New Thoughts (06/09/17-06/13/17)
Improper Boasting (06/10/17)
This passage makes clear that Paul has not entirely shifted points, but has rather opted to turn to this most serious failing to demonstrate just how inappropriate their assessments of the church and its leaders was. You’re boasting of your spiritual development? Look at this mess! What sort of leadership do you have that they allow this to go unattended? Boasting may not in itself be sinful, although I think it is more often than not. Boasting in the Lord, for example, can hardly be construed a sin. Boasting of one’s advancement in the Lord, on the other hand, is more likely the puffery of pride, and arrogance can’t be far behind. What can be said of boasting, though, is that it presents the perfect environment for the leaven of sin to ferment.
It’s an image that came to me when looking at this passage the first time around. Think of the bread making process of which leaven is so integral a part. You don’t add yeast and refrigerate. No. You want that dough in a warm space in which the yeast can do its work. Boasting is the warm space in which sin grows. How is this the case? We’re seeing it here. They were so busy patting one another on the back for their great advancement that they failed to see the issue with this incestuous young man. I will continue to stress that we don’t know if they were boasting of their tolerance for his behavior, for loving the sinner even as they hated his sin, or if Paul is just pointing back to their general boasting about how great their teachers were, how great they must be given all the gifts on display. Certainly, if their teachers and leaders were so marvelous, this situation shouldn’t have been something Paul was learning about – and even more certainly, he shouldn’t be learning about it from other sources, given the myriad questions their letter to him had sought advice about. If you’re going to ask about celibacy (and that question isn’t just a thinly veiled “see how pious we are?”), shouldn’t concern about this matter have been higher on your list?
Pride blinds us to just how sorry our true estate is. We can side with Barnes, when he points out for us that when we find ourselves inclined to boast, it’s time to ask that God might search our heart and reveal if there isn’t some sin being indulged in us. Do we really have cause to be so proud? What are we overlooking, Lord? The Church seems to be doing well, and its people are growing. What are we missing? Where do we need to return to a clearer view of our condition? What is waiting to humble us?
If I look back on our church’s most recent business meeting, we heard once again the pastor’s assessment of our condition. In general, this is a question of measuring against the marks of a church, as well as against our mission statement. What are we supposed to be, and how do we measure up? The assessment was generally quite positive. But, I look at this, and wonder: What are we missing? Honestly, I know there are plenty of issues with sin that we are aware of and addressing. But, still, one wonders: What’s happening that we’re not aware of? How do we, as overseers become aware of them? How do we address them as they come to light? And how, Dear Lord, how do we bear up? Of course, the answer to the last is, “Not by might. Not by power. But, by My Spirit.” May we be found clinging to Him through every test and trial!
Type / Antitype (06/10/17)
Having taken up a favorite image of leaven in the dough, Paul’s thoughts continue along the theme of Passover. As the reference to Pentecost at the end of the letter suggests, it would seem the observance of Passover was either in the very recent past, or the very near future as he was writing this letter, so it’s not surprising that its imagery would enter into his writing. To be very clear, though, Paul is not advocating that the Corinthians observe the Passover. For one thing, it would be rather impossible, since they could hardly be expected to travel to Jerusalem en masse, nor would they likely find a welcome at the temple if they did. The usage here is purely symbolic. He is using the type to turn our attention to the antitype.
But, let me pause on that for just one brief moment. Paul is not advocating a return to this ritual and is, in fact, setting it aside himself. Consider that. Here is Paul, Pharisee of the Pharisees, a man who has spent pretty much the entirely of his life devoted to walking with God. Granted, he has been misguided in that effort at times, but however that may be, we might say his heart was in the right place. If there was anybody who cared about the holiness of God, it was Paul. He just needed a bit of correction – ok, a LOT of correction – in regard to the things he had learned from his Pharisaic teachers. But, this Paul, this man devoted to God in a way unlike most any other, was clearly not observing Passover. If he were, he would be writing from Jerusalem, or at least making arrangements to get there. It was, after all, incumbent upon the Jewish male to be present in Jerusalem for Passover unless it was utterly impossible that he should do so. Paul’s situation in Ephesus did not render it impossible. Paul’s situation as an Apostle of Christ made it unnecessary, and even counter-productive. The Passover ritual had no bearing on his mission. The Passover ritual can have no bearing on ours.
