1 Corinthians 5:8

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.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(8) Old leaven—i.e., in their old state generally; and then the Apostle proceeds to particularise. Sincerity and truth are to take the place of malice and wickedness in the continuous life of the Christian. St. Chrysostom well remarks: “He said ‘Let us keep the feast’ as pointing out that the whole of time is a festival unto Christians, because of the excellence of the good things which have been given.”

MacLaren's Expositions

1 Corinthians

THE FESTAL LIFE

1 Corinthians 5:8.

There had been hideous immorality in the Corinthian Church. 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, ‘will leaven 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 forgets the sin in the Corinthian Church for a moment, and turns 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,’ says he, ‘let us keep the feast . . . with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.’ That ‘wherefore’ takes us back to the words before it, And what are these? ‘Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us’; therefore-because of that sacrifice, to us is granted the power, and on us is laid imperatively the obligation, to make life a festival and to purge ourselves. Now, in the notion of a feast, there are two things included-joy and plentiful sustenance. So there are three points here, which I have already indicated-what the Christian life is, a festival; on what it is sustained, the Paschal Sacrifice; what it demands, scrupulous purging out of the old leaven.

I. The Christian life ought to be a continual festival.

The Christian life a feast? It is more usually represented as a fight, a wrestle, a race; and such metaphors correspond, as it would appear, far more closely to the facts of our environment, and to the experiences of our hearts, than does such a metaphor as this. But the metaphor of the festival goes deeper than that of the fight or race, and it does not ignore the strenuous and militant side of the Christian life. No man ever lived a more strenuous life than Paul; no man had heavier tasks, and did them more cheerily; no man had a sterner fight and fought it more bravely. There is nothing soft, Epicurean, or oblivious of the patent sad facts of humanity in the declaration that after all, beneath all, above all, central to all, the Christian life is a glad festival, when it is the life that it ought to be.

But you say, ‘Ah! it is all very well to call it so; but in the first place, continual joy is impossible in the presence of the difficulties, and often sadnesses, that meet us on our life’s path; and, in the second place, it is folly to tell us to pump up emotions, or to ignore the occasions for much heaviness and sorrow of heart.’ True; but, still, it is possible to cultivate such a temper as makes life habitually joyful. We can choose the aspect under which we by preference and habitually regard our lives. All emotion follows upon a preceding thought, or sensible experience, and we can pick the objects of our thoughts, and determine what aspect of our lives to look at most.

The sky is often piled with stormy, heaped-up masses of blackness, but between them are lakes of calm blue. We can choose whether we look at the clouds or at the blue. These are in the lower ranges; that fills infinite spaces, upwards and out to the horizon. These are transient, eating themselves away even whilst we look, and black and thunderous as they may be, they are there but for a moment-that is perennial. If we are wise, we shall fix our gaze much rather on the blue than on the ugly cloud-rack that hides it, and thus shall minister to ourselves occasions for the noble kind of joy which is not noisy and boisterous, ‘like the crackling of thorns under a pot,’ and does not foam itself away by its very ebullience, but is calm like the grounds of it; still, like the heaven to which it looks; eternal, like the God on whom it is fastened. If we would only steadfastly remember that the one source of worthy and enduring joy is God Himself, and listen to the command, ‘Rejoice in the Lord,’ we should find it possible to ‘rejoice always.’ For that thought of Him, His sufficiency, His nearness, His encompassing presence, His prospering eye, His aiding hand, His gentle consolation, His enabling help will take the sting out of even the bitterest of our sorrows, and will brace us to sustain the heaviest, otherwise crushing burdens, and greatly to ‘rejoice, though now for a season we are in heaviness through manifold temptations.’ The Gulf Stream rushes into the northern hemisphere, melts the icebergs and warms the Polar seas, and so the joy of the Lord, if we set it before us as we can and should do, will minister to us a gladness which will make our lives a perpetual feast.

But there is another thing that we can do; that is, we can clearly recognise the occasions for sorrow in our experience, and yet interpret them by the truths of the Christian faith. That is to say, we can think of them, not so much as they tend to make us sad or glad, but as they tend to make us more assured of our possession of, more ardent in our love towards, and more submissive in our attitude to, the all-ordering Love which is God. Brethren, if we thought of life, and all its incidents, even when these are darkest and most threatening, as being what it and they indeed are, His training of us into capacity for fuller blessedness, because fuller possession of Himself, we should be less startled at the commandment, ‘Rejoice in the Lord always,’ and should feel that it was possible, though the figtree did not blossom, and there was no fruit in the vine, though the flocks were cut off from the pastures, and the herds from the stall, yet to rejoice in the God of our salvation. Rightly understood and pondered on, all the darkest passages of life are but like the cloud whose blackness determines the brightness of the rainbow on its front. Rightly understood and reflected on, these will teach us that the paradoxical commandment, ‘Count it all joy that ye fall into divers temptations,’ is, after all, the voice of true wisdom speaking at the dictation of a clear-eyed faith.

