and ourselves scrubbing vigorously till we get rid of the pollution. And, beyond that, remember further, that this self-purifying is an absolutely indispensable condition of your keeping the feast. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God is but the same teaching as that of my text: Purge out the old leaven, that ye may keep the feast. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

Christ our passover

Observe–

1. Gods greatest mercies to His Church are attended with the greatest plagues upon their enemies. The passover was the salvation of Israel and ruin of Egypt.

2. God provides for the security of His people, before He lays His wrathful hand upon their adversaries.

I. Christ is our passover. Christ is only designated in the New Testament as a Lamb, as being significant of the innocence of His person, the meekness of His nature, His sufficiency for His people.

1. The design of the passover was to set forth Christ. All the sacrifices which were appointed by God as parts of worship, were designed to keep up the acknowledgment of the fail of man, and to support his faith in the promised Redeemer. Christ is the real accomplishment of all; He is our mystical, spiritual, heavenly, perfect Passover. And, indeed, if we consider all the circumstances in the institution, they seem not worthy of the wisdom of God if they be not referred to some other mystery: and what can that be but the Redeemer of the world represented thereby? Why should so much care be in the choice and separation of a lamb? How can we think God should appoint so many ceremonies in it, lay such a charge for the strict observation of them, if He designed it not as a prop to their faith, a ground to expect a higher and spiritual deliverance by the blood of the Messiah, as well as a trial of their obedience, a memorial of their temporal deliverance, and a sign for the direction of the angel in the execution of his commission?

2. The believers in that time regarded it as a type of the Messiah (Heb 11:28).

3. The paschal lamb was the fittest to represent Christ. It was a sacrifice and a feast–a sacrifice in the killing it and sprinkling the blood, a feast in their feeding upon it. It represents Christ as a victim satisfying God, as a feast refreshing us; He was offered to God for the expiation of our sins, He is offered to us for application to our souls. The truth of this proposition will appear–

(1) In the resemblance between the paschal lamb and the Redeemer.

(a) A lamb is a meek creature. It hurts none; it hangs not back when it is led to the slaughter–no greater emblem of patience to be found among irrational creatures. How strange was our Saviours humility in entering into such a life! How much more stupendous in submitting to such a death, as shameful as His life was miserable! From this paschal lamb typifying the Redeemer the Jews might have learned, not to expect a Messiah wading through the world in blood and slaughter, and flourishing with temporal victories and prosperity, but one meek, humble, and lowly, suiting the temper of the lamb which represented Him in the passover.

(b) It was to be a lamb without blemish (Exo 12:5). It was to be entire in all its parts, sound, without bruise, scab, or maim; and the reason why it was separated four days before the killing of it was that they might have time to understand whether it had any spot or defect in it. So is the Lamb of God; He was holy in the production of His nature as well as in the actions of His life. From the first moment of His conception He was filled with all supernatural grace according to the capacity of His humanity; His union with the Divine nature secured Him against the sinful infirmities of our nature, and made all supernatural perfections due to Him, whereby He might be fitted for all holy operations. As He was that holy thing in His birth (Luk 1:35), so He was righteous to the last moment of His life. The law of God was within His heart, signified by the tables of the law laid up in the ark.

(c) The lamb was to be chosen, and set apart three days, and killed the fourth in the evening (Exo 12:6). Our Saviour was separate from men, manifested Himself in the work of His prophetical office three years and upwards, before He was offered up as a sacrifice in the fourth year, after He had been solemnly inaugurated in the exercise of His office. It was ordered by God to he killed in the evening, to signify the sacrifice of the Messiah in the evening of the world. He was crucified at the end of the second age of the world, the age of the law, and the beginning of the third age, that of the gospel, which is called in Scripture the last times (Heb 1:2).

(d) The lamb was roasted with fire whole (Exo 12:4; Exo 12:8-9), not sodden. To put them in mind of the hardship they endured in the brick-kilns of Egypt, and as a type of the scorching sufferings of the Redeemer. Probably alluding to this roasting of the paschal lamb. He bore the wrath of that God who is a consuming fire, without any water, any mitigation or comfort in His torments. It may note also the gradual rising of the suffering of Christ. As His exaltation was not all at one time, but by degrees, so were His sufferings, by outward wounds, cutting reproaches, and inward agonies.

(e) Not a bone of the paschal lamb was to be broken (Exo 12:46). This was fulfilled in our Saviour (Joh 19:36). Death had not a full power over Him, He was not broken to pieces by the greatness of His sufferings.

(2) There is a resemblance in the effects or consequents of the passover.

(a) The diverting the destroying angel by the sprinkling of the blood upon the posts, to be a mark to the angel to spare the firstborn of such houses, was the main end in the institution (Exo 12:12-13). It is only under the warrant of this blood that we can be safe. The Redeemers blood shed for us, and sprinkled on us, preserves our souls to eternal life. As the destroying sword did not touch the Israelites, so condemning wrath shall not strike those that are under the protection of it: death shall have no power over them.

(b) Upon this succeeded that liberty God had designed for them (Exo 12:31). As it secured them from death, so it was the earnest of their deliverance, and broke the chains of their slavery. The death of Christ is the foundation of the full deliverance of His people, and the earnest of the fruition of the purchased and promised inheritance. This was the conquest of Pharaoh, upon which soon after followed his destruction. The Israelites slavery ended when their sacrifices were finished; the efficacy of this Divine passover delivers men from a spiritual captivity.

(c) After this passover they do not enjoy their liberty, but begin their march to Canaan, the promised and delightful land. So by the merit of the sacrifice of Christ the true Israelite turns his face from earth to heaven, from a world that lies in wickedness to an inheritance of the saints in light, and travels towards Canaan. Is Christ called our passover? Then–

1. The study of the Old Testament is advantageous. The Old Testament delivers the types, the New interprets them: the Old presents them like money in a bag, the New spreads them and discovers the value of the coin; the Israelites in the Old felt the weight of the ceremonies, believers in the New enjoy the riches of them.

2. Upon what a slender thread doth the doctrine of transubstantiation hang! Christ is here called the passover–was the paschal lamb therefore substantially the body of Christ?

3. The ancient Jews were under a covenant of grace. Christ was the end, the spirit, the life of their sacrifices. The passover, rock, sacrifices, manna, were the swaddling-bands wherein He was wrapped. They had the sun under a cloud, we the Sun at noon-day in His glory.

4. In the security Christ procures. The destroying angel was not to enter into any sprinkled house, no passage was afforded to him. The wrath of God, or the malice of the devil can have no power over them that are sprinkled with the blood of Christ. In the efficacy. The blood of the lamb was but a sign of that deliverance of the Israelites, but could not purge their defiled consciences; but the blood of our Lamb hath merited our salvation, can cleanse our consciences from dead and condemning works to serve the living God. This comfort is the greater by how much the tyrant we are delivered from is more dreadful that Pharaoh, whose design is not only like his to afflict our bodies but tumble our souls and bodies into the same hell with himself. It is from the wrath of God our passover hath delivered us; and what is the anger of Pharaoh to the fury of an offended Deity? It is true deliverance is yet but begun; it is not yet perfect; miseries and spiritual contests arc to be expected.

Pharaoh will pursue, but shall not overtake; death shall not swallow up those who are sprinkled with this holy blood.

1. Thankfully remember this passover.

2. Inquire whether He be our passover. He is a passover, but is He a lamb eaten by us, owned by us? He is ours by the gift of God, but is He ours by the acceptation of our souls? This Lamb is ours in the liberty, life, glory, and rest He hath purchased, when we are like Him, when we learn of Him.

3. Have faith in the blood of Christ. The killing the lamb signified the death of Christ, the sprinkling the blood signified the application of it by faith. It was not the blood contained in the veins of the lamb or shed upon the ground, that was the mark of deliverance, but sprinkled upon the posts: nor is it the blood of Christ circulating in His body or shed upon the Cross, which solely delivers us, but as applied by faith to the heart. That was sprinkled upon every house that desired safety, and this upon every soul that desires happiness. Had an Israelites family neglected this it had felt the edge of the angels sword; the lamb had not availed him, not by a defect of the sacrifice, but by their own negligence or contempt of the condition. Or had they used any other mark, they had not diverted the stroke: no work, no blood but the blood and sufferings of the Redeemer, can take away the sin of the world.

4. Let us leave the service of sin. The Israelites after this passover did no more work at the brick-kilns of Egypt. They ceased to be Pharaohs slaves, and began to be the Lords freemen.

II. Christ is a sacrifice. I shall lay down some propositions for the illustrating of this doctrine.

1. Sacrifices were instituted as types of Christ.

(1) They were instituted by God.

(2) No other reason can be rendered of the institution of them, but as typical of the great sacrifice of the Redeemer.

(3) Christ did really answer to these types.

2. The sacrifices thus instituted were of themselves insufficient, and could not expiate sin; they must, therefore, receive their accomplishment in some other. But being shadows by their institution, they could make nothing perfect (Heb 10:1; Heb 10:11).

(1) It was not consistent with the honour of God to be contented with the blood of a beast for an expiation of sin. How could there be in it a discovery of the severity of His justice, the purity of His holiness, or the grandeurs of His grace?

(2) They have no proportion to the sin of man. The sin of a rational creature is too foul to be expiated by the blood of an irrational creature.

(3) The reiteration of them shows their insufficiency. They were rather a commemoration of sin, and confessions of it, than expiations of any–rather accusers than atoners.

(4) God had often spoke slightingly of them. He resembles them to the cutting off a dogs neck, when done with an unholy heart (Isa 66:3). He professeth He had no delight in them (Psa 40:6). And what is said of this may be said of all our duties and performances, the staves upon which men naturally lean for acceptation of their persons.

3. Such a sacrifice, therefore, is necessary for a sinful creature. No creature can be such a sacrifice. As the apostle argues, If righteousness be by the law, then was Christ dead in vain (Gal 2:21).

(1) What is a sacrifice for sin must be pure and sinless. God will not accept a defiled offering.

(2) An infinite sacrifice is necessary for a sin in some respects infinite, for every sin entrencheth upon the honour of an infinite God.

(3) Necessary in regard of the justice of God, which is an immutable and infinite perfection of the Divine essence.

4. Christ only was fit to be this sacrifice.

5. It was necessary in regard of His office of priesthood, that He should be a sacrifice.

6. Jesus Christ, then, was a sacrifice in His human nature.

7. That whereby this sacrifice was sanctified, was the Divine nature. Every sacrifice was sanctified by the altar (Mat 23:19).

8. Upon the sacrifice of Christ all His other sacerdotal acts depend, and from thence they receive their validity for us.

(1) This was the ground of His ascension and entrance into heaven as a priest. The high priest was not to enter within the veil without blood.

(2) This is the foundation of His intercession. There are two functions of Christs priesthood–oblation and intercession.

(3) This is the foundation of all the grace any have. The conveyance of all the gracious love of God is through this channel. In redemption by His blood the riches of the grace of God abounded, and that with the marks of the highest wisdom (Eph 1:7-8).

III. Christ was sacrificed for us– when joined with suffering for another, always signifies in anothers stead and place; it is so used Rom 5:7. This will be cleared if we consider–

1. That Christ could not be a sacrifice for Himself. The Messiah was to be cut off, but not for Himself (Dan 9:26). He needed no sacrifice for Himself.

2. Sacrifices implied this. They had a relation to the offerer, and were substituted in his place.

3. The whole economy of Christ is expressed in the whole Scripture to have a relation to us. All things preparatory to His sufferings were for us.

4. Our sins were imputed to Him as to a sacrifice. Christ the just is put in the place of the unjust to suffer for them (1Pe 3:18). Christ is said to bear sin as a sacrifice bears sin (Isa 53:10; Isa 53:12). His soul was made an offering for it.

(1) It cannot be understood of the infection of sin. The filth of our nature was not transmitted to Him.

(2) But that our sin was the meritorious cause of His punishment. All those phrases that Christ died for our sins (1Co 15:3), and was delivered to death for our offences (Rom 4:23), clearly import sin to be the meritorious cause of the punishment Christ endured: sin cannot be said to be the cause of punishment but by way of merit. If Christ bad not been just He had not been capable of suffering for us.

(3) Our sins were charged upon Him in regard of their guilt. Our sins are so imputed to Him as that they are not imputed to us (2Co 5:19), and not imputed to us, because He was made a curse for us (Gal 3:13).

(a) The apostle distinguishes His second coming from His first by this (Heb 9:28), He shall appear the second time without sin unto salvation.

(b) He cannot be well supposed to suffer for our sins, if our sins in regard of their guilt be not supposed to be charged upon Him. How could He die, if He were not a reputed sinner?

5. The sufferings of this sacrifice are imputed unto us. He took our sins upon Himself, as if He had sinned, and gave us the benefit of His sufferings, as if we had actually suffered.

The redounding of these sufferings to us, ariseth–

1. From the dignity of the person undertaking to be a sacrifice for us, and the union of our nature with his.

2. From union with this infinite Person by faith. All believers have a communion with Him in His death (2Co 5:14).

If Christ be a sacrifice–

1. We may see the miserable blindness of the Jews in expecting the Messiah as a temporal conqueror.

2. If Christ be a sacrifice, it shows the necessity of a satisfaction to the justice of God, and a higher satisfaction than men could perform.

3. Christ as sacrificed, is the true and immediate object of faith.

4. It is no true opinion that Christ died only for an example.

5. Comfort to every true believer. He was sacrificed for us. God counted Him a sinner for our sakes, that He might count us righteous for His sake.

(1) As Christ hath been sacrificed for them, so He has been accepted for them.

(2) This sacrifice unites all the attributes of God together for a believers interest.

(3) This sacrifice is of eternal virtue.

(4) The effects of this sacrifice, therefore, are perfect, glorious, and eternal.

6. We must then lay hold on this sacrifice.

7. We must be enemies to sin, since Christ was a sacrifice for it. Unless sin die in us, we cannot have an evidence that this sacrifice was slain for us. (Thomas Hacket.)

The Christian passover

It is remarkable that this is Pauls only allusion to the Jewish Passover. Paul has been commanding the Corinthian Christians to cast out from their midst a grossly profligate person. He then desires to enjoin upon them to get rid of corruption in themselves as well as in others, and corruption suggests the thought of leaven, secretly, silently, victoriously spreading through the mass. And leaven suggests–in his way of going off at a tangent–the thought of the scrupulous search of the Jewish householder for it in his house in preparation for the paschal feast; and that suggests the paschal feast itself. And so without explanation, and quite incidentally, he drops, as it were by the way, this great thought.

I. First, then, paul thought of Christs work as a sacrifice. It was a sacrifice, though of a very singular kind. The passover lamb was slain by the head of each household. It was offered upon no altar; it was prepared by no priest, but for all that it was a sacrifice, and that of an expiatory character. You may call it a gross, low, infantile conception. Be it so! It is the conception of the rite at all events. Paul lays his hand upon that sacrifice, and he says it meant Jesus Christ. So he implies two things, both of which are gravely contested by many to-day: the one that, whatsoever the date of these Jewish sacrifices, they had not only a symbolical but a prophetic aspect; and the other that the centre-point of their prophetic message in reference to Jesus Christ was His death, wherein and whereby men were free from the penal consequences of death in its sternest sense. Is there any theory about Christ and His death which warrants the application of these words our passover to Him, except one which frankly and fully recognises the sacrificial and atoning aspect of His death? Paul may have been right or he may have been wrong. That is what he believed, at any rate. But I have yet another step to take. Pauls Master took precisely the same point of view. I claim Christ as the first who taught us that He was our passover. And I point to the rite that He established as the great standing token that His conception of His work was the same as the apostles. Now I do not want to pin you down to any doctrine of an atonement, but I do want to lay upon your hearts this, which I for one believe with all my heart, that no conception of Christ, His nature, His work, His life and death, is full toned and in accordance with His own teaching which does not proclaim Christ is our passover. And I ask you, Is that the Christ that you know and the Christ that you trust?