This is a lesson we seem to have difficulty accepting. Christianity, after all, has its roots in Judaism. It is, then, no particular surprise to find that many a Christian becomes intrigued by, and even infatuated with, Jewish religious practice. There’s a certain mysticism to it, as we see it, that attracts. It’s not all that different than the urge that leads Protestants to wander off to taste of Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. There’s something about a ceremony that calls to us. But, the ceremony can never be more than a type, never be more than a shadow of the reality. It may thrill. It may do a better job of capturing our emotions. But, it is not the reality. It cannot impart the reality. At best, it can remind us of the reality. And that returns us back to Paul’s usage here.
Passover does have value to the Christian; as an illustration of the fulfillment life we live. Why was the lamb sacrificed? That its blood might be applied to the house, and God’s angel of death pass by without stopping. The lamb was slain to take away the sins of the people. That was the significance, or at least a large part of the significance, of this annual feast. Once again, we are called before God, and once again, our sins render us unfit to do so. Once again, we need to atone, to have our sins washed from us by the blood of the sacrifice.
We know that lamb points us to Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God. Knowing this, we know a major distinction between type and antitype. The type had need to be sacrificed annually. The type had a temporary, symbolic efficacy. The antitype, being of eternal and unchanging nature, needed to be sacrificed but once – once for all time; once for all the elect; once – for as many as will ever have called upon Him. That debt of sin which we are, sadly, still accumulating has already been paid. That debt which we could never have paid from our own account has been paid into our account. We are declared righteous because this Lamb of God came to take away the sin of the world, as John the Baptist observed at the outset (Jn 1:29).
But, returning to the type, it was not enough to come with the lamb, to say, “I’m sorry”, though. There was that other part, the sweeping out of all leaven. Most of the commentaries point to that week that followed, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and there is good reason to do so. But, before we get there, look back prior to the sacrifice. The cleaning out of the leaven came first, as a preparatory act. If the house wasn’t swept of leaven, then the sacrifice was to no purpose. Now, here we shall have to step carefully in considering the antitype, for it’s very clear that we cannot sweep ourselves clean of sin even after the Lamb, let alone before. But, there is something that comes before. There is that rewriting of the heart, if you will, that must necessarily include a true repentance on our part; not just a sorrow for having sinned, but a deep-seated desire (even if newly discovered in ourselves) to be free of sin. This is the work of the Spirit in us, the seed of faith implanted, that we might indeed turn to the Lamb Who was slain and discover His forgiveness.
So, here, I might have to adjust Calvin’s observation just the slightest bit. He suggests, “Passover consisted of two parts – a sacrifice and a sacred feast.” I will have to insist there is that third, and no less significant aspect of preparation. The fact remains, though, that, “There is no reconciliation without a sacrifice.” That has ever been the case with God, and ever shall be. It was there in the Garden, when the need arose to clothe Adam and Eve. Fig leaves wouldn’t cover the shame. There had been no sacrifice. It would need the skins of animals; animals necessarily sacrificed to obtain those skins. And so it continued. That annual sacrifice, and the weekly sacrifices, and on and on, were all there to provide reconciliation. Apart from the blood of the sacrifice, life given for life, it could not be had.
But, now we are come to the week-long feast, the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The significance, which Paul is emphasizing here, is that throughout this week, the requirement went on unchanged: No leaven. Keep all the nation, let alone your own house, swept clean of leaven. Surely, the requirement to sweep the very nation clean should have made clear that the issue wasn’t that God did not much like yeast. Surely, this points us to the intended antitype. Leaven is repeatedly used to indicate the corrupting influence of sin. It is this that we are to sweep out. The nation, for us, is the church.
So, Paul hits us, syntactically with the once-for-all ‘has been sacrificed’ of Christ, which leads to a call for our continual, ever present, ‘Let us go on keeping the feast’, as the Wycliffe Commentary suggests we ought properly to read the Present Tense here. Don’t stop! After all, again turning to the Wycliffe, that seven days of the feast prescribed by God stands as emblematic of ‘a complete circle of time’. Seven is, after all, the number of perfection, for those inclined to numerical signifiers. The point is that our entire Christian life is to be spent in observation of this antitype of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Keep at it. Search out the remaining sin and get it out! This goes for personal life first, of course. But, it also goes for the house of God – the nation.