This text, since it is a commandment, implies that obedience to it, and therefore the realisation of this continual festal aspect of life, is very largely in our own power. Dispositions differ, some of us are constitutionally inclined to look at the blacker, and some at the brighter, side of our experiences. But our Christianity is worth little unless it can modify, and to some extent change, our natural tendencies. The joy of the Lord being our strength, the cultivation of joy in the Lord is largely our duty. Christian people do not sufficiently recognise that it is as incumbent on them to seek after this continual fountain of calm and heavenly joy flowing through their lives, as it is to cultivate some of the more recognised virtues and graces of Christian conduct and character.

Secondly, we have here-

II. The Christian life is a continual feeding on a sacrifice.

‘Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. Wherefore let us keep the feast.’ It is very remarkable that this is the only place in Paul’s 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 John’s account of the Crucifixion, where he recognises 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.’

But whilst the definite statement which precedes my text that Christ is ‘our Passover,’ and ‘sacrificed for us’ as such, is unique in Paul’s writings, the thought to which it gives clear and crystallised expression runs through the whole of the New Testament. It underlies the Lord’s Supper. Did you ever think of how great was the self-assertion of Jesus Christ when He laid His hand on that sacredest of Jewish rites, which had been established, as the words of the institution of it say, to be ‘a perpetual memorial through all generations,’ brushed it on one side, and in effect, said: ‘You do not need to remember the Passover any more. I am the true Paschal Lamb, whose blood sprinkled on the doorposts averts the sword of the destroying Angel, whose flesh, partaken of, gives immortal life. Remember Me, and this do in remembrance of Me.’ The Lord’s Supper witnesses that Jesus thought Himself to be what Paul tells the Corinthians that He is, even our Passover, sacrificed for us. But 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. ‘Therefore 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. Christ’s death for us is the basis, but it is only the basis, of Christ’s living in us, and His death for me is of no use at all to me unless He that died for me lives in me. 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 life-’Christ 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 when we not only 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. Thus when mind and conscience and will and heart all turn to Jesus, and in Him find their sustenance, we shall be filled with the feast of fat things which He has prepared for all people. With that bread we shall be satisfied, and with it only, for the husks of the swine are no food for the Father’s son, and we ‘spend our money for that which is not bread, and our labour for that which satisfieth not,’ if we look anywhere else than to the Paschal Lamb slain for us for the food of our souls.

III. The Christian life is a continual purging out of the old leaven.

I need not remind you how vivid and profoundly significant that emblem of leaven, as applied to all manner of evil, is. But let me remind you how, just as in the Jewish Ritual, the cleansing from all that was leavened was the essential pre-requisite to the participation in the feast, feeding on Jesus Christ, as I have tried to describe it, is absolutely impossible unless our leaven is cleansed away. Children spoil their appetites for wholesome food by eating sweetmeats. Men destroy their capacity for feeding on Christ by hungry desires, and gluttonous satisfying of those desires with the delusive sweets of this passing world. But, my brother, your experience, if you are a Christian man at all, will tell you that in the direct measure in which you have been drawn away into paltering with evil, your appetite for Christ and your capacity for gazing upon Him, contemplating Him, feeding on Him, has died out. There comes a kind of constriction in a man’s throat when he is hungering after lesser good, especially when there is a tinge of evil in the supposed good that he is hungering after, which incapacitates Him from eating the bread of God, which is Jesus Christ.

But let us remember that absolute cleansing from all sin is not essential, in order to have real participation in Jesus Christ. The Jew had to take every scrap of leaven out of his house before he began the Passover. If that were the condition for us, alas! for us all; but the effort after purity, though it has not entirely attained its aim, is enough. Sin abhorred does not prevent a man from participating in the Bread that came down from heaven.

Then observe, too, that for this power to cleanse ourselves, we must have had some participation in Christ, by which there is given to us that new life that conquers evil. In the words immediately preceding my 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; realise your ideal, utilise 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.