II. If Christ is our passover our lives will be a feast. If He indeed has, as our passover, secured for us safety and liberty, then, of course, all life will take a new aspect. And if we recognise the fact that the Lamb slain is the Lamb in the midst of the throne, administering Providence and guiding the world and the Church, and ever present with each of us, if we trust Him, to bless and keep us, then a flush of gladness will be diffused over all life. Just as when the year turns, and the sunshine begins to gather power, even a grim landscape undergoes a subtle change, and is a prophet of the coming summer, so we, if Christ is our passover, will be possessed, in the fact and in the recognition of the fact, of a charm which, if it does not annihilate, at least modifies all burdens and troubles, and which will bring into any life that is true to it a deep, quiet, calm joy far more real, noble, blessed, and the ally of great thoughts and deeds, than the surface ripple of laughter and of mirth which men baptize by that great name. But, brethren, remember that the words are a commandment, and that implies that the realisation of this gladness, which is the natural fruit of the conception of Christs death of which I have been speaking, depends very largely upon ourselves. I do not think Christian people as a whole realise as much as they ought to do the sin of sorrow and the duty of rejoicing. But that is not all which is conveyed in this thought of the feast which life becomes when Christs death is recognised as our expiation. There is further involved the duty of participating in the flesh of the sacrifice. You have to feed upon the Christ who is sacrificed for you, or the sacrifice is of no avail. What Christ is it that nourishes a man? The Christ that taught great and wonderful things? Yes, in some degree. The Christ that walked before men, the sweet Example of all duty, and the sum of whatsoever things were lovely and of good report? Yes, in some degree, but I believe that the Christ who feeds the whole man, and who, being partaken of, gives immortal life to the man who feeds on Him, is the Christ who died and gave His flesh and His blood for the life of the world. Physiologists will tell you that it is possible to feed a man on foods which have so little power of supplying all the constituents necessary for the human body that he may eat them and be starved. And there is a version of the Christ which, if men live upon, they will live a very feeble life, and, as I believe, will come near starving.

III. Lastly, if we feed upon Christ our passover we shall be pure. There is no way of getting thoroughly rid of the old leaven except the one way of taking Christ for the food of our souls. If He is our bread as well as our sacrifice, then we are bound to serve Him in righteousness. What did He die to deliver us from? Sin. What did He die to make us? Pure and righteous. There is no reason for any man believing that Jesus Christ is his passover unless He is that mans purity. The obligation, the inclination, and the ability to cleanse our- selves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit are inseparably wrapped up with the conception of His death as the means of our life and safety. The Jew had first to cast out the leaven, then to partake of the passover. We have a better and an easier task; first to partake of the passover and then to cast out the leaven. Do not put the cart before the horse, as some of you do, and try to make yourselves better, in order that you may have a right to a share in Christ. Begin with eating the bread, and then in the strength of that meat, rejoice all your days, and purge yourselves from all iniquity. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

Christ our passover

The Rev. Dr. Bowman, of the Church Missionary Society, was enabled to erect a place of worship in connection with the Calcutta Leper Asylum, and an aged woman, over eighty-two years old, was there led by the preacher to the Divine Healer. A sceptic asked her if the many gods and goddesses of her own religion would not suffice, but she had an answer ready for him: None of them died for me.

Christs sacrifice a quickening truth

The sacrifice of innocence for guilt is the profoundest truth which God has ever exemplified in a human life. Yet not mere truth, but duty, not theology, but practice, is the end of revelation. Truth is not revealed or offered by prophets, Saviour, or apostles for truths sake, but always for upbuilding in righteousness. There is no more dangerous falsehood abroad than the assertion that truth should be sought for its own sake. Yet a vast deal of this truth-seeking and hearing is an intellectual voluptuousness, a spiritual self-gratification, a selfish indulgence of pleasurable emotions, just as deadly to the soul as bodily sensualism. It is as truly immoral to seek truth out of mere love of knowing it as it is to seek money out of love to gain. It is an idolatry–setting of the worship of abstractions and generalities in the place of the living God. Truth is valuable to the degree that it makes us true. Truth that is not utilised as the Divine energy of ones being, that is not converted into aggressive goodness, is a smiting curse. Truths not taken into the soul, as fuel for the Spirit of God to kindle into a burning enthusiasm for service, are as virtueless in character-building and spiritual empowering qualities as so many bricks. Further, it is ruinous to have our good impulses quickened by truth, as it is manifested in the sacrificial life and death of Jesus, and then allow those impulses to die without being wrought out in Divine being and doing. The knowledge that Christ sacrificed Himself on our behalf will rise up in judgment as our condemnation if we evade sacrificing ourselves for the same end for which He offered up His life.

Let us keep the feast

Contemplate the paschal feast–

I. In its relation to the Lords Supper. I do not suppose that the apostle was actually referring to this, but he was speaking of that experience, to the necessity and importance of which our sacramental feast bears witness.

1. The word suggests–

(1) The idea of a sacred season, and thus the old distinction is no longer to be drawn in our lives between things secular and things sacred: all is to be sanctified.

(2) Enjoyment. Our life is to be a season of continuous festivity. In both these senses our lives are to be festal, and this holy ordinance has been appointed to keep ever before our minds the true idea of what our lives are to be.

2. Observe that–

(1) The Jewish passover was a continuous commemoration of a deliverance wrought out for Israel. So the Holy Communion is designed to be a perpetual remembrance of that wonderful deliverance wrought out for us on the Cross of Calvary. Human gratitude is apt to be short-lived, and only too many of us get out of the sight of the Cross. This feast was instituted by one who knew our human frailty, so that should we forget how much we owe to His dying love we may straightway be brought back again full in view of His Cross, and obtain deeper and clearer apprehensions of the benefits that redemption brings within our reach.

(2) The paschal feast was furnished by the very lamb whose blood secured the safety of the household. So Jesus, the victim, is Himself the feast.

(a) If the only object of the Holy Communion had been a commemoration, it would have been enough that the bread should be broken and the wine should be poured forth; for there was nothing in the fact of our Lords crucifixion to answer to the eating and the drinking. The lesson, then, is that as our physical bodies are continuously dependent upon the material world, so the new life of the human spirit is constantly dependent upon a Divine Supply.

(b) But in order to receive real benefit something more is needed than the mere partaking of the consecrated elements. The outward act is designed to bring your faith to bear upon the thought that God is then and there through Christ communicating the Divine life to you; and as you bring your faith to bear upon that act of Gods love towards you, you will be indeed a communicant.

(c) But the question may occur, What is meant by the words, This is My body, and this is My blood? The words must be used in a spiritual sense. For if we could have partaken of Christs material body and blood at the time of the crucifixion that would have produced no spiritual change. The substance so received would have simply assimilated itself to our bodily tissues in the usual way. Similarly, if a supernatural act of transubstantiation were to transpire at that holy table the mere reception of these would leave us, so far as our spiritual condition is concerned, just where we were before.

II. As an emblem of the Christian life. It was–

1. The feast of safety. The destroying angel was passing through the land, but the Israelites feasted in safety, because they knew that they were safe under the blood-stained lintel. They did not hope or think about it; they knew they were safe, because they had Gods word for it. And if your life is to be a festal life you need a similar consciousness. Many religious people seem much more like keeping a funeral than a feast. They are always complaining of their doubts and fears. They are not quite clear as to whether they have sprinkled the blood, or, if they have done so, they do not take to themselves the full comfort which belongs to those who have; they dont rest upon the distinct declaration of eternal truth–I will pass over; He that believeth on the Son hath eternal life. We must thank ourselves for our miseries if we insist on doubting the Divine faithfulness.

2. A feast of deliverance. They were happy not only because they were safe, but because they were free. They were in the house of bondage still; but they felt the throbbings of national life, and their anticipations told them that, in spite of appearances, they were free. And it is even so with us. Rom 6:1-23. is just as true as Rom 5:1-21. The latter tells us about our justification; the former about our deliverance from the tyranny of sin. I dont say that you are to have no more temptation. The Israelites had not done with enemies when they crossed the sea. Indeed, they had hardly got out of Egypt before Amalek attacked them; and yon will not have gone very far along your spiritual journey before temptation will attack you. But it is a very different thing to be attacked by Amalek and to be kept in the slavery of Pharaoh. From the hand of Amalek they had to be delivered by the same God that had delivered them out of the power of Pharaoh. And even so now you are free in Christ you will have to guard your liberties by employing the same Divine power that set you free to defend you.

3. The feast of separation. The Egyptians were not allowed to keep it. Up to that time the Egyptians and the Israelites had lived as neighbours, but now there was a line of separation between them. If you have not sprinkled the paschal blood you have no right at the table of the Lord. Nor can you participate in that feast of life which the Christian is privileged to keep; for you belong to the world, and the world has no part in the paschal feast. And Christians cannot properly enjoy it unless they are content to be separate from the world. I meet with not a few Christians from whose life all happiness seems to have departed just for this reason. They are not willing to be separated, and so they cannot keep the feast.

4. The feast of purification. Not with the old leaven, &c. Careful search was to be made, and all that was leavened was to be excluded from their habitations. And here is a very important lesson. We may be delivered from the tyranny of sin, and yet how much of latent evil may still lurk within! But there is a Holy Spirit of burning who can and will consume the dross if we are only willing to be cleansed.

5. The feast of wayfaring men. They were to eat it in haste, with shoes on their feet, &c. And if you want to enjoy the passover you must realise that you are a wayfaring man, and shape your life accordingly. (W. Hay Aitken, M. A.)

The Christian feast

The text is justly supposed to have some reference to the institution, which has the same place under the gospel which the passover had under the law. The Lords Supper was intended–

I. As a memorial of the sufferings of Christ for His people. This we learn from the words of Jesus at its first institution, and that we are to remember Him particularly as suffering for our sins is evident from This is My body which is broken for you, &c. Show forth the Lords death till He come. It is to be looked upon, therefore, as a token of love, or memorial left by a friend at parting among his friends, that whenever they see it they may remember him. This remembrance of a suffering Saviour must be attended with–

1. Suitable affections.

2. Self-examination. Let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of this bread, &c.

II. As a badge of our Christian profession. Baptism is appointed for our initiation into the Christian Church at our first assuming that profession; and by partaking of this ordinance we declare our constancy in it, and that we do not repent of our choice nor desire to change our Master.

III. As a seal of the covenant of grace, both upon Gods part and upon ours.

1. It is a standing evidence, obvious to our senses, that God is unchangeably willing to stand to the articles on His part; that He is ready to give His Son and all His blessings to such as believe, as He is to give bread and wine as signs and seals of them.

2. As to our part in receiving these elements, we signify our hearty consent to the covenant of grace, and, as it were, set our seal to it to confirm it.

IV. As a communion of saints. Our sitting down at the same table, partaking of the same elements, and commemorating the same Lord, are very expressive of this communion, and have a natural tendency to cherish it. In such a posture we look like children of one family, fed at the same table upon the same spiritual provisions. Hence this ordinance has been frequently and justly called the communion (chap. 10:16, 17).

V. As a fellowship with god (1Jn 1:3). This communion consists–

1. In that intercourse which is carried on between God and His people.

2. In the community of property.

3. In the interchange of property. (S. Davies, A. M.)

The feast of joy

What is joy? The firstborn of love and the parent of peace–love, joy, peace. And what was the far end of all our Redeemers work on earth? That your joy may be full. And how can the Church reach to its deep things of privilege unless it takes the right vessel to the cistern and draw water with joy out of the wells of salvation? Let us ask, Why ought we to be happy in the resurrection of Christ? Because–

I. Our Lord is happy. From the moment of His rising neither His body nor His mind appear to have been subject to, or even capable of, pain. When He said, It is finished! His sufferings were over. Now in proportion as our sympathy is with Him, our heart will always make the tone of our mind. Be glad, then, because your Lord is glad. Jesus is not a Man of sorrows now. He is a Man of joys.

II. Truth has been vindicated. To a well-ordered mind it is a great satisfaction to see any truth thoroughly established. The resurrection of Christ must stand or fall on revelation. In the Old Testament it is involved in the types and prophecies. Our Lords own teaching showed it, and it was the mainspring of His whole life. And the apostles are emphatic–If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, &c. So that it is the end of all Divine truth; and the evidence is most exact and clear. The Bible is verified and the truth of Christianity placed beyond doubt.

III. The father has accepted the sacrifice of His Son. Christ was justified in the Spirit, which quickened Him. And in that He was justified, His atoning work is justified, and in that His atoning work is justified I am justified, and God Himself is justified to forgive me.

IV. Honour is put on the body. Some Christians, wishing to avoid the extreme into which they once ran, now disparage the body too much. But what is this body? The broken mirror of God, to be recast presently into a counterpart of the form of Jesus as He is now in glory–the temple walls of the Holy Ghost. This reflection is full of comfort. If the next world were to be peopled only with spirits, we might be called upon in vain to believe in the communion of saints. It would be almost impossible to realise anything so abstract; but now in our flesh we shall see God.

V. A warrant is given of a glorious resurrection. Where the Head is, there must the members be. The tomb is not dark now, for Jesus left a light; not degrading, for it has been dignified by fellowship with Him; not final, for it is open the other end. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)

The Eucharist

I. Its nature–a feast, because of–

1. The fellowship it affords.

2. The feelings it inspires.

3. The strength which it imparts.

II. Its requisites.

1. Love to man.

2. Sincerity and truth before God. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

The obligation of Christians to observe the Lords Supper

Let us keep this feast because–

I. Its obligation rests on the Redeemers dying command. An injunction is always rendered more binding–

1. When it comes from the lips of one we love, and who has shown a deep interest in our welfare. We naturally pay a respectful deference to the request of a neighbour or acquaintance; but what is this in comparison with the command of a parent? The observance of the Lords Supper is the solemn injunction of One who has proved Himself to be infinitely more than the best and fondest on earth.

2. When it is conveyed at some exceptionally solemn or momentous season. Surely if there be a time more sacred or impressive than another it is at the hour of death. Do this in remembrance of Me was as much Christs dying legacy as the Peace I leave with you.

II. It is a befitting public declaration of our Christian profession. Beautiful must have been the spectacle when Israel assembled to give public testimony on the slopes of Ebal and Gerizim. More solemn and interesting still when, year by year, they went to celebrate the appointed feasts. The Psalmist puts special emphasis on paying his vows in the presence of all Gods people (Psa 116:14; Psa 116:19). Let none of us be guilty of false shame in shrinking from an open declaration of the infinite debt of gratitude we owe to redeeming love. Even the soldiers of pagan Rome gloried in ascending the steps of the Capitol to the Temple of Victory, with their votive offerings, swearing by the gods allegiance to their imperial master. And shall we Christians be found cowards to Christ? Whosoever is ashamed of Me, &c.

III. By not keeping it we incur spiritual loss. We never can be careful enough in discarding the unscriptural idea that there is any peculiar grace or virtue in the Sacrament. All grace flows from Christ (Zec 4:12). But we must not undervalue the ordinance as a means of grace. It is doubtless one of the Divine channels for the conveyance of spiritual good. God works by instrumentalities; and if we neglect those of His own express appointment we cannot expect otherwise than to suffer spiritually. Conclusion: You object, We are not warranted to approach the table of Communion, because–

1. We are not prepared for it. My answer is, The same reason which makes you unfit for the Communion renders you unmeet for death. Is it not because we are sinners, and unworthy, that we are invited to come to the feast, and there to celebrate the infinite worthiness of the Lamb that was slain?

2. Some venture who have no right to be there. But your duty is independent of any such intruders. You are not responsible for the sin and presumption of others. (J. R. Macduff, D. D.)

The celebration of the Lords Supper a Christian duty

I. That Christ crucified is the true passover, of which the Jewish was a type.

1. The passover was of Divine appointment. It did not originate with Moses and Aaron, or any of the elders or people of Israel. It was not the offspring of human policy, but of God.

2. The passover was appointed for the deliverance of the Israelites from bondage and death.

3. The passover would benefit none unless the blood were applied.

4. The passover was not only to be slain, and its blood sprinkled, but it was also to be eaten.

II. That as the feast of the passover was to be celebrated by the Jews so the eucharist or Lords Supper is to be celebrated by Christians. The Jews were to celebrate it–all the Jews and proselytes (Exo 12:47-48)–but none else (verse 43); it was to be celebrated as long as their dispensation should continue (verse 24); as a memorial of their deliverance from Egypt (verse 27). So the Lords Supper is to be celebrated by all Christians. All Christians ought to celebrate it.

1. Because Christ has commanded it (Luk 22:19). Whatever He has commanded must be implicitly obeyed.

2. Because it keeps alive the important doctrine of salvation through the death of Christ.

3. Because it eminently tends to excite holy affections. Godly sorrow, arising from a conviction, that our sins, in common with those of others, occasioned the sufferings and death of Christ. Ardent love to Christ. Grateful obedience.

III. That in order to its acceptable celebration several things demand attention.

1. We should have correct views of its nature.

2. We should not ascribe an efficiency to it which it does not possess. Many substitute it in the place of regeneration.

3. We should celebrate it with suitable dispositions. Not with malice. Not with wickedness. But with sincerity and truth, with purity of intention, and with an agreement between our principles and outward profession.

Conclude by answering a few objections.

1. I dare not keep the feast, for it is a solemn ordinance. For the same reason you should neither pray, read the Scriptures, sing Gods praises, nor hear His gospel preached; for they are solemn.

2. I am not prepared to receive it.

3. I have kept the feast formerly, but since then I have relapsed into sin. (Sketches of Sermons.)

Let us keep the feast

I. It is to be kept for the great and general purpose of commemorating Christs love.

II. For the more especial purpose of holding in remembrance His death.

III. For the purpose of making a public profession of our belief in Christ, and our devotion to His service. When the Christian kneels at the table of the Redeemer, he virtually, in the view of God, of angels, and the Church, declares that he believes in the mysterious constitution of the Saviours person, and that he confides on Him, and on Him only, for deliverance from hell and elevation to bliss. He attaches himself to the standard of the Leader of the Faithful; he engages to fight against the powers of darkness, and in the interest of heaven. (W. Craig.)

Sincerity and truth.—

Sincerity

I. The nature of gospel-sincerity.

1. A single intention and aim to please God, and approve ourselves to Him through our whole course.

2. An impartial inquiry into our duty.

3. An entire and universal application to the practice of duty, as far as it is known, without stated and allowed reserves and exceptions.

4. A correspondence and harmony between inward sentiments and the words and actions.

II. Of what importance it is that this qualification should attend us in all the exercises of the Christian temper and duty.

1. It is expressly required by Divine precept in the several branches of our duty. The new man in general, which Christianity teaches us to put on, is, after God created in true holiness (Eph 4:24). The first and great commandment of godliness is thus prescribed (Mat 22:37).

2. It is indispensably necessary to our acceptance with God. How can that be expected to meet with a favourable regard from God, which was not in intention done to Him?

3. This qualification alone can minister solid satisfaction to ourselves upon reflection. One man may possibly reach his ends with another by disguise; but how low and empty a satisfaction will that produce, if he cannot be satisfied from himself? So the truly good man alone is (Pro 14:14).

4. Sincerity will be the easiest method of conduct. What art and pains are needful to wear a disguise tolerably!

5. Herein we shall copy after the most illustrious and excellent examples. Insincerity, on the other hand, is most directly the image of the devil, that false and lying spirit, who, from his craft and deceitfulness, is called the old serpent, and represented as assuming all shapes and disguises to carry on his designs.

This subject may very fitly be applied various ways.

1. As a subject of sorrow for the evident violations of sincerity among those who wear the name of Christians.

2. As a measure of judging ourselves, whether we are in a state of acceptance with God.

3. As a ground of humiliation to the best for the defects in their sincerity, as well as in every particular branch of goodness.

4. As an engagement to cultivate and advance in this excellent qualification. (J. Evans, D. D.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 7. Purge out therefore the old leaven] As it is the custom of the Jews previously to the passover to search their houses in the most diligent manner for the old leaven, and throw it out, sweeping every part clean; so act with this incestuous person. I have already shown with what care the Jews purged their houses from all leaven previously to the passover; see the note on Ex 12:8-19, and on the term passover, and Christ as represented by this ancient Jewish sacrifice; See Clarke on Ex 12:27, and my Discourse on the Nature and Design of the Eucharist.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

Purge out therefore the old leaven: if the article in this place be emphatical (as some think) it ought to have been translated this old leaven, that is, the incestuous person, whose communion with you influenceth your whole communion, which is defiled by it, through your churchs neglect of their duty with reference to him. If the article be not to be taken emphatically, these words may be understood as spoken to every individual member of this church, and is no more than put off the old man; the lusts and corruptions of our hearts, as well as false doctrine, being compared to leaven, which influence our whole man, as leaven doth the whole mass of meal. The first seemeth to be most proper to this place, if we consider what went before, and that the apostle is speaking to the whole church, and had been before speaking of an act to be done by them not singly, but when they should be gathered together in a church assembly; these he commands to purge out the old leaven, that is, this incestuous person.

That ye may be a new lump; that they might be truly a Christian church, reformed from such things as no way agreed with the doctrine and profession of the gospel.

As ye are unleavened; as you are or should be unleavened, like the Jews, who at the passover kept the feast of unleavened bread, when for seven days together they might have no leavened bread in any of their houses, Lev 23:6.

For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us; for though the feast of the Jewish passover be ceased, and you be tied to none of those Levitical observations, yet you are under as high an obligation; for Christ, who is the true paschal Lamb, is slain or sacrificed for us, and your old man should be crucified with him, and you no longer serve sin.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

7. old leavenThe remnant ofthe “old” (Eph4:22-24) heathenish and natural corruption. The image is takenfrom the extreme care of the Jews in searching every corner of theirhouses, and “purging out” every particle of leaven from thetime of killing the lamb before the Passover (Deu 16:3;Deu 16:4). So Christians arecontinually to search and purify their hearts (Psa 139:23;Psa 139:24).

as ye areunleavenednormally, and as far as your Christian calling isconcerned: free from the leaven of sin and death (1Co6:11). Paul often grounds exhortations on the assumption ofChristian professors’ normal state as realized (Rom 6:3;Rom 6:4) [ALFORD].Regarding the Corinthian Church as the Passover “unleavenedlump” or mass, he entreats them to correspond in fact with thistheir normal state. “For Christ our Passover (Exo 12:5-11;Exo 12:21-23; Joh 1:29)has been (English Version, “is”) sacrificedfor us”; that is, as the Jews began the days ofunleavened bread with the slaying of the Passover lamb, so, Christour Passover having been already slain, let there be no leavenof evil in you who are the “unleavened lump.” Doubtless healludes to the Passover which had been two or three weeks before keptby the Jewish Christians (1Co16:8): the Gentile Christians probably also refraining fromleavened bread at the love-feasts. Thus the Jewish Passover naturallygave place to our Christian Easter. The time however, of keepingfeast (metaphorical; that is, leading the Christian life ofjoy in Christ’s finished work, compare Pr15:15) among us Christians, corresponding to the Jewish Passover,is not limited, as the latter, to one season, but is ALL our time;for the transcendent benefits of the once-for-all completed sacrificeof our Passover Lamb extends to all the time of our lives andof this Christian dispensation; in no part of our time is the leavenof evil to be admitted.

For evenan additionalreason, besides that in 1Co 5:6,and a more cogent one for purging out every leaven of evil; namely,that Christ has been already sacrificed, whereas the old leaven isyet unremoved, which ought to have been long ago purged out.

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

Purge out therefore the old leaven,….] Meaning either the incestuous person, whose crime might well be compared to sour “leaven”, and be called old because of his long continuance in it; whom the apostle would have removed from them; this is properly the act of excommunication, which that church was to perform, as a quite distinct thing from what the apostle himself determined to do. The allusion is to the strict search the Jews made g, just before their passover after leaven, to purge their houses of it, that none of it might remain when their feast began; which they made by the light of a lamp, on the night of the fourteenth of the month Nisan, in every secret place, hole, and corner of the house: or this may be an exhortation to the church in general with respect to themselves, as well as this man, to relinquish their old course of sinning, to “put off concerning the former conversation the old man”, Eph 4:22 the same with the old leaven here; it being usual with the Jews h to call the vitiosity and corruption of nature , “leaven in the lump”; of which say i,

“the evil imagination of a man, as leaven the lump, enters into his bowels little, little, (very little at first,) but afterwards it increases in him, until his whole body is mixed with it.”

That ye may be a new lump; that they might appear to be what they professed to be, new men, new creatures in Christ, by their walking in newness of life; and by removing that wicked person, they would be as the apostles were, when Judas was gone from them, all clean through the word of Christ:

as ye are unleavened; at least professed to be. They were without the leaven of sin; not without the being of sin in their hearts, nor without the commission of it, more or less, in their lives; but were justified from it by the righteousness of Christ, and had the new creature formed in their souls, or that which was born of God in them, that sinned not. The apostle compares the true believers of this church to the unleavened bread eaten at the passover, for the grace of their hearts, and the simplicity of their lives; as he does the incestuous man to the old leaven, that was to be searched for, and cast out at the feast:

for even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us. This is observed, to show the pertinency of the similes of leaven and unleavened, the apostle had made use of; and to make some further improvement of them, for the use, comfort, and instruction of this church; saying, that Christ is “our passover”, the Christians’ passover; the Jewish passover was a type of Christ; wherefore Moses kept it by faith, in the faith of the Messiah that was to come; see Heb 11:28 as it was instituted in commemoration of the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt, so likewise to prefigure Christ, and the redemption of his people by him. The Jews have a saying k,

“that in the month Nisan they were redeemed, and in the month Nisan they will be redeemed;”

which was the month in which the passover was kept; and for the confirmation of which, they mention the following texts, Mic 7:15. There is an agreement between the passover, and Christ, in the sacrifice itself, and the qualities of it; it was a “lamb”, as Christ is the “Lamb” of God, of his appointing and providing, and fitly so called, for his innocence and harmlessness, his meekness, humility, and patience; it was a lamb “without blemish”, as Christ is, without spot and blemish, without the spot of original sin, or blemish of any actual transgression: it was a male, as Christ is the son or man, the head of the body, and the “firstborn” among many brethren; it was a male of the first year; in which it might prefigure Christ in the flower of his age, arrived at man’s estate, and having had experience of a variety of sorrows and afflictions. There is also some likeness between them in the separation and slaying of it. The passover lamb was to be “taken out from the sheep, or from the goats”; as Christ’s human nature was chosen out from among the people, and, in God’s eternal counsel and covenant, separated from the rest of the individuals of human nature, and taken into a federal union with the Son of God, and preordained before the foundation of the world, to be the Lamb slain; it was also wonderfully formed by the Holy Ghost in the virgin’s womb, and separated and preserved from the infection of sin; and in his life and conversation here on earth, he was separated from sinners, from being like them, and is now made higher than the heavens. This lamb was kept up from the “tenth” of the month, to the “fourteenth”, before it was killed; which might typify preservation of Christ, in his infancy, from the malice of Herod, and, in his riper years, from the designs of the Jews upon him, until his time was come; and it is to be observed, that there was much such a space of time between his entrance into Jerusalem, and his sufferings and death; see Joh 12:11. The lamb was “slain”, so the Prince of life was killed; and “between the two evenings”, as Christ was in the end of the world, in the last days, in the decline of time, of the age of the world, and even of the time of the day, about the “ninth” hour, or three o’clock in the afternoon, the time between the two evenings; the first evening beginning at noon as soon as the sun began to decline, the other upon the setting of it. There is likewise a comparison of these together to be observed, in the dressing and eating of it. The passover lamb was not to be eaten “raw nor sodden”; so Christ is to be eaten not in a carnal, but in a spiritual way, by faith; it was to be “roast with fire”, denoting the painful sufferings of Christ on the cross, and the fire of divine wrath that fell upon him; it was to be eaten “whole”, as a whole Christ is to be received by faith, in his person, and in all his offices, grace, and righteousness; not a “bone” of it was to be “broken”, which was fulfilled in Christ, Joh 19:36 it was to be eaten “with unleavened bread”, which is spiritualized by the apostle in the next verse; and also with “bitter herbs”, expressive of the hard bondage and severe afflictions, with which the lives of the Israelites were made bitter in Egypt; and significative of the persecutions and trials that such must expect, who live godly and by faith in Christ Jesus: it was eaten only by Israelites, and such as became proselytes, as Christ, only by true believers; and if the household was too little, they were to join with their “neighbours”; which might typify the calling and bringing in of the Gentiles, when the middle wall of partition was broken down, Christ, his flesh and blood being common to both. The first passover was eaten in haste, with their loins girt, their shoes on, and staves in their hands, ready to depart from Egypt to Canaan’s land; denoting the readiness of believers to every good work; having their feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace; their loins girt about with truth, their lights burning, and they like men waiting for their Lord’s coming; hasting unto the day of the Lord, being earnestly, desirous of being absent from the body, that they might be present with him: in a word, the receiving of the blood of the passover lamb into a bason, sprinkling it on the lintel, and two side posts of the doors of the houses, in which they ate it, which the Lord seeing passed over those houses, when he passed through Egypt to destroy the firstborn, whence it has its name of the passover, were very significative of the blood of sprinkling, even the blood of Christ upon the hearts and consciences of believers; whereby they are secured from avenging justice, from the curse and condemnation of the law, and from wrath to come, and shall never be hurt of the second death. Thus Christ is our antitypical passover, who was sacrificed, whose body and soul were offered as an offering and sacrifice unto God for us, that he might be proper food for our faith; and also in our room and stead, to make satisfaction to divine justice for all our sins and transgressions.

g Misn Pesachim, c. 1. sect. 1. 2. Maimon. Hilch. Chametz Umetzah, c. 2. sect. 3, 4. h T. Hieros. Beracot, fol. 7. 4. T. Bab. Beracot, fol. 17. 1. Bereshit Rabba, fol. 29. 4. Caphtor, fol. 38. 2. & 41. 1. Tzeror Hammor, fol. 73. 2. 84. 4. 86. 1. 87. 3. 95. 3, 4. & 119. 4. Baal Hattarim in Lev. ii. 11. i Zohar in Exod. fol. 71. 3. k T. Bab. Roshhashana, fol. 11. 1, 2. Raya Mehimna in Zohar in Exod. fol. 49. 3.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

Exhortation to Christian Purity.

