A Little Sin Spoils a Lot of Life | 1 Corinthians 5:6-8

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Our text today is 1 Corinthians 5:6-8.

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? 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. 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. — 1 Corinthians 5:6–8

Paul moves from confronting one man’s sin to confronting the entire church’s tolerance of it, and he does it with a picture everyone in Corinth understood: leaven.

1. Leaven is quiet.
2. Leaven is small.
3. Leaven works invisibly.

Yet once it’s mixed in, it spreads through the whole batch of dough. It doesn’t matter if it starts in a corner—it ends everywhere. That’s Paul’s point.

Sin never stays personal. It always becomes communal.

• A private compromise eventually affects public integrity.
• A hidden lust eventually damages relationships.
• A tolerated sin eventually shapes a church’s culture.

Just like leaven, sin spreads beyond the person who commits it.

That’s exactly why Paul confronted Corinth so strongly in the previous passage. Discipline wasn’t only about the man—it was about the whole church, because what one person hides, the whole body eventually breathes.

This is why Paul commands them to “cleanse out the old leaven.” He’s pulling from Passover imagery. Every Jewish family searched their home by candlelight, removing every crumb of leaven so the new batch would remain pure. Even a pinch of the old dough could corrupt everything new.

Paul is applying that same spiritual search to the church:

• Remove the old habits.
• Remove the excuses.
• Remove the tolerated sins.
• Remove the attitudes that spread like rot.

If we want a healed church, we must remove what is poisoning both the individual and the body. This is not just about your life. This is about our life together.

But Paul ends with a powerful statement: “As you really are unleavened…” In other words, you’re already made new. So live like it. Your identity is clean. Your standing is pure. Your church has been washed. So stop kneading in old corruption. Stop letting sin expand. Stop pretending one compromise won’t spread to others.

Don’t be leavened with evil—be unleavened with truth.

This is Paul’s call to you. This is Paul’s call to your church. This is Paul’s call to every fellowship that wants to remain spiritually healthy. Remove what spreads death. Keep what spreads life.

DO THIS:

Do a “Passover sweep” of both your personal life and your church involvement. Remove whatever small thing you’ve been tolerating before it grows and affects more than you realize.

ASK THIS:

1. Where have I underestimated the spread of a small sin?
2. How might my compromise be shaping others around me?
3. What leaven needs to be removed so my life—and my church—can stay healthy?

PRAY THIS:

Father, show me anything in my life that’s quietly spreading and corrupting what You want to renew. Give me courage to remove it and help me strengthen the purity of my church as well. Make me unleavened with sincerity and truth. Amen.

PLAY THIS:

“Give Us Clean Hands”