One last word-this stringent exhortation, which makes Christian effort after absolute purity a Christian duty, and the condition of participation in the Paschal Lamb, is based upon that thought to which I have already referred, of the diabolical power of infection which Evil possesses. Either you must cast it out, or it will choke the better thing in you. It spreads and grows, and propagates itself, and works underground through and through the whole mass. A water-weed got into some of our canals years ago, and it has all but choked some of them. The slime on a pond spreads its green mantle over the whole surface with rapidity. If we do not eject Evil it will eject the good from us. Use the implanted power to cast out this creeping, advancing evil. Sometimes a wine-grower has gone into his cellars, and found in a cask no wine, but a monstrous fungus into which all the wine had, in the darkness, passed unnoticed. I fear some Christian people, though they do not know it, have something like that going on in them.

It is possible for us all to keep this perpetual festival. To live in, on, for, Jesus Christ will give us victory over enemies, burdens, sorrows, sins. We may, if we will, dwell in a calm zone where no tempests rage, hear a perpetual strain of sweet music persisting through thunder peals of sorrow and suffering, and find a table spread for us in the presence of our enemies, at which we shall renew our strength for conflict, and whence we shall rise to fight the good fight a little longer, till we sit with Him at His table in His Kingdom, and ‘eat, and live for ever.’

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

5:1-8 The apostle notices a flagrant abuse, winked at by the Corinthians. Party spirit, and a false notion of Christian liberty, seem to have saved the offender from censure. Grievous indeed is it that crimes should sometimes be committed by professors of the gospel, of which even heathens would be ashamed. Spiritual pride and false doctrines tend to bring in, and to spread such scandals. How dreadful the effects of sin! The devil reigns where Christ does not. And a man is in his kingdom, and under his power, when not in Christ. The bad example of a man of influence is very mischievous; it spreads far and wide. Corrupt principles and examples, if not corrected, would hurt the whole church. Believers must have new hearts, and lead new lives. Their common conversation and religious deeds must be holy. So far is the sacrifice of Christ our Passover for us, from rendering personal and public holiness unnecessary, that it furnishes powerful reasons and motives for it. Without holiness we can neither live by faith in him, nor join in his ordinances with comfort and profit.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Let us keep the feast - Margin, "Holy day" ἑορτάζωμεν heortazōmen. This is language drawn from the paschal feast, and is used by Paul frequently to carry out and apply his illustration. It does not mean literally the paschal supper here - for that had ceased to be observed by Christians - nor the Lord's Supper particularly; but the sense is "As the Jews when they celebrated the paschal supper, on the slaying and sacrifice of the paschal lamb, put away all leaven - as emblematic of sin - so let us, in the slaying of our sacrifice, and in all the duties, institutions and events consequent thereon, put away all wickedness from our hearts as individuals, and from our societies and churches. Let us engage in the service of God putting away by all evil."

Not with the old leaven - Not under the influence, or in the indulgence of the feelings of corrupt and unrenewed human nature - The word "leaven" is very expressive of that former or "old" condition, and denotes the corrupt and corrupting passions of our nature before it is renewed.

The leaven of malice - Of unkindness and evil - which would diffuse itself, and pervade the mass of Christians. The word "malice" (κακίας kakias) denotes "evil" in general.

And wickedness - Sin; evil. There is a particular reference here to the case of the incestuous person. Paul means that all wickedness should be put away from those who had been saved by the sacrifice of their "Passover," Christ; and, therefore, this sin in a special manner.

But with the unleavened bread ... - That is, with sincerity and truth. Let us be sincere, and true, and faithful; as the Jews partook of bread unleavened, which was emblematic of purity, so let us be sincere and true. It is implied here that this could not be done unless they would put away the incestuous person - No Christians can have, or give evidence of sincerity, who are not willing to put away all sin.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

8. not … old leaven—of our unconverted state as Jews or heathen.

malice—the opposite of "sincerity," which allows no leaven of evil to be mixed up with good (Mt 16:6).

wickedness—the opposite of "truth," which allows not evil to be mistaken for good. The Greek for "malice" means the evil habit of mind; "wickedness," the outcoming of the same in word and deed. The Greek for "sincerity" expresses literally, a thing which, when examined by the sun's light, is found pure and unadulterated.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Therefore let us keep the feast: here is a manifest allusion to the feast of the Jewish passover, which was immediately followed with the feast of unleavened bread for seven days. As the passover prefigured Christ, who is our paschal Lamb, whose flesh we eat and whose blood we drink by believing, and sacramentally in the Lord’s supper; so the Jewish subsequent feast of unleavened bread prefigured all the days of a Christian’s life, which are to be spent,

not with the old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth: which may be either understood of those evil and good habits which they signify, and so let us know the duty of every particular Christian to take heed of any malice or wickedness; or else (which seemeth most proper to this place) the abstract is put for the concrete, malice and wickedness for wicked and malicious men, and sincerity and truth for persons that are true and sincere. So that we are from hence taught, both the duty of every particular Christian, considering that Christ hath died as a sacrifice for his sin, to live up to the rule which he hath given us, abhorring malice and all wickedness, and acting truth and sincerity; and also the duty of every true church of Christ, to keep their communion pure from the society of wicked and malicious men, and made up of men of truth and sincerity. The latter seemeth to be principally intended.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Therefore let us keep the feast,.... Not the feast of the passover, which was now ceased, though this is said in allusion to it; when the master of the house used to say (l),