Two points I feel the need to hit on before I finish this portion. First: We cannot possibly hope to fulfill the antitype, lifelong effort at purification and sanctification by returning to the types and shadows of Jewish practice. This is, by and large, to fall into the trap the Galatians fell into. Having been saved by grace, let’s get back to the Law! Suggest this to anybody inclined to such things and you will hit stiff denials. Of course not! We know better than that. We’re not returning to the Law, we’re just restoring the ancient ways. We just want to honor our forebears. We just want to demonstrate our status as the new Israel by taking on the ways of the old. But, the whole trajectory of Christianity, the whole work of Christ our Lord, and the Apostles whom He appointed, was to set aside the types and step into the fulfillment! If our Lamb has been slain once for all, what cause can we have to go back to the shadow? If His nearest and dearest Apostles felt perfectly comfortable speaking to Him as Jesus, how can we suppose it demonstrates some deeper spirituality or some nearer communion with Him if we insist on speaking of Him only as Yeshua? I don’t think He’s terribly impressed by it. I could be wrong, but it sure seems He was and is perfectly comfortable with Jesus.
Second point: When we speak of the need to sweep our nation, our Church, clean and keep it so, we certainly cannot take that to indicate that our doors must be slammed close upon all unbelief. Paul will take us through that point in the next section (1Co 5:9-10), so I don’t need to dwell on it just yet, but I don’t want it left unsaid either. Of course we welcome the unbeliever to come and learn of Christ. The call to come as you are remains. The call to remain as you are, however, has never been rightly heard in the church. The tolerance of a purported believer insistently living a life of blatant and unrepentant sin remaining in the church is, or ought to be unthinkable. Here is where the broom must be applied. But, the broom is applied in hopes not simply of keeping the house clean, but of bringing that lost one back to his senses, back to repentance, and ultimately, back into the family of Christ.
Necessity of Discipline (06/11/17)
I would hope that there is no question as to the basic need for discipline. But, then, if I look around at society I have to conclude that maybe this is no longer true. There is a need to explain. Parents don’t seem to get it any more. Teachers are apparently incapable of maintaining it, whether due to lack of ability, perhaps due to managerial interference. The last few weeks have shown me that I, too, suffer the infection. Discipline becomes a thing we practice when it suits us. But, that is incompatible with the Christian life. The Christian life is a well-disciplined life.
In pursuit of that life, our primary concern is that particular discipline we speak of as the mortification of sin. Put to death the old man! Clean out the old leaven! Come out of that walking death into newness of life! Yes, we must cling to Christ and entrust ourselves to His power if ever we are to do this, but the call remains. Work out your salvation in fear and trembling, and do so in full knowledge that God Himself is at work in you to render you willing and to empower the work (Php 2:12-13). Why? Because God detests sin. He detests it to so great a degree that He arranged for the sacrifice of His own Son, Jesus Messiah, to put an end to it. Reconciliation required a sacrifice, and man was incapable of making it, let alone being unfit to do so. But, God made the sacrifice. Just as He had done with Abraam back at the start; just as He had done with Adam that last day in Eden; God, it seems, is forever having to make sacrifices for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in time (2Co 5:21).
This is the call we are hearing from Paul. Clean up! Get that leaven of sin out of here. That image is apt, isn’t it? Sin, left unaddressed, will fester, will expand, will spread. Clean it out! Leave no least scrap of it, because it will not remain a least scrap. But, as I said at the end of the previous section, understand the boundaries of this application. We are not called to denounce sinners on every side. We are not called to form up political action groups in hopes of purging the sin from our governing bodies. There is unlikely to be a Christian theocracy until our King returns. Look how well it’s worked out when such things were attempted. If ever there was a corrupting leaven to remove from the Church, it was that corrupting leaven of political power!
But, the leaven we are to remove is personal first. Get that beam out of your eye. What is the sin you figure you have under control, so it’s OK? Or, maybe it’s sufficiently hidden, in your view, that you suppose you can let it slide. God says otherwise. Get rid of it! It will not remain as it is. It will fester. Like the cancer it is, it will infect whatever is good and holy in you (Holy Spirit excluded, of course), until nothing fit remains. You, dear Christian, have no permit for posturing. Yes, I know we have our church face to wear when amongst our brothers, but we shouldn’t and we know it. We are all of us weak of flesh. Pretending we are not fools no one. It certainly doesn’t fool God, and that’s pretty much the only thing that matters. If we give leeway to our sin, we are defaming God’s holy character. It cannot be otherwise. As Christians, we represent Him. We may represent Him well or we may represent Him poorly, but we represent Him.
