Ramblings on What We Share: Keeping Pure

Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.

What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you.”

I Corinthians 5:6-12

Sin is contagious. The reason behind dealing with sin in our midst is the same reasoning behind the Levitical law concerning lepers: to protect the community from infection. At the first appearance of the slightest spot, we must examine it and take steps to remove it and keep it from spreading.

Paul reminds us here that the infection of sin is rampant outside the camp of the redeemed. But neither germs nor sin know the meaning of boundaries and the wickedness around us seeps into our lives and the church. When we find it, he tells us to throw it out and start afresh.

The recipe for spiritual growth is to be around those who are morally pure and spiritually mature. We absorb the essence of around us. If it is the essence of the Holy Spirit, then we are more likely to also be filled with the Spirit. If it is the essence of sin, then we are more likely to sin.

So let us examine ourselves – aware of every taint of boasting or immorality. Let us purify our hearts through repentance and confession, and then let us partake of that which is pure, sincere and true.