"everyone that is hungry, let him come and eat; he that hath need, let him come "and paschatize", or keep the feast of the passover:''

but rather the feast of the Lord's supper is here meant, that feast of fat things Isaiah prophesied of; in which are the richest entertainments, even the flesh and blood of Christ; though it seems best to understand it of the whole course of a Christian's life, spent in the exercise of spiritual joy and faith in Christ; he that is of a merry heart, as the believer of all men in the world has reason to be of, "hath a continual feast", Proverbs 15:15 of spiritual mirth and pleasure, rejoicing always in Christ, as he ought to do: which feast, or course of life, is to be kept "not with old leaven"; in the old, vain, sinful manner of conversation, as before:

neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; not in malice to any man, or one another, nor in any sort of wickedness, living in no known sin, and allowing of it:

but with the unleavened bread of sincerity; as opposed to malice, of sincere love to God and Christ, and to his people: and of truth; of Gospel doctrine, discipline, and conversation.

(l) Haggada Shel Pesach, p. 4. Ed. Rittangel.

Geneva Study Bible

Therefore let us keep the {g} feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

(g) Let us lead our whole life as it were a continual feast, honestly and uprightly.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Meyer's NT Commentary

1 Corinthians 5:8. The paschal lamb having been slain, there follows the keeping of the feast, and that not with leaven, but with what is unleavened. Since, then, Christ has been slain as the Christian’s paschal lamb, they too must keep their feast in an ethical sense, that is to say, by leading a holy life, without sinful admixture, with pure and true Christian virtue. Hence the admonition: let us therefore keep feast, etc. The ἑορτή implied in ἑορτάζ is, it is true, the feast of the Passover, but in such a sense that the keeping of the Passover is meant to be a figurative representation of the character of the whole of a Christian’s walk and conversation, because this is to be without moral leaven, etc. Comp Philo, de congr. er. qu. gr. p. 447 D. It may be added, that Theodore of Mopsuestia says aptly: ὡς γὰρ παρὼν, οὕτω πρὸς τοὺς παρόντας λοιπὸν διαλέγεται.

ἐν ζύμῃ παλ]. Precisely as in 1 Corinthians 5:7; not as a designation of the incestuous person (Michaelis, Rosenmüller, Heydenreich), which would, besides, have required the article. ἘΝ is used in the sense of provided with. Comp on 1 Corinthians 4:21.

ΜΗΔῈ ἘΝ ΖΎΜῌ ΚΑΚ. Κ. ΠΟΝ.] singles out something special from the general ΜῊ ἘΝ Ζ. ΠΑΛ.: and in particular not with the leaven of maliciousness and wickedness (see on Romans 1:29). The genitives are genitives appositionis. The apostle must have had ground enough in the condition of the church, even apart from the case of the incestuous man, for laying such peculiar stress in the way of warning upon nequitia and malitia.

ἀζύμοις] from ἌΖΥΜΑ, what is unleavened, i.e. מַצוֹת (Exodus 12:15; Exodus 12:18). There is nothing (such as ἌΡΤΟΙς) that needs to be supplied.

ΕἸΛΙΚΡΙΝ. and ἈΛΗΘ. differ from each other only in degree; the former is moral purity (καθαρότης διανοίας καὶ ἀδολότης οὐδὲν ἔχουσαι συνεσκιασμένον καὶ ὕπουλον, Theophylact on 2 Corinthians 1:12); the latter, moral truth, the essence of actual moral goodness. See on John 3:21; Ephesians 5:9; Php 4:8.

REMARK.