And so He warns us: Judgment must begin with the household of God (1Pe 4:17). It’s time, as Peter says. Now is the time for it. Don’t put it off. Expose the lie wherever it may be found. Let the heart be laid bare before God and man. It’s already laid bare before God, so what’s the difference if man finds out, too? The difference is that the subterfuge comes to an end. The difference is that the leaven, exposed to the light of Christ, can no longer corrupt. I know that doesn’t necessarily follow from the type. Leaven and sunlight work together, don’t they? But, let it stand for the moment.
The call for discipline in the Church is serious. It is to be taken seriously. It is to be honored by the Church as the first evidence of good care. If there is no discipline, we can readily argue, God is not in it. “For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives” (Heb 12:6). My! Just look at how that text unfolds. “It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.” (Heb 12:7-8). And you wonder why discipline is a necessary mark of the Church?
Let us accept, then, that we cannot insist on the nation being holy. We cannot insist that unbelievers behave as if they belonged to God. They are of a different kingdom and they obey that kingdom’s master. Unless our Master redeems them to Himself, they are outside our jurisdiction. But, in the house? Not only can we insist on holiness, we are commanded to insist on holiness. Clean out the old leaven! Root out every sin!
Oh! How harsh that sounds to our ears. How harsh it seems to those who populate the church. You’re going to stick your nose in our business? Are you planning a witch-hunt? Well, to the first question, you had best hope the answer is yes. Of course we’re going to stick our noses in your business, and we beg of you that you might stick your noses in ours. If you see your brother sin, and call him to repentance and he hears you, you have won your brother. How are we to do that if we isolate and hide away one from another? How are we going to do that if we are not keenly aware of each other’s business? It can’t be done. Are we going on a witch-hunt? Far be it from us! Were we to do so, we would have to empty the house entirely, even of ourselves. But, when the sin is visible, it is time and past time that it be dealt with.
Face it: If the sin is visible, then the corruption has already progressed too far. What we are seeing is only the least manifestation of the corrupted mass that lies below the surface, trying to remain hidden. That’s the point of the image. Leaven corrupts. One little packet of yeast will cause the entire lump of dough to undergo change. One little sin left unattended will become a big sin, and will infect not just the individual member, but the whole body. So, individual and gathered church; the same rule applies. Allow no impurity to corrupt you. Understand that as judgmental and, shall we say, puritanical as it sounds, it holds true. There was a day when churchmen did not feel the need to hide away from the point. “One bad member infects the whole church.” So, the JFB writes it. It’s offensive, isn’t it? Doesn’t something in you just recoil from it? I know for my own part I want to look at those authors and say they’re pushing the point too far. And yet, they’re not alone, and more to the point, there is plentiful Scripture to back them up. Even in this letter, we have it stated. Don’t be deceived! Bad company corrupts good morals (1Co 15:33). Yes, God is stronger than sin. But, our flesh is weak, and given the corrupting company of the bad, we will swiftly come to neglect our own good morals in favor of fitting in. This is true and you know it!
Think also of Paul’s instruction to his young friend and coworker Timothy. Discussing the matter of discipline, particularly as it applies to weeding out bad teaching and bad leadership, he writes, “Their talk will spread like gangrene” (2Ti 2:17). You can’t let it stay untreated. It’s not going to get better. It can only get worse. Cut it off, or you’ll lose not even the whole limb, but the whole body. Gangrene kills. Cancer kills. Sin kills.
While we are not given the clearest of insight into the thinking of the Corinthians that had led them to tolerate this incestuous relationship in one of their own, we can perhaps guess at this much. At best, they must have concluded that tolerating the sin of this one member wasn’t going to have any effect on the rest of the church. Everybody else, they may have supposed, recognizes how wrong this is. “Even pagans won’t accept such immorality,” after all (1Co 5:1). There’s no trouble here if we leave so and so to his decision. But, that’s not true. It’s not true at all. Man is weak. If he sees somebody getting away with what he knows shouldn’t be done, the outcome is all but certain: He will decide that he can get away with it, too. After all, if this one can do as he does and be accepted, why should I try harder?
The Wycliffe translators give us the takeaway. “Sin always spreads and contaminates if left alone.” ALWAYS. There is no exception. Don’t suppose yours is the one case that will break the pattern. It isn’t. If sin persists, as Barnes says, it will diffuse not just through the person who is sinning, but through the congregation of which he is a part. That’s the danger. It doesn’t just spread. It contaminates. If we indulge the sin of an individual, we can be certain – CERTAIN – that it will pervade and corrupt the Church. It only gets worse if the individual is one who is leadership in some capacity. Now, it’s not just some guy getting away with it. It’s leadership modeling it. If they’re doing it, I must have misunderstood what Scripture was saying. It must be acceptable behavior after all. And pretty soon you’ve got the Church of Anything Goes. Except, it’s no longer a church, unless we account it a church of Satan.
There is only one right answer to this, and it’s the hard one: Remove the sin, which in a case such as this requires that we remove the sinner who is serving as carrier. If that one has insisted on acting like a citizen of the world, then let him go live in the world. If he wishes to live like swine, let him dwell with swine. When and if he awakes to his condition, repents of his sins, and returns to Christ, we will gladly welcome him back. But, not until. That leaven must be swept out, that the lump may remain clean.
Leaven and Salt (06/12/17)
I’m picking up a theme from my previous visit to these verses by way of turning attention to the contrasts that are set before us. If I ask what stands as the opposite of leaven, salt may not be the first thing that comes to mind, but it is the correct answer. Consider the rules that covered the Old Covenant sacrificial system. On the one hand, no leaven was to be found in the sacrifice. On the other, salt was to be part of it. Move into the New Testament, and what do we find? We are called to be the salt, but to remove the leaven.
If we think about salt much at all, we tend to think of its value for seasoning. We might be sufficiently aware of history to recognize its use as a preservative. But, at least up here in New England, that preservative aspect of salt is probably swamped by our recognition of its destructive capacities. There was a reason, for example, that one salted the fields of the enemy, and it sure wasn’t to preserve them. It was to ensure they never grew again. The Dead Sea isn’t called the Dead Sea for nothing. The salt levels ensure that nothing lives. Likewise, if you’ve salted a path across your lawn to get rid of the ice in the winter, you can be sure that stretch is going to be quite visible right through the summer. It won’t grow, not without some serious alteration of the soil’s chemistry.
But, salt is also a purifier, and that is really where Jesus is pointing us when He calls us to be the salt. Yes, there’s the savor. There is something about salt that pleases the tongue, at least in moderation. There are some foods I would not choose to eat without that added flavor. There are others which I would not immediately associate with using salt, like chocolate. And yet, as the marketers have discovered, the combination does something. The tang somehow manages to amplify the sweetness by contrast.
But, salt, in this spiritual application, stands as the direct opposite of leaven. Leaven sneaks in and corrupts the whole. Salt purifies and preserves. The one promotes corruption, the other prevents it. Put the two together and I’m not sure who wins. I’d guess the salt, but I could be wrong. But, in matters of spirit, there can be no contest. You have the Salt of Christ versus the leaven of Satan, and there’s just no question about which is going to win. Jesus, our Salt, preserves us. Salt could not be looked to as a preservative if it were incapable of staving off the corruption of fermentation, could it? After all, fermentation and corruption are largely synonymous activities.
I should note how well this point is going to wind up tying in with yesterday’s sermon. Here, we are called to watch out for that sin creeping in to take us unawares. We are called to be attentive. Beware the lying voice that wants to tell you that the little sin you are tolerating is OK. It can’t do any harm. For you smokers out there, you know the voice well. It used to tell you that you could quite whenever you wanted to do so. Only it was a lie, wasn’t it? You wanted to do so and found you couldn’t. So, the voice switched tactics, and gave you a laugh: You apparently didn’t want to do so at that point. This is self-justification in application. Watch out! If you’re telling yourself that what you know is sinful is actually acceptable on this occasion because… well, because whatever. The rationalization’s specifics don’t matter. The minute you’ve put sin and acceptable into the same thought you’re lying to yourself, listening to the father of lies. It’s leaven! Leaven is hateful to God. Leaven is hateful to salt. The two cannot coexist.
You have arrived at a “Choose you this day” moment, whether you are recognizing that fact or not. Which do you choose to be, salt or leaven? Which do you want in charge of your future condition, the insidious corruption of leaven or the sweet preservation of salt? If we are to be the living sacrifices that Scripture tells us we must be, the choice is clear. The sacrifice must be salted, and every trace of leaven removed.
How does this tie to the sermon yesterday? The big point from that sermon was that a right understanding of Christ, a sound, biblical Christology, is the answer to every heresy. Heresy, when named as such, is likely to be seen as the most obvious of sins. But, if it were as obvious as all that, it would never gain a foothold. In plain point of fact, heresy is the most insidious of sins because it arrives with sufficient truth to sound pious and holy. It is designed to slip past our guard, to get itself planted in our thinking before we realize what’s happened. It is exactly the sort of leaven that will enter in, being unseen, and corrupt from within. It will not be noticed until the damage is done. What seemed an insignificant difference over some fine point of theology emerges, bursts forth through the crust of the Church, if you will, to finally be recognizable as full-blown error. What may have appeared to be an innocuous addition to the gospel festers, metastasizes, and if left unattended, winds up completely displacing the gospel. What was once a church becomes not a church. What was once a community of faith is no more. God, as we read in Galatians during Sunday School yesterday, will not be mocked. Having sown leaven, you will reap corruption.
Inward and Outward Corruption (06/12/17)
That corruption may begin in the secret inner life, but it will not remain secret. The JFB notes the two forms of leaven that Paul singles out: Malice and wickedness. These find their opposites in the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, but let us look at the negative before we turn to the positive. Malice considers the inward thought, the intent of the heart. We might think it acceptable, because it remains hidden. We might suppose that it is somehow OK for us to hold a grudge against so and so, particularly if so and so is outside the Church. After all, it’s just a thought, and thoughts never hurt anybody, right?
The problem is that thoughts won’t remain thoughts. Malice will eventually produce wickedness. The inner thought-life will inevitably burst forth in active, outward behavior. If you are familiar with the adage, “Familiarity breeds contempt,” it’s a matter not far removed from this point. Familiarity, in an employee/employer situation, or in a child/parent relationship, suggests more than just being close to the authority figure. Yeah, I know you. I know your weaknesses and shortcomings, as well as your strengths. That’s not the point. It’s not even suggesting that allowing for social interaction will necessarily result in a reduced ability to exercise authority, although that is almost always going to prove true. Familiarity, in this instance, starts to lean in toward malice. It contains, I think, the idea that you have taken the boss’s measure and found him wanting, found him to be inconsequential at best, and impediment at worst. Believe me, that sort of assessment does indeed breed contempt, and contempt will lead to outward disrespect. You simply cannot offer voluntary allegiance to somebody you despise. Malice will produce wickedness. Thought life will produce action. Evil habit of mind, to borrow the phrasing the JFB elects to use, will result in evil outcome of word and deed. Don’t be fooled! Remove the leaven before its work becomes evident. Get active in correcting the damage before it reaches the point of being uncorrectable.
Does this sound like a call to work? It is! I’ll just go ahead and blend in a bit more of Galatians here. The fruit of the Spirit – the absolutely necessary evidence of His internal presence – is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Gal 5:22-23). The deeds of the flesh, the produce of leaven, are immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing and the like (Gal 5:19-21). Which are you demonstrating, leaven or salt? What are your outward words and actions declaring of your inner thought-life? If, like me, you don’t find the answer satisfactory, what are you going to do about it?
Understand that you cannot work yourself into acceptability with God. You can’t work yourself into a pure state. You can, however, seek to be more attuned to what God is trying to do in and with you, and seek to be less obstructionist to His work. He is willing and working in you (Php 2:13). Are you willing to work with Him? Perhaps if we simply ask what we are injecting into the dough of our life – salt or leaven? Perhaps it’s time we altered the ingredients. Otherwise, we’re going to wind up with the same, corrupted recipe.
Inward and Outward Purity (06/12/17-06/13/17)
The right ingredients, as Paul presents them to us here, are sincerity and truth. Again, we have the inward and the outward. An interior life of sincerity will necessarily produce an outward behavior that promotes and produces truth. Aletheia – that marvelous word that depicts an outward appearance in perfect concord with inner reality. It stands, therefore, as the polar opposite of hypocrisy – the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. There, the outward appearance was false to the interior. It was the carefully limed wall of a tomb, making for a lovely presentation, but still containing the stench of decay.
