I Corinthians 5:6 Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? 7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 8 Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
Christ is our Passover Lamb. Technically, the Passover is "a Jewish holiday beginning on the 14th of Nissan, and commemorating the Hebrews liberation from slavery in Egypt; and exemption of the Israelites from the slaughter of the firstborn in Egypt(Exodus 12)."* Paul fills this paragraph with imagery from that celebration: the lamb, the unleavened bread, the festival celebration of God "passing over" His people and not bringing judgment. Paul's reason for mentioning Christ the Lamb in particular was to emphasize the purity that was present because the sinless Lamb was there. The problem Paul was addressing was sin in the Church that was not just being ignored, but almost celebrated. It was a contradiction to the presence of the Holy Passover Lamb. The blood of the Lamb was not a license to sin, but a call to repentance and dependence on God for deliverance. Salvation in Christ calls us to a higher level of purity, not a lower one.
*(Diann Cotton: 100 Days with Jesus)
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