This whole allegory, 1 Corinthians 5:6-8, would have been unnatural on Paul’s part, had he been writing this Epistle, which was written before Pentecost (1 Corinthians 16:8), after Easter, and so between that feast and Pentecost,—extremely natural, on the other hand, if the Jewish Passover was then in immediate prospect. Were that the case, this very allegory, which is taken up by him in no other place, would offer itself to him unsought, so that the peculiar stamp of his discourse would be accounted for as bearing the impress of the festal thoughts awakened within him by the approach of the Passo1Co 5:The passage before us, therefore, compared with 1 Corinthians 16:8, is rightly regarded by Bengel and most of the succeeding commentators (comp especially Wieseler, Chronologie d. Apost. Zeitalt. p. 327 ff.) as giving evidence of the fact that Paul was now writing shortly before Easter. The few expositors who oppose this view (Henke on Paley’s Hor. Paul. p. 413 ff.; Eichhorn, Einl. III. p. 138; de Wette, Curtius, de temp. quo prior P. ad Tim., etc. p. 43; Schrader, II. p. 132; Hofmann) have only this in their favour, that a demonstrative proof is of course impossible. But it is a misunderstanding of the passage to find in it an admonition to celebrate properly the approaching feast of Easter (see especially Heydenreich). Considering the figurative nature of the expression (see on 1 Corinthians 5:8), we must not try to draw any inferences from this passage as to the question whether or how Christians kept the feast of Easter in those days (against Weitzel, Passahf. p. 183 ff.; Lechler, p. 350). Theophylact says well: δείκνυσιν ὅτι πᾶς ὁ χρόνος ἑορτῆς ἐστι καιρὸς τοῖς Χριστιανοῖς διὰ τὴν ὑπερβολὴν τῶν δοθέντων αὐτοῖς ἀγαθῶν· διἀ τοῦτο γὰρ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ Θεοῦ ἄνθρωπος γέγονε καὶ ἐτύθη, ἵνα σε ἑορτάζειν ποιήσῃ. Comp Hilgenfeld, Paschastreit, p. 173 f.

Expositor's Greek Testament

[837] aorist tense.

[838] Corinth, Corinthian or Corinthians.

[839] J. A. Beet’s St. Paul’s Epp. to the Corinthians (1882).

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

8. keep the feast] Rather, keep festival, referring to the perpetual feast the Christian Church keeps on the Flesh and Blood of her Lord. Not ‘the feast’ as in our version, which would imply some particular festival.

malice and wickedness] Rather, perhaps, vice and wickedness, cf. ch. 1 Corinthians 14:20.

sincerity and truth] The word here translated sincerity is derived either (1) from a word signifying to revolve, as though rejecting by its rapid revolution all extraneous matter, or (2) by most etymologists as from the rays of the sun, which by their searching character would immediately reveal the presence of any impurity. It would, therefore, seem to mean transparent honesty of purpose and character.

Bengel's Gnomen

1 Corinthians 5:8. Ἑορτάζωμεν, let us keep the feast) The Vulgate has epulemur, “let us feast:” an apposite expression.—παλαιᾷ, with the old) of Judaism and heathenism. These constitute the genus.—κακίας καὶ πονηρίας) These constitute the species: κακία is vice, the reverse of virtue, and that too, virtue unmixed, or in sincerity, τῇ εἰλικρινείᾳ. πονηρία is in those, who strenuously retain and defend κακίαν, and is opposed, τῇ ἀληθείᾳ, to the truth. Ammonius writes thus: πονηρὸς, ὁ δραστικὸς κακοῦ, he who is disposed TO DO evil;[40] comp. 1 Corinthians 5:13. Sincerity takes care not to allow evil to be mixed up with good; truth, not to allow evil to be mistaken for good.

[40] Κακία is the evil habit of the mind: πονηρία, the outcoming of the same. Calvin defines κακία, “animi pravitas,” on Ephesians 4:32. πονηρός is ὁ παρέχων πόνους. See Trench, Syr. Gr. Text.—ED.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 8. - Therefore let us keep the feast. Let us keep the Christian feast of Christ's resurrection in that spirit of holiness - of purging away sin from the midst of us - which was symbolized by the Jewish removal of leaven. Not with old leaven. For now ye are "in Christ," and, therefore, are a "new creation." Leaven is the type of hypocrisy (Luke 12:1) in its secret workings, but more generally it is a type of every corrupting influence. Of sincerity and truth. "All that corresponds to an unsullied, uncontaminated, and genuine Christian character." The beautiful Greek word for "sincerity" means freedom from all admixture. It is, perhaps, derived from "testing in the sunshine," and is used by St. Paul in 2 Corinthians 1:12; 2 Corinthians 2:17. "Truth" means "reality." 1 Corinthians 5:8

Vincent's Word Studies

Let us keep the feast (ἑορτάζωμεν)

Only here in the New Testament. The epistle was probably written a short time before the Passover. See 1 Corinthians 16:8.

Sincerity (εἰλικρινείας)

See on pure minds, 2 Peter 3:1.

Truth

Bengel observes: "Sincerity takes care not to admit evil with the good; truth, not to admit evil instead of good."