A. D. 57.

      7 Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:   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 sincerity and truth.

      Here the apostle exhorts them to purity, by purging out the old leaven. In this observe,

      I. The advice itself, addressed either, 1. To the church in general; and so purging out the old leaven, that they might be a new lump, refers to the putting away from themselves that wicked person, v. 13. Note, Christian churches should be pure and holy, and not bear such corrupt and scandalous members. They are to be unleavened, and should endure no such heterogeneous mixture to sour and corrupt them. Or, 2. To each particular member of the church. And so it implies that they should purge themselves from all impurity of heart and life, especially from this kind of wickedness, to which the Corinthians were addicted to a proverb. See the argument at the beginning. This old leaven was in a particular manner to be purged out, that they might become a new lump. Note, Christians should be careful to keep themselves clean, as well as purge polluted members out of their society. And they should especially avoid the sins to which they themselves were once most addicted, and the reigning vices of the places and the people where they live. They were also to purge themselves from malice and wickedness–all ill-will and mischievous subtlety. This is leaven that sours the mind to a great degree. It is not improbable that this was intended as a check to some who gloried in the scandalous behaviour of the offender, both out of pride and pique. Note, Christians should be careful to keep free from malice and mischief. Love is the very essence and life of the Christian religion. It is the fairest image of God, for God is love (1 John iv. 16), and therefore it is no wonder if it be the greatest beauty and ornament of a Christian. But malice is murder in its principles: He that hates his brother is a murderer (1 John iii. 15), he bears the image and proclaims him the offspring of him who was a murderer from the beginning, John viii. 44. How hateful should every thing be to a Christian that looks like malice and mischief.

      II. The reason with which this advice is enforced: For Christ our passover is sacrificed for us, v. 7. This is the great doctrine of the gospel. The Jews, after they had killed the passover, kept the feast of unleavened bread. So must we; not for seven days only, but all our days. We should die with our Saviour to sin, be planted into the likeness of his death by mortifying sin, and into the likeness of his resurrection by rising again to newness of life, and that internal and external. We must have new hearts and new lives. Note, The whole life of a Christian must be a feast of unleavened bread. His common conversation and his religious performances must be holy. He must purge out the old leaven, and keep the feast of unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. He must be without guilt in his conduct towards God and man. And the more there is of sincerity in our own profession, the less shall we censure that of others. Note, On the whole, The sacrifice of our Redeemer is the strongest argument with a gracious heart for purity and sincerity. How sincere a regard did he show to our welfare, in dying for us! and how terrible a proof was his death of the detestable nature of sin, and God’s displeasure against it! Heinous evil, that could not be expiated but with the blood of the Son of God! And shall a Christian love the murderer of his Lord? God forbid.

Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary

Purge out (). First aorist (effective) active imperative of , old verb to cleanse out (), to clean completely. Aorist tense of urgency, do it now and do it effectively before the whole church is contaminated. This turn to the metaphor is from the command to purge out the old (, now old and decayed) leaven before the passover feast (Exod 12:15; Exod 13:7; Zeph 1:12). Cf. modern methods of disinfection after a contagious disease.

A new lump ( ). Make a fresh start as a new community with the contamination removed. is the root for , a young man, not yet old (). So new wine ( Mt 9:17). is fresh as compared with the ancient (). See the distinction in Col 3:10; Eph 4:22; 2Cor 5:17.

Unleavened (). Without ( privative) leaven, the normal and ideal state of Christians. Rare word among the ancients (once in Plato). They are a new creation ( ), “exemplifying Kant’s maxim that you should treat a man as if he were what you would wish him to be” (Robertson and Plummer).

For our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ ( ). First aorist passive indicative of , old verb to sacrifice. Euphony of consonants, to because of –. Reference to the death of Christ on the Cross as the Paschal Lamb (common use of as Mark 14:12; Luke 22:7), the figure used long before by the Baptist of Jesus (Joh 1:29). Paul means that the Lamb was already slain on Calvary and yet you have not gotten rid of the leaven.

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

Leaven. Not the sinful man, but evil of every kind, in accordance with the more general statement of the leavening, power of evil in ver. 6. The apostle ‘s metaphor is shaped by the commands concerning the removal of leaven at the passover : Exo 12:19; Exo 13:7. Compare Ignatius; “Dispense, therefore, with the evil leaven that has grown old [] and that has gone sour [] , and be changed into new leaven which is Jesus Christ” (Epistle to Magnesians, 10.).

New [] . See on Mt 26:29.

Passover [ ] . The Paschal lamb, as Mr 14:12; Luk 22:7.

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

Comments

1) Purge out therefore the old leaven. (Greek ekkatharate) cleanse out or cleanse by putting out the old leaven or putrefaction of the old nature.

2) That ye may be a new lump. (hina) in order that ye the church may be a re-cleansed assembly.

3) As ye are unleavened. The church assembly of the Lord is a sanctified, cleansed, and unleavened assembly as it measures up to Gods standards. Mat 5:48; Joh 17:10-23.

4) For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us. The law of the passover sacrifice required that all leaven, leavened bread, be put away and only the unleavened bread used after the sacrifice of the passover observance or worship. The logic is that since Christ is sacrificed as our passover, it is improper to continue the form of worship with the particular leaven of known carnal fornication among church members; Exo 12:14-15; Exo 12:17-19; 1Co 11:25.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

7. Purge out therefore Having borrowed a similitude from leaven, he pursues it farther, though he makes a transition from a particular point to a general doctrine. For he is no longer speaking of the case of incest, but exhorts them generally to purity of life, on the ground that we cannot remain in Christ if we are not cleansed. He is accustomed to do this not infrequently. When he has made a particular statement, he takes occasion to pass on to general exhortations. He had made mention of leaven on another account, as we have seen. As this same metaphor suited the general doctrine which he now subjoins, he extends it farther.

Our Passover (288) Before coming to the subject-matter, I shall say a few words in reference to the words. Old leaven receives that name on the same principle as the old man, (Rom 6:6,) for the corruption of nature takes the precedence in us, previously to our being renewed in Christ. That, therefore, is said to be old which we bring with us from the womb, and must perish when we are renewed by the grace of the Spirit. (289) The verb ἐτύθη, which occurs between the name Christ and the term which denotes a sacrifice, (290) may refer to either. I have taken it as referring to the sacrifice, though this is of no great importance, as the meaning is not affected. The verb ἑορτάζωμεν, which Erasmus rendered “Let us celebrate the feast,” signifies also to partake of the solemn feast which was observed after the sacrifice had been offered up. This interpretation appeared to suit better with the passage before us. I have, accordingly, followed the Vulgate in preference to Erasmus, as this rendering is more in accordance with the mystery of which Paul treats.

We come now to the subject-matter. Paul, having it in view to exhort the Corinthians to holiness, shows that what was of old figuratively represented in the passover, ought to be at this day accomplished in us, and explains the correspondence which exists between the figure and the reality. In the first place, as the passover consisted of two parts — a sacrifice and a sacred feast — he makes mention of both. For although some do not reckon the paschal lamb to have been a sacrifice, yet reason shows that it was properly a sacrifice, for in that rite the people were reconciled to God by the sprinkling of blood. Now there is no reconciliation without a sacrifice; and, besides, the Apostle now expressly confirms if, for he makes use of the word θύεσθαι, which is applicable to sacrifices, and in other respects, too, the context would not correspond. The lamb, then, was sacrificed yearly; then followed a feast, the celebration of which lasted for seven successive days. Christ, says Paul, is our Passover (291) He was sacrificed once, and on this condition, that the efficacy of that one oblation should be everlasting. What remains now is, that we eat, (292) not once a-year, but continually.

(288) “Would any one,” asks Hervey, (in his Theroa and Aspasio, volume 1,) “venture to say — ‘Paul our passover is sacrificed for us?’ Yet this, I think, may be, or rather is in effect said, by the account which some persons give of Christ’s satisfaction. The very thought of such a blasphemous absurdity is too painful and offensive for the serious Christian to dwell upon. I would therefore direct his attention to a more pleasing object. Let him observe the exquisite skill which here and everywhere conducts the zeal of our inspired writer. The odes of Pindar are celebrated for their fine transitions, which, though bold and surprising, are perfectly natural. We have in this place,” (1Co 5:7) “a very masterly stroke of the same beautiful kind. The Apostle, speaking of the incestuous criminal, passes, by a most artful digression, to his daring topic — a crucified Savior. Who would have expected it on such an occasion? Yet, when thus admitted, who does not see and admire both the propriety of the subject and the delicacy of its introduction?” — Ed.

(289) Our Author gives a similar definition of the expression the old man, when commenting on Rom 6:6. “ Totam antem naturam significat, quam afterlinus ex utero, quae adeo regni Dei capax non est, ut interire eatenus oporteat, quatenus in veram vitam instauramur;” — “It denotes the whole of that nature which we bring with us from the womb, and is so far from being fit for the kingdom of God, that it must perish, in so far as we are renewed to a true life.” — Ed.

(290) “ Assauoir, Pasque ;” — “Namely, passover. ”

(291) Charnock makes the following pointed observations on the form of expression here employed: — “ Christ the Passover — i e the paschal lamb. The lamb was called the passover. The sign for the thing signified by it. 2Ch 35:11. And they killed the passover, i e the lamb; for the passover was properly the angel’s passing over Israel, when he was sent as an executioner of God’s wrath upon the Egyptians So Mat 26:17. Where shall we prepare for thee to eat the passover? i e the paschal lamb. Our passover, i e our paschal lamb. He is called God’s lamb, Joh 1:29 God ’ s in regard of the author, ours in regard of the end: God ’ s lamb in regard of designation, ours in regard of acceptation Our passover, i e not only of the Jews, but of the Gentiles. That was restrained to the Israelitish nation, this extends, in the offers of it, to all, and belongs to all that are under the new administration of the covenant of grace. For us, ( ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν,) i e not only for our good, but in our stead, to free us from eternal death — to purchase for us eternal life.” — Charnock ’ s Works, volume 2. — Ed

(292) “ I1 ne reste plus sinon que nous en soyons nourris;” — “Nothing remains, but that we be nourished by it.”

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

(7) Purge out therefore the old leaven.It is not the offending man who is here spoken of, but it is the spirit in the Church which tolerated the evil, and which is to be purged out of their midst that they may become actually (a new lump) as they are by profession (unleavened).

Christ our passover is sacrificed for us.Better, Christ our passover is slain; for us is not in the best MSS. The word translated sacrifice is generally used in the New Testament in the sense simply of slaying or killing (Mat. 22:4; Joh. 10:10; Act. 10:1; Act. 10:13; Act. 11:7); and in the similar expressions regarding our Lord (Rev. 5:6; Rev. 5:12) the word is wounded.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

7. Purge out By expelling the sinner if impenitent.

Old leaven This refers not to any process by which leaven can be expelled from the impregnated lump; but more probably to the practice at passover of expelling all old leaven from their houses. Note on Mat 26:2. The original reason of this use of unleavened bread was to typify the haste of Israel’s departure from Egypt, as admitting no time for leavened bread to “rise.” But to this was subsequently added the condemnation of leaven, as a type of corruption and a relic of old Egypt; and so a ritual display of expulsion was performed. On the fourteenth day of Nisan, the whole household at night, in formal procession, searched with lighted candles through every nook and corner of their residence for any fancied possible particle of old leaven to be expelled. Hence arises before St. Paul’s mind a full allegory of the purification of the Church by the expulsion of sin.

Our passover Point after point St. Paul takes in the whole symbolism of the passover. How truly the slaying of the victim was a sacrifice, and how truly Christ was the reality of which the victim was a symbol, we have shown in note on Mat 26:2.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

1Co 5:7. Purge out therefore the old leaven The Apostle continues the figure from unleaved bread, 1Co 5:6 with a particular view to the Jewish passover, in which it was forbidden. “As therefore it was the manner of the Jews at their passover, especially on the day of preparation, to search diligently if the least morsel of leavened bread were left in their houses, and carefully to remove it all,in like manner do you also put away this incestuous person, and every other contagious evil; commencing a people pure and incorrupt, in order to your due celebration of the Christian passover;for even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us. We have a festival to keep, as well as the Jews; a paschal Lamb was slain and sacrificed for our redemption, of which the lamb offered under the law for the deliverance from Egypt was but a type; and their flight out of that house of bondage was but a typical representation of our hastening out of the more cruel bondage of sin.” It is probable that this Epistle was written near the festival of Easter: see ch. 1Co 16:8 where the Apostle says he shall stay at Ephesus, where he then was, till Pentecost. See Bp. Lavington’s Sermon, “On the nature and use of a type,” Ridley’s Sermons on the Christian Passover, and Heylin.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

1Co 5:7 . . .] From what has been already said, the meaning apart from the figure cannot, it is plain, be: Exclude from your communion the incestuous person (Chrysostom, Theophylact, Cornelius a Lapide, Zeger, Estius, Michaelis) and other notorious offenders (Rosenmller), but: Empty your church of the sinful habits, which still remain among you from your pre-Christian condition (as a residuum of the unregenerate , Rom 6:6 ; Eph 4:22 ; Col 3:9 ). Comp Theodoret, Calvin, de Wette, Osiander, Ewald, Maier, Neander, Hofmann. Flatt, Pott, and Rckert join the two ideas together; but this is unwarranted and against the unity of sense of the passage. Respecting , comp Ignatius, Magnes. 10 : .

The expression . (comp Plato, Euth. p. 3 A; LXX. Deu 26:13 ) is selected in view of the custom, based on Exo 12:15 ff; Exo 13:7 , and very strictly observed among the Jews, of removing all leaven from the houses on the day before the Passover (see as to this, Schoettgen, Hor. p. 598; Lund, Jd. Heiligth. , ed. Wolf, p. 1111 f.), which was meant to be a sign of the moral purification of the house (Ewald, Alterth. p. 475 f.).

] a fresh kneaded mass, i.e. figure apart: a morally new church , freshly restored after the separation from it of all immoral fermenting elements, its members being through Christ (Col 3:9-10 ). As respects the difference between and , see on Col 3:10 .

] in accordance with your unleavened character, i.e. in keeping with the ethical nature of the position of a Christian, which, as such, is separated from sin. For this is the essential characteristic in the Christian , who is, it is taken for granted, reconciled to God, born again, spiritually dead and risen again with Christ (Rom 6:2 ff.), and who as a new of God (2Co 5:17 ; Eph 4:24 ; Col 3:10 ) in the (Rom 7:6 ) is free from the law of sin and death (Rom 8:2 ), and constantly developing the powers of a divine life towards perfect holiness (1Co 6:11 ; 2Co 6:14 ff.), being alive unto God as His child in whom Christ lives (Gal 2:19-20 ) and sin in such an one (the being leavened) is abnormal. Hence Christians are according to this higher mode of regarding the position of a Christian

. There is as little warrant for rendering here by esse debetis (Flatt, Pott, Billroth, following Chrysostom, Theophylact, al [807] ) as in Luk 9:55 . Rosenmller holds that . has here its proper meaning: as ye now “ vivitis festos dies azymorum .” But , in fact, does not mean qui abstinet fermento (as Grotius would make out, likening it to , ), but non fermentatus (comp ). Plato, Tim. p. 74 D; Athen. iii. p. 109 B; Gen 19:3 ; Eze 29:2 , al [809] Moreover, Paul could not address these words in that proper meaning to the church as a whole , even if the Jewish-Christians among them still kept the Jewish Passover.

. . [810] ] The motive for . . [811] The emphasis is on , [812] and does not mean simply for, etenim , but for also (Hartung, Partikell . I. p. 137 f.; Stallbaum, a [813] Plat. Gorg. p. 467 B), the “ also ” introducing the objective relation of things corresponding to the exhortation which had just been given. The paschal lamb slain, and the leaven not purged out what a contradiction that is! Paul designates Christ as the Christians’ paschal lamb which had been slain (Deu 16:6 ; Mar 14:12 ; Luk 22:7 ), because He is the antitype of the Passover lamb under the law, inasmuch, namely, as His blood was shed, not by any means merely “as the beginning of redemption which made it possible ” (Hofmann, Schriftbeweis , II. 1, p. 323), but, according to the whole N. T., as the atonement for believers, and that, too, on the very same day (the day before the feast of the Passover, see on Joh 18:28 ) on which, from the earliest times, the blood of the paschal lambs had been shed as an expiation for each family (see Ewald, Alterth. p. 466 f.; Keil, lxxxviii. 11). Comp also Joh 19:36 . In connection with this verse it has been justly remarked (comp on Joh 18:28 , and Lcke in the Gtt. gel. Anz. 1834, p. 2020), that Paul could not with propriety have given this title to Christ, if he had followed the Synoptical account of the day of Jesus’ death. Comp Introd. to John , 2. In point of fact, had he followed the tradition of the Synoptists, that death-day, as being the 15th Nisan, would, by the mode of conception necessarily arising from his Jewish nationality, have hindered his calling Christ antitypically the slain Paschal lamb. For a Passover lamb slain on the first day of the feast would have been, to a Jewish mind moulded according to the ancient and venerated appointment of the divine law, a “ contradictio in adjecto ;” [817] even supposing that the point of the comparison which, in accordance with the invariable Pauline mode of regarding the death of Jesus (comp also on Joh 1:29 ), must of necessity be His being slain as a , Rom 3:25 were the new divine polity of the holy people, to which the death of Jesus stands, it is said, just in the same relation as the slaying of the paschal lamb in Egypt to the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt (as Hofmann objects). Wieseler, in his chronol. Synopse , p. 374 f. (comp also his Beitr. z. Wrdigung d. Ev. p. 266), urges as an argument on the other side, that in 1Co 10:16 , , as a technical phrase for the cup in the Lord’s Supper, shows that this cup was identified with that of the Passo1Co 5:Assuredly! but it shows also, in necessary connection therewith, that Christ slain on the 14th Nisan was the Paschal Lamb of believers. The Supper, therefore, which brought them into fellowship with the body and blood of Christ, could not but present itself to the Christian consciousness as the paschal meal , corresponding to the eating of the paschal lamb, and so, too, the cup in the Supper as the antitype of the paschal cup. Consequently chap. 1Co 10:16 , taken in connection with the passage before us, speaks for and not against the account in John. It is, however, from the view held by the primitive church respecting the Supper as the antitype of the paschal meal, that the origin of the Synoptical tradition is to be historically understood. See on Joh 18:28 .

[807] l. and others; and other passages; and other editions.

[809] l. and others; and other passages; and other editions.

[810] . . . .

[811] . . . .

[812] Theodoret renders wrongly, for it is against the order of the words (as if it were . .): ; comp. Luther and Neander. Erasmus translates correctly: “ Nam et pascha nostrum.”

[813] d refers to the note of the commentator or editor named on the particular passage.

[817] This passage, too, therefore goes to establish the position that John’s narrative, and not the Synoptic , is the historically correct one as regards the day of the death of Jesus. Observe how the Rabbinical tradition also agrees with this. See Gemara Bab. in Sanhedr. vi. 2 : “Traditio est, vespera Paschatis suspensum fuisse Jesum.” It is well known that the 14th Nisan (the Preparation-day) was called , vespera Paschatis. The fabulous circumstances linked with the death of Jesus itself in the passage of the Talmud referred to, do not affect the simple statement as to the time when it took place.

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

DISCOURSE: 1957
CHRIST OUR PASSOVER

1Co 5:7-8. Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

CHRISTIANITY affords us not only new grounds of hope, but also new motives to action, yea, the only motives that are capable of giving an uniform direction to our conduct. The arguments derived from the excellency of virtue, the fitness of things, or even the certainty of rewards and punishments, never could produce any effects comparable to those, which have been wrought by the exhibition of a crucified Saviour. St. Paul, well knowing the efficacy of this topic, proposed it on all occasions. If he would enforce the duties of love, beneficence, or zeal, the love of Christ was both his pattern, and his plea. Thus, in the passage before us, having enjoined the Corinthian Church to excommunicate their incestuous member, he reminds them of the sacrifice of Christ; and, in allusion to their accustomed method of eating the Paschal Lamb, exhorts them to celebrate the Christian passover with becoming purity, both as to outward discipline, and inward affection. In considering his words we shall notice,

I.

The representation here given of Christ

Christ is here said to have been sacrificed for us
[Sacrifices were appointed of God from the very fall of Adam as means of conciliating his favour, and expiating any offences which had been committed against him. The creatures sacrificed were put to death, and were always considered as dying in the place of the offender, who, by his transgression, had forfeited his life to divine justice. Precisely in this way has Christ been sacrificed for us: he died, the just for the unjust; he was put to death not merely for our good, but in our stead: and in his sufferings we may behold a figurative representation of what we had merited by our transgressions.]

In this view he is called our Passover
[The paschal lamb was sacrificed in a peculiar manner, and on a most extraordinary occasion. God had determined to destroy the Egyptian first-born, but to spare his own people: He appointed the Jews to kill a lamb, to sprinkle its blood upon the door-posts, and to eat its flesh roasted with fire, taking also with it some bitter herbs [Note: Exo 12:3-9.]. Upon their due observation of this ordinance God promised to interpose for their deliverance, and not to suffer the destroyer to involve so much as one of them in the common ruin. Thus are we obnoxious to the wrath that is coming upon the ungodly world: but Jesus, that spotless Lamb, has, on the very same month, day, and hour, that the passover was first killed, and in the midst of most inconceivable agonies both of body and soul, yet without the breaking of a bone, been slain for us [Note: Exo 12:46. with Joh 19:33; Joh 19:36.]; and we are by faith to sprinkle our hearts with his precious blood: we are also to feed upon his body and blood; and, in so doing, are as sure of the divine protection as if we were already in heaven. Though thousands should fall beside us, and ten thousand at our right hand, the sword of the avenger should not come nigh us.]

That we may rightly improve this glorious truth, let us consider,

II.

The exhortation grounded upon it

While the occasion of Christs death affords us ground for the deepest humiliation, the deliverance effected by it should ever be remembered with joy
[The Jews were commanded to keep an annual feast in commemoration of their deliverance from the destroying angel [Note: Such a feast is the Lords Supper to us: as they fed on the Paschal Lamb, so do we on the body and blood of Christ, represented to us in the bread and wine.]. And, as their feast was a memorial of the mercies they had received, so is ours to be, to the latest generations. Indeed our whole lives should be kept as a holy solemnity, because we are daily and hourly experiencing the saving virtue of the Redeemers blood.]

The peculiar manner in which the Jews were to observe their passover, was a figurative representation of the manner in which ours also should be observed
The Jews were enjoined on pain of death to forbear the use of leaven, and to put it out of their houses for seven days [Note: Exo 12:15; Exo 12:19.]: and they were to eat the lamb with bitter herbs and unleavened bread. Thus is the leaven of sin to be purged out of our hearts with the greatest care; and while we feed by faith on the spotless Lamb of God, we must partake also of the bitter herbs of repentance and the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. As for the old leaven of Gentile uncleanness, or of Jewish pride and malignity, it must be wholly put away: the scrupulosity with which the Jews searched and swept their houses to purge out all leaven, is an admirable pattern for our imitation. A sincere desire to know the will of God, a full and unreserved determination to do it, together with a corresponding meekness in our spirits, purity in our thoughts, sincerity in our words, and integrity in our actionsthis, this is the Christian temper; this is the frame in which our whole lives should be kept as a feast unto the Lord. Moreover as the Jews were to eat the passover in haste, with their shoes on their feet, and their loins girt, so must we be in a continual readiness to go towards the promised land.]

From this most instructive subject we may observe
1.

How plain is the way of salvation!

[Ask of every one that was saved that night, To what he was indebted for his preservation? Would there be two opinions throughout the whole nation of Israel? Would there be so much as one that would ascribe it to his own wisdom, or power, or goodness? No, not one. All without exception would say, I owe it to the blood of the Paschal Lamb sprinkled upon my door-posts. That was Gods ordinance: and by the observance of that alone I was kept from the sword of the destroying angel, who was constrained to pass over every house where that blood was seen. Let us then see ourselves doomed to perish on account of our sins; but, through the application of the blood of Christ to our souls, preserved from death: and we have a perfect view of the Gospel salvation. Nothing can be conceived more simple or more intelligible even to the meanest capacity.]

2.

How beautiful is the Christian life!

[It is one continued feast; a feast upon the body and blood of our great Sacrifice [Note: Joh 6:53-57.]. True, it must be eaten with bitter herbs. But who is there amongst us who does not need to have his joys tempered with penitential sorrow? It must be eaten too with unleavened bread: for if there be in us any allowed guile, we can never hope to escape the wrath of God [Note: Psa 32:2.]. We must eat it also with our loins girt, and our staff in our hands, ready every moment to proceed on our journey to the promised land. Compare this state with that of those who were to be left behind in Egypt, wholly ignorant of these high privileges, and altogether destitute of these exalted hopes: truly of the Christian, whoever he be, it may well be said, Happy art thou, O Israel; who is like unto thee, O people saved by the Lord [Note: Deu 33:29.]?]

3.

How certain and glorious is the effect of faith!

[The whole that was prescribed to Israel was one act of faith. The killing of the sacrifice, the sprinkling of its blood, the feeding on its flesh, the uniting with it the bitter herbs of penitence, and the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, and the habitual readiness to depart, were all, I say, one act of faith. And of its success we are fully informed. Of the whole nation not so much as one was lost. If any one had refused to comply with the appointed ordinance, he would have perished: but in all Israel not so much as one was slain. So, beloved, it shall be with you, if you live by faith upon the Son of God. Sooner shall heaven and earth pass away, than the least or meanest of true believers shall perish. Be assured of this; and you shall have even now a foretaste of the blessedness that awaits you in the worlds above.]

Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)

7 Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:

Ver. 7. As ye are unleavened ] viz. In part sanctified. Every new man is two men. Many a one that is merry in company hath a shrew at home; so have the best their inward troubles. The comfort is, that God overlooks our involuntary infirmities, and accounts us unleavened, when yet there is much still to be purged out. The leper, when his leprosy began but to heal, was pronounced clean, because then he went on still to heal, and his leprosy to shale off.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

7 .] The is not the man , but the crime attaching to their character as a church, which was a remnant of their unconverted state, their . This they are to purge out from among them. The . alludes to the careful ‘purging out’ from the houses of every thing leavened before the commencement of the feast of unleavened bread. Schttgen, Hor. Hebr., in loc., gives a full account of the extreme care with which this was done. See also Stanley’s note.

That ye may be a new lump (opposed to the of old and dissolute days), as ye are (normally and by your Christian profession) unleavened (i.e. dead to sin and free from it). This indicating the state by profession, the normal state, as a fact, and the grounding of exhortations on it, is common enough with our Apostle, see Rom 6:3-4 ; ch. 1Co 3:16 , al. freq., and involves no tautology here, any more than elsewhere.

An unfortunate interpretation has been given to these words, ‘as ye are now celebrating the feast of unleavened bread ;’ and has met with some recent defenders, e.g. Wieseler, and Conybeare, Life and Epistles of St. Paul, edn. 2, vol. ii. p. 40, note. But first, the words will not admit it ; for cannot (as joined immediately with , 1Co 5:8 ) without much harshness be applied in its literal sense to the celebrators of the feast, but must indicate the material which was unleavened, see reff., , , Athenus iii. 109, and Gen 19:3 ; Exo 29:2 . Secondly, the celebration of a Jewish feast would certainly not be predicated without remark of a whole mixed congregation of Gentiles and Jews, even supposing that the Gentile converts did celebrate it with the Jews. It is no answer to this, to cite passages (see Conyb.and Howson, ubi supra), where he seems to treat mixed churches, e.g. Gal 4:8 ; Rom 7:1 ; Rom 11:18 , as if they belonged wholly to one or other of their component elements. For this is not a parallel case. He would here, as above, be distinctly predicating, as a fact, of the whole church, a practice which he himself would have been the first to deprecate. See Gal 4:10 . Thirdly, it is not at all probable that the Apostle would either address the Corinthians as engaged in a feast which he, at Ephesus, was then celebrating, seeing that it would probably be over before his letter could be delivered, or would anticipate their being engaged in it when they received his letter, if it were yet to come. For be it remembered, that in the sense required, they would only be during seven days. Here again, I do not see how the example of “a birth-day letter to a friend in India,” adduced by Mr. Conybeare, as an answer to my objection, will apply. It seems to me that if strictly considered, in detail, it tells my way, not his. But, fourthly, and even could all the other objections be answered, this would remain in its full force, the reference is one wholly alien from the habit and spirit of our Apostle . The ordinances of the old law are to him not points on whose actual observance to ground spiritual lessons , but things passed away in their literal acceptance, and become spiritual verities in Christ. He thus regards the Corinthian church as (normally) the unleavened lump at the Passover; he beseeches them to put away the old leaven from among them, to correspond with this their normal state: for , he adds, it is high time for us to be in very deed ( so Xen. Anab. v. 8. 7, , , . It introduces a powerful reason, for (on other accounts and) also. See Hartung, Partikellehre, i. 137, 8), seeing that our Passover was sacrificed (see reff.: and cf. Heb 9:26 ; Heb 9:28 ), even Christ (the days of unleavened bread began with the Passover-sacrifice): therefore (reff.) let us keep the feast (not the actual Passover, but the continued Passover-feast of Christians on whose behalf Christ has died. There is no change of metaphor: the Corinthians are the living , as believers are the living stones of the spiritual temple) not in (as our element) the old leaven (general our old unconverted state), nor (particular) in the leaven of vice and wickedness (the genitives are of apposition, ‘the leaven which is vice and wickedness;’ see Winer, edn. 6, 59. 8. a ), but in the unleavenedness ( , unleavened things, see Exo 12:15 ; Exo 12:18 ) of sincerity and truth. The view here maintained is that of Chrys., , , , , . , , , , . Hom. xv. p. 128.

With regard to the chronological superstructure which has been built (by Wieseler and others) on this passage, that the Epistle was written shortly before Easter , we cannot of course say that the approach of the Passover may not have suggested to the Apostle this similitude: and we know from ch. 1Co 16:8 that he was looking forward to Pentecost. But further than this it would not be safe to assume: see Prolegg. to this Epistle, vi. 3, 4.

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

1Co 5:7 . , “Cleanse out” the aor [837] implying a summary , and – a complete removal (see parls.; for simple , Joh 15:2 ), leaving the Church “clean”: an allusion to the pre-Paschal removal of leaven (Exo 12:15 ff; Exo 13:7 ). For . , cf. Ignatius, ad Magn. , 10, . . . , applying, however, to Judaism what here relates to Gentile vice. The “old leaven” (denoting not persons the incestuous and his like but influences: see

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

Purge out. Greek. ekkathairo. Only here and 2Ti 2:21.

Christ. App-98.

is = was.

for = on behalf

of. App-104. But the texts omit “for us”.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

7.] The is not the man, but the crime attaching to their character as a church, which was a remnant of their unconverted state, their . This they are to purge out from among them. The . alludes to the careful purging out from the houses of every thing leavened before the commencement of the feast of unleavened bread. Schttgen, Hor. Hebr., in loc., gives a full account of the extreme care with which this was done. See also Stanleys note.

That ye may be a new lump (opposed to the of old and dissolute days), as ye are (normally and by your Christian profession) unleavened (i.e. dead to sin and free from it). This indicating the state by profession, the normal state, as a fact, and the grounding of exhortations on it, is common enough with our Apostle,-see Rom 6:3-4; ch. 1Co 3:16, al. freq., and involves no tautology here, any more than elsewhere.

An unfortunate interpretation has been given to these words,-as ye are now celebrating the feast of unleavened bread; and has met with some recent defenders, e.g. Wieseler,-and Conybeare, Life and Epistles of St. Paul, edn. 2, vol. ii. p. 40, note. But first, the words will not admit it; for cannot (as joined immediately with , 1Co 5:8) without much harshness be applied in its literal sense to the celebrators of the feast, but must indicate the material which was unleavened, see reff.,- , , Athenus iii. 109, and Gen 19:3; Exo 29:2. Secondly, the celebration of a Jewish feast would certainly not be predicated without remark of a whole mixed congregation of Gentiles and Jews, even supposing that the Gentile converts did celebrate it with the Jews. It is no answer to this, to cite passages (see Conyb.and Howson, ubi supra), where he seems to treat mixed churches, e.g. Gal 4:8; Rom 7:1; Rom 11:18, as if they belonged wholly to one or other of their component elements. For this is not a parallel case. He would here, as above, be distinctly predicating, as a fact, of the whole church, a practice which he himself would have been the first to deprecate. See Gal 4:10. Thirdly, it is not at all probable that the Apostle would either address the Corinthians as engaged in a feast which he, at Ephesus, was then celebrating, seeing that it would probably be over before his letter could be delivered,-or would anticipate their being engaged in it when they received his letter, if it were yet to come. For be it remembered, that in the sense required, they would only be during seven days. Here again, I do not see how the example of a birth-day letter to a friend in India, adduced by Mr. Conybeare, as an answer to my objection, will apply. It seems to me that if strictly considered, in detail, it tells my way, not his. But, fourthly,-and even could all the other objections be answered, this would remain in its full force,-the reference is one wholly alien from the habit and spirit of our Apostle. The ordinances of the old law are to him not points on whose actual observance to ground spiritual lessons, but things passed away in their literal acceptance, and become spiritual verities in Christ. He thus regards the Corinthian church as (normally) the unleavened lump at the Passover; he beseeches them to put away the old leaven from among them, to correspond with this their normal state: for, he adds, it is high time for us to be in very deed ( -so Xen. Anab. v. 8. 7, , , . It introduces a powerful reason, for (on other accounts and) also. See Hartung, Partikellehre, i. 137, 8), seeing that our Passover was sacrificed (see reff.: and cf. Heb 9:26; Heb 9:28), even Christ (the days of unleavened bread began with the Passover-sacrifice): therefore (reff.) let us keep the feast (not the actual Passover, but the continued Passover-feast of Christians on whose behalf Christ has died. There is no change of metaphor: the Corinthians are the living , as believers are the living stones of the spiritual temple) not in (as our element) the old leaven (general-our old unconverted state), nor (particular) in the leaven of vice and wickedness (the genitives are of apposition,-the leaven which is vice and wickedness; see Winer, edn. 6, 59. 8. a), but in the unleavenedness ( , unleavened things, see Exo 12:15; Exo 12:18) of sincerity and truth. The view here maintained is that of Chrys., , , , , . , , , , . Hom. xv. p. 128.

With regard to the chronological superstructure which has been built (by Wieseler and others) on this passage, that the Epistle was written shortly before Easter, we cannot of course say that the approach of the Passover may not have suggested to the Apostle this similitude: and we know from ch. 1Co 16:8 that he was looking forward to Pentecost. But further than this it would not be safe to assume: see Prolegg. to this Epistle, vi. 3, 4.

Fuente: The Greek Testament

1Co 5:7. , the old) leaven of heathenism and natural corruption.- , that you may be a new lump) the whole of you, evil being taken away.-, even as) The third clause of this verse depends rather on the first, than on the second.-, unleavened) individuals among you, in consequence of conversion, 1Co 6:11.- , the passover) The epistle was written about the time of the passover, 1Co 16:8.-, [our or] of us) Christians. The Jewish passover was a type of the Christian and new passover.-) was sacrificed. Paul speaks in the past time; he was much more likely to speak in the present, as his scope so required, if he had acknowledged the sacrifice of the Mass. Hesychius: , .

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

1Co 5:7

1Co 5:7

Purge out the old leaven,-Here is an allusion to the order given by Moses (Exo 12:15; Exo 12:20; Exo 13:7) to remove all leaven from the Jewish house before the Passover, and carried out with such scrupulous care that on the fourteenth day of the month they searched with lighted candles even the darkest places in their houses to see whether any remained.

that ye may be a new lump,-The position of Christians is analogous to that of Israel, and they should put away the evil and purge out the leaven of sin that is among them that they may be a pure unleavened lump of holiness.

even as ye are unleavened.-They were purged of the leaven of evil in coming into Christ.

For our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ:-As when the passover lamb was sacrificed they must put away the leaven, so Christ is our passover, a perpetual sacrifice for us, so we must put from us the leaven of evil as the children of God.

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

For the Feast

Purge out the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, even as ye are unleavened. For our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ: wherefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.1. Cor. 1Co 5:7-8.

There had been hideous immorality in the Corinthian Church. St. Paul had struck at it with heat and force, sternly commanding the exclusion of the sinner. He did so on the ground of the diabolical power of infection possessed by evil, and illustrated that by the very obvious metaphor of leaven, a morsel of which, as he says, leaveneth the whole lump, or, as we say, batch. But the word leaven drew up from the depths of his memory a host of sacred associations connected with the Jewish Passover. He remembered the sedulous hunting in every Jewish house for every scrap of leavened matter; the slaying of the paschal lamb, and the following feast. Carried away by these associations, he forgot the sin in the Corinthian Church for a moment, and turned to set forth, in the words of the text, a very deep and penetrating view of what the Christian life is, how it is sustained, and what it demands. Wherefore let us keep the feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

In the text three events are commemorated, (1) the search which the Israelites made for leaven immediately before the Passover; (2) the slaying of the Passover lamb; and (3) the Passover feast. That is also the order in which the thoughts occur to the Apostle. So we have

I.The Old Leaven.

Purge out the old leaven.

II.Our Passover.

Our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ.

III.The Feast

Wherefore let us keep the feast.

I

The Old Leaven

Purge out the old leaven.

1. The appointed preparation for the Jews, on the point of keeping their Passover, was putting away leaven out of their houses. For seven whole days they were to eat only unleavened bread. In the first instance this was meant to remind them of the haste with which God brought them out of Egypt, when they took their dough before it was leavened. But it had also this other meaning, that men should labour and strive and pray to cleanse themselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit. For that is the old leaven of which the Apostle here makes mention; the corrupt nature and bad habits of men, filling them full of malice and wickedness.

In consequence of the command that they should purge out the leaven at the Passover, the head of the household among the Jews, especially when they grew more strict in their ritual, would go through the whole of the house on a certain day to search for every particle of leavened bread. It was generally done in the evening with a candle, and the servants and others would accompany the goodman of the house to search for every crumb. Clothes were shaken, cupboards were emptied, drawers were opened, and if a mouse ran across the room and might be supposed to carry a crumb of bread into its hole, they trembled lest a curse should rest on the home. So strict did they become that our Saviour might have rebuked them as straining at a gnat while swallowing a camel. We, however, have no need to fear excessive strictness in getting rid of sin. With as scrupulous a care as the Israelite purged out the leaven from his house we are to purge out all sin from ourselves, our conduct, and our conversation.

I remember hearing a friend of mine describe what he himself once saw in Palestine, and, of all places in Palestine, in Nazareth, and, of all places in Nazareth, in a carpenters shop there. The carpenter would not allow him to witness the search in the house lest his presence should defile the home; but he allowed him to enter the shop and witness the search there. The man went about the work with a will; he was evidently thoroughly in earnest; he girded up his loins as if he had a days work before him, and then proceeded to search with the utmost zeal. Carefully and conscientiously he turned over every board, he moved all his tools, he swept out the whole place, he opened every drawer, looked into every cupboard; there was not a crevice or a cranny in the wall that was not inspected lest there might be a tiny crumb of leaven anywhere in the shop. As he drew towards the close of his search my friend suddenly heard him utter an exclamation of horror, and looking round he saw him standing as though he had seen something most alarming. If he had found a viper or a cockatrice he could not have been more horrified than he seemed to be. What was it? In the last corner that he had visited, under some shavings, he had come across a little canvas bag, and in this little bag there were a few crumbs of leavened bread; one of the workmen had left it on some former occasion. It was enough; it defiled the whole place. With the utmost possible gravity and solemnity, and with a most anxious expression of countenance as though it were a most critical and important business, the man took hold of two pieces of wood, and using them as a pair of tongs he raised up the bag, and holding it off at arms length, marched out of the shop and dropped the leavened crumbs, bag and all, into the centre of a fire that he had burning outside ready for such a contingency, and so he purged out the old leaven.1 [Note: Canon Hay Aitken.]

Self-scrutiny is often the most unpleasant, and always the most difficult, of moral actions. But it is also the most important and salutary; for, as the wisest of the Greeks said, an unexamined life is not worth living.2 [Note: J. Strachan, Hebrew Ideally, i. 93.]

2.Leaven had a figurative use in Jewish speech, signifying the working of evil affections in the soul. Lord of Eternity, prayed one of the Rabbis, it is open and known in Thy sight that we desire to do Thy will. Subdue that which hindereth, to wit, the leaven which is in the lump. If, it is written in the paschal rubric, a man be on the way to offer his paschal lamb, and it come into his mind that he has leaven in his house, if he can return and remove it, and then return to his office, let him return and remove it; but, if he cannot, let him destroy it in his heart. Our Lord came not to abrogate the ancient Law but to fulfil it; and, ever exalting the spirit above the letter, He took this Jewish prescription and gave it a loftier interpretation. If, He said with evident reference to that article of the paschal rubric, thou art offering thy gift at the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way, first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. And St. Paul taught the same lesson when he wrote to the Corinthians: Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? Purge out the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, even as ye are unleavened.

The working of leaven did not seem, at first sight, to belong to the more regular process of nature. Mans imagination had been struck here by the likeness to something dark, ominous, evil. This strange disturbance into which the natural substances were thrown by the arrival of this alien matterwhat did it portend? This secret insertion of so little within so much by which there was set moving an inner ferment, a yeasty working, a spreading excitementwhat was it? What did it express? Was it healthy? Was it not typical, rather, of disease, corruption? It looked so uncanny, so uncomfortable. How insidiously it crept! How unaccountably it penetrated! It seemed to eat its way along; it insinuated its hidden force within the mass; until what was before quiet and at peace began to stir with unaccountable agitation, began to shake and heave and swell. And what a portentous inflation! What a mysterious tumult! Surely here (men said) is the very picture of what we know of the nature of sin! This is the very way of its attack. A seed, a germ, hardly suspected for its smallness, plants itself deep down within some secret recess of the soul, and from that moment the old peace has begun to break up. At first, it is a mere spot of uncomfortable disturbance; but it is ever moving forward; the stir spreads wider; there is gradual agitation; there is growing upheaval. We never quite know how or when, but somehow, point by point, our steadiness dissolves; our orderly restraint weakens; always the ferment is touching a fresh layer; always the festering eruption breaks out in a new place. And, wherever it goes, there is this same effervescence, this inflation, this overstepping of old bounds, this swelling exuberance, this irresistible turmoil. Stronger and more violent grows the heat of the motion; it rushes forward over the whole material; nothing can, at last, hold out against its devouring extravagance. It eats into the whole body as doth a canker. Like a poison in the blood, it permeates every nook and corner. And all from so tiny a beginning! Yes; like a little leaven it leaveneth the whole lump. So men thought of leaven. They might use it, indeed, for the homeliest affairs; but still it became for them a type of the movement of evil. Its working seemed to embody the dreadful character of the mystery of iniquity. It had, therefore, proverbially a sinister significance. And in the Bible itself it is generally used, as a symbol, under this comparison.

3. The leaven is called the old leaven of malice and wickedness.

(1) Malice, that is, ill-nature, envy, grudging, is a subtle thing, mingling itself with many parts of mens conduct, where they little suspect it themselves. For example: you hear a neighbour praised for something on which you are apt to value yourself. Ask your own conscience fairly: do you feel no sort of pang, no jealousy or envy, at this? Is it not too plain, that we are most of us inclined to repine at our neighbours getting things which we think we might as well have had ourselves? Now, whatever you may judge of it, this is the leaven of malice, and must be purged out.

It is said of the famous English clergyman, Venn, that in his declining years he was removed to the obscurity of a country parish, and a stirring young curate was employed to help him in his work. Nobody wanted to hear the old man preach, while the curate attracted surprising congregations. Naturally the rectors family grew jealous. They could not bear the advancement of a junior above their honoured father. But the arrows were quenched in a boundless ocean of charity, for with true Christ-likeness the old man said, Carry me to hear him preach. God honours him, and I will honour him. No man can receive anything except it be given him from heaven.1 [Note: G. C. Peck, Old Sins in New Clothes, 284.]

(2) So in respect of that wickedness of which the great Apostle, warns usfraud, falsehood, cunning, insincerity. It is what people generally can least endure to be charged with: to call a man a liar is the bitterest of all affronts; and those who would confess many faults will search far and wide, and invent all sorts of excuses, rather than plead guilty to this. And many seem to think that if they affirm no direct falsehood, they are sufficiently purged from this sin. But surely they judge too hastily. There is a leaven of cunning as well as of malice, which is apt to mingle with all our conduct, and poison and infect it and make it unworthy of God, to a degree far beyond what we can imagine, till we have really watched and tried ourselves. We get into mean, pitiful habits, of setting traps for our own praise; of contriving to take the best of everything for ourselves; of getting off in all business with less than our share of expense, or trouble, or ill-will. This is the leaven of selfish cunning, so worked into the daily behaviour of most men that they are not themselves at all aware of it: they never, of course, dream of repenting of it.

It is important to bear in mind that, in speaking of sin and sinners, we are apt to take as our type of sin one particular class of sin, the sins of the publican and the harlot. It is natural that, revolting, ruinous, flagrant as they are, they should represent sin to our mind. Yet there are sins more malignant, and more difficult to conceive cured. I can conceive many of these poor creatures, whom the world speaks of as lost, blindly seeking after God. It is difficult to me to conceive this of those who, with full knowledge and all advantages, prey on human happiness in one way or anotherthe selfish seekers of their own interest and pleasure.1 [Note: Dean Church, Life and Letters, 265.]

As are those apples, pleasant to the eye,

But full of smoke within, which use to grow

Near that strange lake, where God pourd from the sky

Huge showers of flames, worse flames to overthrow;

Such are their works that with a glaring show

Of humble holiness, in virtues dye

Would colour mischief, while within they glow

With coals of sin, though none the smoke descry.

Ill is that angel which erst fell from heaven,

But not more ill than he, nor in worse case,

Who hides a traitorous mind with smiling face,

And with a doves white feather masks a raven,

Each sin some colour hath it to adorn;

Hypocrisy, almighty God doth scorn.1 [Note: William Drummond.]

4. For power to purge out the old leaven, we must have some participation in Christ, by which there is given to us that new life which conquers evil. In the words immediately preceding the text, the Apostle bases his injunction to purge out the old leaven on the fact that ye are unleavened. Ideally, in so far as the power possessed by them was concerned, these Corinthians were unleavened, even whilst they were bid to purge out the leaven. That is to say, be what you are; realize your ideal, utilize the power you possess, and since by your faith there has been given to you a new life that can conquer all corruption and sin, see that you use the life that is given. Purge out the old leaven because ye are unleavened.

Power, that is the great practical matter for us men, once our faces are set towards the light; and in the life in Christ the way of power is marked out. Everywhere, all over the world, in its darkest places, as a man follows the light he sees, the power comes, and more light comes, and power grows anew, Divine power flowing in upon him and through him, whether he knows it or not. But in the Christian faith we are given an open vision of the way of power, as well as of the light and truth of men; open-eyed we may yield to Christ being made Man in usthe Christ who ever comes to enlarge the realm of His Incarnation; and we may possess and wield His power as our own, reason giving consent, heart warmed by the vision, and the presence of Him who reigns. In this, too, Christianity stands at the centre of things, and fulfils and completes them all.2 [Note: William Scott Palmer.]

When God was about to call Abraham to a higher level of service and a higher range of truthto require of him a perfection which might seem unattainable, and to unfold to him a grace which might seem incredible, He prefaced the call with the revelation, I am El ShaddaiGod Almighty, the Wielder of power, the All-sufficient. After that nothing is impossible, nothing incredible. The august title reveals the infinite resources from which man can draw, the Divine energy which ensures his success. Absolute reliance on Gods almightiness is the condition of power. For every duty there is an appointed dynamic: Thy God hath commanded thy strength. The Almighty will not let His servants fail or be put to shame, else that is not His name. He links His power to His imperatives. What we can do in our own strength is one thing; what we are empowered to achieve by omnipotent grace is far different. The possibilities of life are to be measured, not by the ability of man, but by the power and will of God. Instead of desiring a lower ideal, we should pray for a higher energy. Lord, said Augustine, give what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt. Attempt great things for God, expect great things from God, said Carey. Who is sufficient for these things? asked St. Paul, and presently answered, Our sufficiency is of God.1 [Note: J. Strachan, Hebrew Ideals, i. 97.]

It does not matter how intricately sin may have been woven into all the tissues of life and coloured word and deed and thought; Christ by the Spirit can take it all away. He can purely purge away thy dross, and take away all thy tin. A lump of ore, when mixed with clay and mire, may be washed clean, as the soul by the washing of regeneration; but fire acts upon it in a different way. It liberates the metal from the stoney or clayey surroundings, and sets one free from the other. Often more than one mineral is contained in the same rock. Take, for example, a piece of Cornish arsenical mundic. Here is stone speckled all through with minute but thoroughly distributed portions of the poison known as arsenic. Here also in close neighbourhood is a vein of pure copper ore. Mixed with both is the quartz and earthy matter in which they are imbedded, which is the earliest deposit. We will call the stony portion the simple creature life; the arsenic the evil nature, injected as a foreign substance by some external power; and the copper representing the new life, also foreign to nature, and also external in its introduction into the heart. Here they are together in close association, though not in fellowship. Can nothing separate them? Yes, fire can, and every particle of the arsenic can, by its power, be separated from its companions.

II

Our Passover

Our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ.

It is very remarkable that this is the only place in St. Pauls writings where he articulately pronounces that the paschal lamb is a type of Jesus Christ. There is only one other instance in the New Testament where that is stated with equal clearness and emphasis, and that is in St. Johns account of the Crucifixion, where he recognizes the fact that Christ died with limbs unbroken, as being a fulfilment, in the New Testament sense of that word, of what was enjoined in regard to the antitype, a bone of him shall not be broken.

1. The words carry us back in imagination to the last night of Israels bondage in the land of Egypt. That was a season of horror and anguish to the Egyptians, for at midnight the firstborn of every household was killed by the Angel of the Lord. It was a memorable night to Israel also, though they passed it in perfect safety. The Hebrews had been informed by Moses and Aaron of Gods purpose to slay the first-born of the Egyptians, and had been instructed as to the mystic ceremony by the observance of which they would protect themselves from being overtaken in the same terrible doom. On the night of the Exodus the head of each household was to kill in sacrifice a lamb, or a kid of the goats. He was to put the blood in a basin, and afterwards sprinkle it with a sprig of hyssop on the upper door-post and the two side-posts of his house. The lamb was then to be roasted whole, and eaten with unleavened bread and a salad of bitter herbs. The family were to eat it in the attitude of pilgrims about to set out on a long journeywith their loins girded, their sandals strapped on their feet, and their staves ready in their hands. All this was done in the evening; and a few hours later, at midnight, the first-born of every Egyptian family was smitten by the Angel of Death. But no one died that night in any Israelitish house the door of which was marked with the blood of the paschal lamb. In giving the command about the sprinkling of the blood, the Lord had added this gracious promise: When I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt. And God announced that the Passover was to be to the Jews an ordinance for ever; it was to be an annual festival commemorative of the deliverance of their forefathers from Egypt; the people were to observe it with solemnity and gladness; and parents were to teach their children its significance.

2. There are three thoughts contained in the statement that Christ our passover has been sacrificed for us.

(1) It emphasizes, with each great approach of the redeemed people to God as their covenant Lord, that a Passover is necessary. It becomes a memorial to be kept at Sinai, at Gilgal, and again with special solemnity after periods of backsliding from God, as in the great Passovers under Hezekiah and Josiah, and at the return from the captivity under Ezra, after their separation from the filthiness of the heathen. Besides this, it is the annual covenant feast to be kept unto the Lord throughout all their generations. Thus it bears witness through all the Old Dispensation to mans need of redemption and Gods pledge to meet that need, till that day when the disciples asked the great Antitype Himself, Where wilt thou that we prepare for thee to eat the passover?

Think of these two chains which have always fettered the spirit of humanity, and say whether Christ accomplished nothing for mans redemption in breaking themthe sense of guilt on the conscience and the fear of death. I do not mean to say that men have actually been delivered from these. We are too ignorant of our own franchise, like the poor Israelites who despised their freedom, and perished through their unbelief in the wilderness. But the chains are broken for those who will enjoy their freedom; and countless multitudes have tested to the full their emancipation, and all Christendom feels some common benefit from the deliverance.1 [Note: J. Ll. Davies.]

(2) It offers, next, the Divine provision for that need. If we ask, Where is the lamb for a burnt offering? we receive the answer: Not in that ancient service with its filaments stretching back into the remote past, not even in its great Christian counterpart, which unites in one link of loving rite the Lords Supper with the Jewish Passover, but in that of which both alike speak so clearly, the death of the Cross. Christ by His own blood has entered in once for all into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.

If Christ hath died His brethren well may die,

Sing in the gate of death, lay by

This life without a sigh:

For Christ hath died and good it is to die;

To sleep when so He lays us by,

Then wake without a sigh.

Yea, Christ hath died, yea, Christ is risen again:

Wherefore both life and death grow plain

To us who wax and wane;

For Christ who rose shall die no more again:

Amen: till He makes all things plain

Let us wax on and wane.1 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti, Poems, 168.]

(3) It also expresses the simple appropriation of faith, whereby alone the blessings of Christs Passion can become ours. The paschal lamb was offered, not as in any way worthy of Gods acceptance; but, being looked on as a substitute for the family, it saved the first-born from death. God did not wish to smite Israel, but to save them. But He did not simply omit the Israelite houses and pick out the Egyptian ones through the land. He left it to the choice of the people whether they would accept His deliverance and belong to Him or not. The angel of judgment was to recognize no distinction between Israelite and Egyptian save this of the sprinkled, stained doorposts. Death was to enter every house where the blood was not visible; mercy was to rest on every family that dwelt under this sign. God meant that all should be rescued, but He would not force anywe may say He could not force anyto yield themselves to Him.

And now Christ our Passover is slain and we are asked to determine whether we will use His sacrifice or not. We are not asked to add anything to the efficacy of that sacrifice, but only to avail ourselves of it. Wherever there was faith there was a man in the twilight sprinkling his lintel, and resolved that no solicitation should tempt him from behind the blood till the angel had passed by. He took God at His word; he believed that God meant to deliver him, and he did what he was told was his part. To us God opens a way out from all bondage and from all that gives us the spirit of slaves.

Stephen Grellet was the child of French parents of the nobility, and was born in the city of Limoges, in the beautiful district of Limousin, a few years before the great Revolution broke out in France. He was brought up as a Roman Catholic, and shared in the sufferings of the Royalist party like other members of the nobility. In the fortunes of war he was captured and ordered to be shot. But at that moment a commotion arose and he escaped to America, and began soon after that life of wonderful usefulness which carried him several times across Europe on errands of mercy, brought him before kings and popes, exposed him to perils of war and imprisonment, and made him one of the first workers in the United States for the abolition of slavery. Upon what did that career turn? First, upon a sense of conviction of sin so keen that an awful voice seemed to call from Heaven to him as he walked in the fields Eternity! eternity! eternity! and he felt himself sinking as in the lowest hell. Then, when he was like one crushed under the millstones with the sense of his sin, there came the fulness of heavenly joy through trust in a living Saviour. He realized that there was One, even He whom I had piercedJesus Christ the Redeemerthat was able to save me. I saw Him to be the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world. On my earnest petition being put up to Him, the language was proclaimed, Thy sins are forgiven, thine iniquities are pardoned. 1 [Note: W. Guest, Life of Stephen Grellet, 24.]

Safdar Ali was the son of a Moslem judge in a native state of India, and attended Agra College, studying among other things very closely the Moslem faith. After leaving college he obtained the post of Deputy-Inspector of Schools in the Punjab, and there he came across Sufi philosophers and fakirs. From them he learned to practise austerities of life in order to obtain purity of heart. But he failed to find it, and when he told them of his failure they answered that he must find an infallible director. Among sheikhs and fakirs he sought for such a one in vain, till at length he decided on the pilgrimage to Mecca. As he was preparing for it he met with a copy of Pfanders Mizan-al-Haqq, or Balance of Truth, a defence of Christianity against Moslems. This led him to decide to study the Christian faith, and for three years, instead of going to Mecca, he pondered over the Bible and Koran side by side, deserted by his wife, but helped by a Christian convert Nehemiah. The result was that he found Christ as a personal Saviour, and could say:

My Friend was near me, and I roamed far in search of Him;

My well was full of water, while I was parched and thirsty.

Praise upon praise, to-day my journey is ended.

Now the last stage is reachedmy pilgrimage is oer.2 [Note: History of the C.M.S. ii. 555.]

3. But the particular reason why the Apostle here states that our Passover has been sacrificed is to offer a reason why the old leaven should be purged out. His thought, accordingly, is that Christ is our representative; in offering Himself He offers us to God; and we are no longer our own.

Christ is our passover, because through Him there is made the acknowledgment that we belong to God. He is in very truth the prime and flower, the best representative of our race, the first-born of every creature. He is the One who can make for all others this acknowledgment that we are Gods people. And He does so by perfectly giving Himself up to God. This fact that we belong to God, that we men are His creatures and subjects, has never been perfectly acknowledged save by Christ.

Only those of us who can see that we ought to live for God can claim Christ as our representative. Only those who wished to go free from Egypt to serve God sacrificed the paschal lamb; the service of God, the living as His people, was the object they had in view. What object have we? If we mean to be of His spirit, if we mean to count it our meat and drink to do Gods will, if we are really disposed to seek the advancement of Gods purposes, and not to seek great things for ourselves, we may speak of Him as our Substitute and Sacrifice. If He is our Passover, the meaning of this is that He gives us liberty to serve God, that He comes to redeem us from all that hinders our serving Him. The one question is, Do we at heart wish to give ourselves up to God? Do we find in His life and death, in His submission to God and meek acceptance of all God appointed, the truest representation of what we would fain be and do, but cannot?1 [Note: Marcus Dods.]

III

The Feast

Wherefore let us keep the feast.

1. Wherefore, exclaims the Apostle (and remember that Wherefore loses its force unless we have appropriated to ourselves the benefit of the Paschal sacrifice), let us keep the feast. When we know that for us the Paschal blood has been shed, that word wherefore indicates a logical conclusion which must follow from Gospel premises; and this inference is so patent and powerful, that there is no escape from it. Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: wherefore let us keep the feast.

2. The feast alluded to in these words is neither the Passover of the Law nor a Communion season of the Christian Church. It is the whole life of the followers of Jesus, as that life is led in Him, and as, in it all, they are partakers of His joy. Their Paschal Lamb is for them always slain. For them the incense of Christs offering continually ascends before the throne of God. They have put the leaven of sin out of their hearts and lives, not for an hour only, or a day or a week, but for ever. Therefore they keep constant festival. Their whole life, with its memories of deliverance from bondage, and with the first-fruits of a spiritual harvest ripening around them in their free and independent home, has a festival light thrown over it. They always eat the flesh and drink the blood of One who never fails either to support or quicken them. The Christian Passover never ends.1 [Note: W. Milligan, in The Expositor, 3rd Ser., viii. 164.]

3. Two things are suggested by keeping the feast.

(1) Taking food.For the point to be observed is this, that just as in that ancient ritual the lamb slain became the food of the Israelites, so with us the Christ who has died is to be the sustenance of our souls, and of our Christian life. Wherefore let us keep the feast.

Feed upon Him; that is the essential central requirement for all Christian life. And what does feeding on Him mean? How can this man give us his flesh to eat? said the Jews, and the answer is plain now, though so obscure then. The flesh which He gave for the life of the world in His death, must by us be taken for the very nourishment of our souls, by the simple act of faith in Him. That is the feeding which brings not only sustenance but life. Christs death for us is the basis, but it is only the basis, of Christs living in us, and His death for us is of no use at all to us unless He that died for us lives in us. We feed on Him by faith, which not only trusts to the Sacrifice as atoning for sin, but feeds on it as communicating and sustaining eternal lifeChrist our passover is sacrificed for us, wherefore let us keep the feast.

Again, we keep the feast when our minds feed upon Christ by contemplation of what He is, what He has done, what He is doing, what He will do; when we take Him as the Master-light of all our seeing, and in Him, His words and works, His Passion, Resurrection, Ascension, Session as Sovereign at the right hand of God, find the perfect revelation of what God is, the perfect discovery of what man is, the perfect disclosure of what sin is, the perfect prophecy of what man may become, the Light of light, the answer to every question that our spirits can put about the loftiest verities of God and man, the universe and the future. We feed on Christ when, with lowly submission, we habitually subject thoughts, purposes, desires, to His authority, and when we let His will flow into, and make plastic and supple, our wills. We nourish our wills by submitting them to Jesus, and we feed on Him not only when we say Lord! Lord! but when we do the things that He says. We feed on Christ, when we let His great, sacred, all-wise, all-giving, all-satisfying love flow into our restless hearts and make them still, enter into our vagrant affections and fix them on Himself.

To feed on Christ is to get His strength into us to be our strength. You feed on the cornfield and the strength of the cornfield comes into you and is your strength. You feed on the cornfield and then go and build your house, and it is the cornfield in your strong arm that builds the house, that cuts down the trees and piles the stones and lifts the roof into its place. You feed on Christ and then go and live your life, and it is Christ in you that lives your life, that helps the poor, that tells the truth, that fights the battle, and that wins the crown.1 [Note: Phillips Brooks.]

(2) Enjoyment.In the second place, the word suggests the thought of enjoyment. Our life is to be a feast; that is to say, a season of continuous happy festivity. Not only when we reach that better land, and sit down at the marriage supper of the Lamb; not only then are we to be privileged to feast with Him. The feast of heaven begins on earth, and only those who know from their own experience what it is to feast with Jesus now will ever feast with Him yonder.

The Christian is not only to take the doctrines which concern Christ, to build up his soul with them as the body is built up with food, but he may draw from them the wine of joy and the new wine of delight. It is meet that we rejoice in Christ Jesus. He is the bliss of the saints. Is it not a joy unspeakable and full of glory, that my sin will never be laid to my charge if I believe in Him; that my sin has been laid at His door, and He has put it all away, so that if it be searched for it shall not be found? Is it not an intense delight to believe that Christ has so effectually put away sin that no destroying angel can touch one of His saints? There being no condemnation, there can be no punishment for us either in this world or in that which is to come. We are safe as were the Israelites when the door was sprinkled with the blood. And then, being justified, we rise to a higher position, we are adopted into the family of God, and if children, then heirs. What a vista of glory opens before our eyes at the mention of that word, heirs of God! All things are ours, because Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us.

As if to one who in a dungeon lay,

Laden with chains, and hidden from the sun,

For some dark evil deed that he had done,

For which he must his life a forfeit pay,

Should come a messenger of glad reprieve,

And lead him out into the sunlight gay,

Pardoned and free, on some high holiday,

To joy his trembling heart can scarce conceive;

So in his veins the wine of life should run,

So should he still rejoicing keep the feast,

Who is from guilt and fear of death released,

By the sure promise of the Mighty One,

That, as in Egypt passing Death was fain

To spare the house where blood he might perceive,

Sprinkled by those who did the Lord believe,

So, for us too, our Passover is slain.

For the Feast

Literature

Aitken (W. H. M. H.), The Highway of Holiness, 220.

Beeching (H. C.), The Bible Doctrine of the Sacraments, 86.

Burrell (D. J.), The Gospel of Gladness, 255.

Davies (J. LI.), The Work of Christ, 85.

Dods (M.), Footsteps in the Path of Life, 97, 100.

Green (T. H.), The Witness of God, and Faith, 1.

Grubb (G. C.), The Light of His Countenance, 9.

Gurney (T. A.), The Living Lord and the Opened Grave, 57.

Hepher (C.), The Revelation of Love, 157.

Jerdan (C.), For the Lords Table, 62.

Keble (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year: EasterAscension, 1.

Kuegele (F.), Country Sermons, New Ser., ii, 256.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions: 1 and 2 Corinthians, 83.

Maurice (F. D.), Lincolns Inn Sermons, iii. 245.

Morgan (R. C.), The Cross in the Old Testament, 81.

Moule (H. C. G.), The Pledges of His Love, 97.

Pope (R. M.), The Poetry of the Upward Way, 29.

Smith (D.), The Pilgrims Hospice, 37.

Spurgeon (C. H.), New Park Street Pulpit, ii. (1856) No. 54.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xvi. (1870) No. 965.

Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), xxiii. (1883) No. 1244.

Waterston (R.), Thoughts on the Lords Supper, 153.

Watt (L. M.), The Communion Table, 223.

Wiseman (N.), Childrens Sermons, 72.

Christian World Pulpit, xiv. 121 (Aveling).

Church of England Pulpit, lxiii. 237 (Sandham).

Churchmans Pulpit: Easter Day and Season: vii. 195 (Keble).

Clergymans Magazine, 3rd Ser., xv. 300 (Gurney).

Contemporary Pulpit, 2nd Ser., ix. 161 (Barry).

Homiletic Review, xliii. 333 (Dieterich).

Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible

Purge: 1Co 5:13, Exo 12:15, Exo 13:6, Exo 13:7, Eph 4:22, Col 3:5-9

ye may: 1Co 10:17

Christ: 1Co 15:3, 1Co 15:4, Exo 12:5, Exo 12:6, Isa 53:7-10, Joh 1:29, Joh 1:36, Joh 19:14, Act 8:32-35, 1Pe 1:19, 1Pe 1:20, Rev 5:6-9, Rev 5:12

sacrificed: or, slain

Reciprocal: Gen 22:13 – in the Exo 10:9 – a feast Exo 12:3 – take to Exo 12:11 – it is the Exo 12:14 – by an ordinance Exo 12:19 – Seven Exo 12:21 – the passover Exo 12:27 – It is the sacrifice Exo 23:15 – the feast Exo 29:2 – bread Exo 34:25 – leaven Lev 2:4 – the oven Lev 23:5 – General Num 5:3 – without Num 9:2 – his appointed Num 9:7 – we may not offer Num 28:16 – General Deu 16:1 – the passover Deu 16:2 – sacrifice 1Sa 9:12 – sacrifice 2Ch 30:1 – to keep 2Ch 30:21 – the feast 2Ch 35:17 – the feast Ezr 6:22 – the feast Pro 9:2 – killed Eze 45:17 – he shall prepare Eze 45:21 – ye shall Mat 13:33 – like Mat 22:4 – Behold Mar 14:12 – killed Luk 12:1 – Beware Luk 22:1 – General Luk 22:16 – until Joh 19:30 – It is Act 12:3 – Then Act 20:6 – the days Rom 12:1 – a living 1Co 5:2 – might 1Co 5:9 – not 1Co 11:24 – eat Gal 5:9 – General Eph 5:2 – a sacrifice 2Ti 2:21 – purge Heb 13:10 – an altar

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

CHRIST AND THE PASSOVER

Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.

1Co 5:7

The Passover is perhaps the most interesting ceremony in the world on the sole ground of its continuous celebration by the Jews; but let us not forget that it has a further history in the Christian Church.

I. Our Saviour adopted the Passover, with the significance attached to it by the Jews of His day, as the symbol of His own sacrifice and of that New Covenant with His Father which He established. If certain critical conclusions were true, we should be forced to the conclusion that the significance of the most sacred Christian rite is itself based upon a fiction.

II. In the fact of our Lord having thus invested the ancient Passover with the supreme importance of its spiritual continuance in the Lords Supper, the Christian must see an overwhelming reason for accepting the interpretation of it which was evidently His own and that of His Apostles.

III. These solemn, ancient, and sacred associations cannot be overthrown by precarious guesses; and we may confidently adhere to the old belief that, as God graciously established the Passover as the perpetual symbol of His covenant with His people, and of His redemption of them from bondage, so our Saviour established the Lords Supper as the symbol of our redemption from a far heavier bondage, and of our admission to a far more precious covenant.

Dean Wace.

Illustration

The Passover, to which St. Paul here compares the sacrifice of our Saviour, is perhaps the most interesting and important ceremony in the world. There is no dispute that part of it, at all events, the feast of unleavened bread, goes back to the very commencement of the national life of the Jewish people, or even further, and it is celebrated now by the Jews with the utmost reverence and care in accordance with what they believe to be the prescriptions of their fathers. To quote from Dr. Kalisch, a well-known Jewish commentator, those prescriptions are still observed by the Jewish people with scrupulous conscientiousness, even by those who otherwise do not strictly adhere to the ritual injunctions of Mosaism, so that the celebration of Passover, even with the greatest sacrifices, has become a standing proverbial characteristic of the Hebrew nation. Passover was always considered as pre-eminent among the national festivals of Israel, both on account of its political importance and its solemn religious character. It is considered second to no precept except circumcision; it has the significance of a sacrament; it was formerly the only expiatory sacrifice which every Israelite could offer personally without the mediation of the priest; thus the paschal lamb showed manifestly Israel as a kingdom of priests; it connected the individual with God, as a member of the chosen community, and with his brethren, as leading to the same Divine sovereignty. Those who neglected to pay this annual debt broke off their connection alike with God and with their fellow-citizens. Both the Israelites and their enemies were fully impressed with the paramount religious influence which a due observance of Passover, that corner-stone and basis of the national life of Israel, exercised upon the people. Hezekiah commenced his great religious reform with an invitation to all the tribes of Israel to repair to Jerusalem and to celebrate the festival of unleavened bread; and a perfect change in the religious aspect of the country was the almost immediate consequence (Com. on Exod., p. 181).

Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary

1Co 5:7. Paul has introduced the subject of leaven for the purpose of illustration. There were enough Jews in the congregation to know about the regulations under the law of Moses regarding leaven, and even the Gentiles had seen enough of the Jewish practices to understand something on the subject. At the time of the feast of the Passover and the seven days following, the Jews were required to “put away leaven out of your houses” (Exo 12:15), in order that they might keep their feast acceptably. Paul uses the language of that occasion for his instructions to the Corinthians. Purge out therefore the old leaven corresponds to “put away leaven out of your houses” with the Jews. The leaven to be purged out of the Corinthian church was the wicked fornicator. That ye may be a new lump means the church will be free from the leaven of this wicked man, and in so doing they would become a body fit for the service of Christ, having become unleavened. The Jews were to bring about this condition that was free from leaven, because a creature had been slain and prepared to be used in the Passover feast, and it could be eaten only “with unleavened bread” (Exo 12:8). Likewise, Christ has been slain and made a passover for us, and we should be prepared to partake thereof with a condition that has been purged from the leaven of sin.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

1Co 5:7. Purge out[1] the old leaven. Referring to the practice enjoined in Exo 12:15, and almost superstitiously observed at the Passover time, of removing every particle of leaven from their houses, the apostle would have them put away in the person of this flagrant offender, that corrupt element, the old man, which at their conversion they had put off.

[1] The word therefore is not in the genuine text.

that ye may be a new lump, even as ye are (already) unleavenedconsidered as new creatures, in whom all things have become new.

For our Passover also is (Gr. was, or hath been) sacrificed, even Christ.[1] Yes, and ours is infinitely more precious than Israels. It was the blood of a brute creature, the sprinkling of which on their door-posts was the means of their redemption; we are redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world; their redemption was merely national and temporal, ours is world-wide and eternal.

[1] The words for us. which are without any good authority, are also out of place; for the apostles one object was to remind them that we Christians have a Passover, and a Passover-feast to keep, as well as the Jews.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

Vv. 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 , to purify by removing, would apply to an act such as the: taking away from among (1Co 5:2), and the: delivering to Satan (1Co 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 1Co 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 , 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 lev, 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 (Exo 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 , new, does not signify: new as to quality (as 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 Rom 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 , unleavened, the active meaning belonging to the adjectives , (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 , 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 , 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 , 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; is in apposition to . The practical consequence of His death thus understood, and of the new state in which it places believers, is drawn in the following verse.

Fuente: Godet Commentary (Luke, John, Romans and 1 Corinthians)

Purge out the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, even as ye are unleavened. For our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ:

Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)

7. Purify out the old leaven in order that you may be a new lump, as you are free from leaven: for Christ indeed was made our Passover. The summary of this verse is a most explicit commandment to get sanctified wholly, since in this way alone can we be thoroughly expurgated and made free from the old leaven of sin; Christ Himself, who is and always was perfectly free from sin, being our paragon. You know how explicit the law of Moses was in reference to the bread used in the Passover festival? It had to be perfectly free from leaven in order to represent Christ, who is perfectly free from sin. Hence you see we are to have the very purity of Christ Himself, which is original in Him, but exotic in us, having been relegated to us and conferred on us by the Holy Ghost.

Fuente: William Godbey’s Commentary on the New Testament

Verse 7

As ye are unleavened; required to be unleavened, that is, pure.–Christ our passover. It was only at the time of the passover that the Jews were required to abstain from the use of leaven. The sacrifice of Christ is therefore represented as a passover, to compete the figure.

Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament

5:7 {8} Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new {e} lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our {f} passover is sacrificed for us:

(8) By alluding to the ceremony of the passover, he exhorts them to cast out that unclean person from among them. In times past, he says, it was not lawful for those who celebrated the passover to eat unleavened bread, insomuch that he was held as unclean and unworthy to eat the passover, whoever had but tasted of leaven. Now our whole life must be as it were the feast of unleavened bread, in which all they that are partakers of that immaculate lamb which is slain, must cast out both of themselves, and also out of their houses and congregations, all impurity.

(e) By lump he means the whole body of the Church, every member of which must be unleavened bread, that is, be renewed in spirit, by plucking away the old corruption.

(f) The Lamb of our passover.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

In Jewish life it was customary to throw away all the leaven (yeast) in the house when the family prepared for the Passover celebration (Exo 12:15; Exo 13:6-7). They did this so the bread they made for Passover and the feast of Unleavened Bread that followed would be completely free of leaven. This may have been for hygienic reasons as well as because of the symbolism of the act. This is what the Corinthians needed to do as a church so they could worship God acceptably. In one sense they were already free of leaven; their trust in Christ had removed their sins. However in another sense they possessed leaven since they had tolerated sin in their midst. Paul described the same situation earlier in this epistle when he said the Corinthians were saints (1Co 1:2) even though they were not behaving as saints. God had sanctified them in their position, but they were in need of progressive sanctification. They needed to become what they were. This was Paul’s basic exhortation.

"1 Corinthians emphasizes that the gospel issues in transformed lives, that salvation in Christ is not complete without God/Christlike attitudes and behavior.

"The classic expression of Paul’s understanding of the relationship between gospel and ethics (indicative and imperative) is to be found in 1Co 5:7.

"Ethics for Paul is ultimately a theological issue pure and simple. Everything has to do with God and with what God is about in Christ and the Spirit. Thus (1) the purpose (or basis) of Christian ethics is the glory of God (1Co 10:31); (2) the pattern for such ethics is Christ (1Co 11:1); (3) the principle is love, precisely because it alone reflects God’s character (1Co 8:2-3; 1Co 13:1-8); and (4) the power is the Spirit (1Co 6:11; 1Co 6:19)." [Note: Fee, "Toward a . . .," pp. 51, 53.]

The mention of the removal of leaven before the Passover led Paul to develop his analogy further. Christ, the final Passover Lamb, had already died. A type is a divinely intended illustration of something else, the antitype. A type may be a person (cf. Rom 5:14), a thing (cf. Heb 10:19-20), an event (cf. 1Co 10:11), a ceremony, as here, or an institution (cf. Heb 9:11-12). Therefore it was all the more important that the believers clean out the remaining leaven immediately.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)