I think this is the lukewarm condition that Jesus so thoroughly rejected in writing to the church in Laodicea (Rev 3:16). Your outside doesn’t match your inside. You represent as true, but inwardly, you are full of malice. You put on a fine show, but it’s only a show. You loudly declare yourself a Christian, but the fruit of the Spirit is nowhere to be found. You are a liar like your father. I think the situation there is far worse than we tend to suppose. There is still opportunity to repent as that letter is written, but I have to think that of all the seven churches to whom Jesus sends word in Revelation, this one is the hardest hit. There is no positive to soften the blow. You are fake. Repent or die. That’s the message.
I want us to hear a few of the conclusions our predecessors reached in regard to this matter. Calvin writes, “We cannot remain in Christ if we are not cleansed.” Barnes speaks in a similar vein. “No Christians can have, or give evidence of sincerity, who are not willing to put away all sin.” I wonder how many of us today could say we actually agree with this. More likely, we have discovered some intricate theological argument by which to convince ourselves that this is not really a requirement. After all, being weak in flesh, we can hardly manage putting away any sin at all. Who, then, could ask that we put all sin away? I fear we are as inclined as the social Christians we decry to act as if nothing changed when we came to faith. We read Paul’s comments to the Romans and nod sagely. Yes, of course we mustn’t go on sinning that grace may abound, Paul. But, all the while, we are quite clear on the fact that we will indeed go on sinning. And we will indeed continue to count on grace abounding toward us. God has called us His own, right? What can go wrong?
But, the saving work of Christ, even with its accompanying knowledge that sanctification also comes by His power and only by His power, leaves us with the command to holiness. We are, as Paul reminds us, dead to sin, or at least ought to think of ourselves as being so (Ro 6:11). Let me just stress that, because to get it wrong is to be stressed by faith. We are not dead to sin, nor does Paul say we are. He knows better. It’s a lifelong struggle, even with Christ on our side. Were it not for Christ being on our side, there would be no struggle, for we would simply accede to our natural tendency to sin with no further thought given to the matter. If you doubt that, just think back to the days before He called you out of that stuff.
But, He did call, and that’s the point. The JFB draws our attention to the fact. We must, they record, come to know our high calling and its implications. You weren’t called just so you could say hello. You weren’t called so that you could add the Lord’s signet ring to your necklace, but then go back to sleeping around with every comer. It’s a high calling. It’s a call to come out from among them, and live unto Him. It’s a calling to live life bearing the mark of the Lord upon your forehead, even if only figuratively. My thoughts turn again to the headpiece of the high priest, upon which was the inscription, “Holy Unto the Lord” (Ex 28:36). What does that mean? It means that one was exclusively His, to be used by no other and to serve no other. “Thus all the tithe of the land, of the seed of the land or of the fruit of the tree, is the Lord’s; it is holy to the Lord” (Lev 27:30). Ezra, speaking to the Israelites who had returned to Jerusalem, said, “You are holy to the Lord, and the utensils are holy; and the silver and gold are a freewill offering to the LORD God of your fathers” (Ezra 8:28). But, focus on the first part, for it has never ceased to be true: You are holy to the Lord.
Don’t lose sight of the implications. If you are holy to the Lord, you are exclusively His. You have been called into this life of a nation of priestly kings (1Pe 2:5), a holy priesthood – again: Dedicated to God’s exclusive use and service. You can have no other master. You can have no admixture. You cannot serve God and mamman (Lk 16:13). It won’t work. The implications of holiness unto the Lord begin with a renunciation of and turning away from our past life of slavery to sin. It requires that we acknowledge the past. Yes, we were slaves to sin, and the habits of slavery remain. But, it also requires acknowledgement of the present. You were like that, but you were washed, sanctified, justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Spirit of our God (1Co 6:11). You can’t act like you weren’t.
Recall the discussion of excommunication in the last section, and of its connection with the communion table and partaking of the Lord’s Supper. Now, hear what Calvin says regarding this allusion to Passover. “If, therefore, we would wish to feed on Christ’s flesh and blood, let us bring to this feast sincerity and truth. Let these be our loaves of unleavened bread.” These are our showbread, if you will. These are the proper grain offering: Sincerity and Truth; inward purity of thought and character manifest in outward speech and action; the whole in harmonious accord, and wholly devoted to the loving pursuit of God’s purposes. And yet, we cannot do this ourselves. Even our friend Clarke, for all that we may disagree with him on many points, agrees on this one. We are, he says, ever in need of being saved from all manner of sin, malice, and wickedness. We are ever in need of having ‘inward purity and outward holiness’ take their place. Note the phrasing. It is important. We are in need of having this done to and for us. We are, in that regard passive, with God taking the action if there is to be any hope of it getting done. And yet, we are called to active participation. Work out your salvation (Php 2:12). I shall some day have to get around to studying that text in full, but for the moment let me suggest this interpretation: Salvation must work out in us if it is ours, just as the fruit of the Spirit must demonstrate if the Spirit dwells within. If we would work out our salvation, it is not to say we work our way into salvation, or that we work, even, to preserve our salvation, for such things are beyond us. But, to work that our state of salvation might demonstrate in the purity and truth described here in 1 Corinthians? There is labor for a lifetime, and of a sort that is sure to be found pleasing to God, to the degree we progress in the work He Himself is doing in us.
What, then, is this unleavened life to which we are called? It is a life characterized by purity and truth. Purity, sincerity, speaks to the inner state of the thought life without which the rest of life cannot possibly be pure. Purity produces character of worth – not of meritorious worth, but worthy of being called character. There is a significant difference between having a reputation for being a character and having a reputation for being a man of character. The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but they are not to be confused. Character, godly character, is the proof that God is at work within. Character, while a clear product of inner life, necessarily expresses in outward behavior. I must observe, though, that as it expresses, we may well think ourselves hypocritical; we may feel that we are putting on a show for others, and that these well-behaved, careful actions are not expressive of our real, inner thought life. I am going to suggest something, though: They actually are the right expression of our real inner thought life. They are the expression of the new man. The old man is still around, and much of our thinking tends to reflect his presence. That’s why the expression of the new man strikes us as foreign to our nature. As much as our nature reeks of the old, corrupt flesh, of course this new stuff is foreign. It is the product of a foreign righteousness taking root in us, and praise God for it!
Here, too, is a reminder of the place of works in the life of the believer. We are – at least I am – inclined to try and work on inner purification by coercing outward actions. That is to say we seek to purify from the outside in. But, that was the mistake the Pharisees made. The problem is that it fundamentally won’t work. The problem is that once we’ve scrubbed the outer surface so that we feel we are presentable, we will stop. If I look good, that’s good enough. But, God is far more interested in us actually being good. He wants outward Truth, alethia, not the careful scripting of hypocrisy. The greatest frustration we shall know in this new life of faith is that our attempts at outward purity are doomed to failure. We will focus on the things that strike us as most public. We want others to think well of us, so we work on those things we think they can see.
We may, for example, go to great lengths to set aside an old habit such as smoking or drinking. After all, these things are noticeable. Even if you’re not seen in the act, there are residual evidences that you can’t entirely remove. So, we will expend all manner of energy on that effort, and yet leave the inward malignancies of lust and avarice unattended. Why? Because we’re certain that those are private sins. Nobody can see them, so they don’t matter. But, they’re leaven nonetheless. They will – not may, will – lead to further corruptions, both inward and outward, if we leave them to fester. God is not willing that we do so. He wants us better, so He works on those inward matters. He addresses the roots of our sin that the tree of sin may wither. Just lopping off the occasional branch won’t do it. It would be more likely to make the sin stronger, just as pruning a bush or a tree is done not to kill it but to strengthen it. God prunes those He loves. But, as to sin, it must be rooted out entire, and He is a very careful Gardener.
We, for our part, do well to attend to what God is working on in our lives. No, it cannot happen without Him. But, it is unlikely to happen without our involvement. God is not big on passivity when it comes to His children. He wants us engaged, together with Him, guided by Him, empowered and impelled by Him, that we may know victory over our sins through Him. We, in turn, must keep our eyes and ears upon Him, to know where He is working in order that we might work with Him. There is our victory. To keep trying to do what we think we ought to do on our own is futility. Which would you prefer to pursue?
