Purge out the Old Leaven

What do you associate with the power of Jesus Christ?  Perhaps His resurrection or the miracles He performed come to mind.  The wisdom of Jesus in teaching, when He cast out demons with a word, and His supernatural ability to know the hearts of men are all demonstrations of His power.  When a paralytic was brought to Jesus, He said "Son, your sins are forgiven you."  The scribes who sat by criticised Him in their hearts saying, "Who does this blasphemer think he is?  Only God can forgive sins."  Knowing their hearts, Jesus asked the men:  "What is easier - to say 'Your sins are forgiven? or to say to the paralytic 'Rise, take up your bed and walk?'  So you know I have the power to forgive sins (and am God in the flesh), rise, take up your bed and walk!"  Immediately the man stood to his feet and walked, much to the amazement of all the witnesses.  Anyone can say "Your sins are forgiven" because there is no physical means to discern whether spiritual cleansing has taken place.  Healing a paralytic takes more than words:  it takes actual power which Jesus demonstrated over and over again.

Christians are sinners who have trusted in Jesus Christ to forgive their sins and clothe them with His righteousness.  We are born again through spiritual regeneration by the Holy Spirit and corporately make up the Body of Christ (the church) of which Jesus is the Head.  Once a believer follows Christ in faith, the lifestyle of Christians ought to reflect this inner transformation:  we are to put off sin and hindrances which easily weigh us down.  We do not claim perfection, but daily we are sanctified to that end.  In the early church in Corinth, some of the people were using grace as a cloak for sin.  There was a well-known couple that openly participated in an adulterous and incestuous relationship.  Paul said this in 1 Corinthians 5:4-5:  "In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together, along with my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, ⁵ deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus."  Paul says in so many words, "In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and with His power, deliver unrepentant sinners who profess to be Christians to Satan's control."  Open sin cannot be tolerated in the Body of Christ.  It would be better to be without a hand or foot and enter into heaven maimed than to enter whole into Hell.

It seems almost ironic that the power of our LORD Jesus enables us to deliver a sinning brother unto Satan.  Though on the surface this may seem extreme, the one who remains in sin has already made a conscious choice to serve Satan, not Christ.  If fellowship with the Body of Christ continues, it is false fellowship.  Instead of holiness, hypocrisy, uncleanness, and wickedness are the influences sinning believers bring to the whole.  Where strength and victory ought to be a nominal believer supplies weakness, division, discord, and confusion.  Such a cancer must be cut out of the Body, even as gangrenous rot is cut from flesh.  No accommodation for sinful living is provided by Christ for the church.  After effort has been made to graciously encourage and restore such a one (Gal. 6:1), love demands we sever ties with those who are called brothers and sisters who without repentance embrace and pursue sin.  It is the power of Christ which enables us to do so.  Only the power of Jesus can save those who are dead in sins or restore those who have been overtaken by a trespass.

The world treats symptoms and thinks short-term:  God looks upon the heart and keeps eternity in perpetual focus.  Jesus is not only our Saviour, but He is our Standard.  Those who claim allegiance to Him while serving Satan do so to their own hurt and damage wholeness and compromise the unity of the Body.  Man is pleased to be soothed into Hell under the delusion he is a saint, but to this persuasion love cannot submit.  Love does not allow the name or church of Christ to be maligned, nor allow disease to remain in the Body untreated.  A little leaven leavens the whole lump.  It would be better for the body of a sinner to be destroyed on earth so his soul will be saved for eternity.  Once Satan and the world chews us up and spits us out we are granted clarity and new depths of devotion for God we did not posses before.

A great example of God's loving discipline, power, and salvation is seen in the life of Jonah.  Jonah was given a message by God to deliver to the people of Nineveh but he rebelled at God's command.  He ultimately ended up being thrown into a prison of flesh:  he was swallowed by a great fish God had prepared for that purpose.  For three days his body was burnt by digestive juices as he gagged in the suffocating stench of the bowels of the fish.  He lay pressed by folds of flesh in utter darkness, hearing the pulsing of the heart of the creature which compassed and crushed him.  It was only after three days in that prison that Jonah committed himself to God again in obedience.  He was then vomited up by the fish and God used Jonah powerfully to save an enormous city of people.  God saved Jonah so he could save others.  Sometimes a man needs to be imprisoned before he will honour God with his freedom.

When we turn our eyes upon Christ and repent, the power of Jesus frees us from the chains of sin, bondage, and death.  How many of us have been vomited out of prisons of addictions, lusts, and sins and by God's grace entered into new life!  Let us never forget the prison we have been delivered from and walk uprightly, lest we willingly return there as shamed inmates.  I conclude with Paul's admonition in 1 Corinthians 5:7-8: "Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. ⁸ Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth."