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Spiritual Leaven
A little leaven leavens the whole lump. This is a proverb and warning which is repeated twice in the Bible (I Cor. 5:6; Gal. 5:9).
Leaven is a substance that causes dough to rise. We usually use yeast as our leavening agent for bread these days. If your goal is to have unleavened bread, then no amount of yeast is acceptable. For, just as the proverb states, it only takes a little leaven to contaminate the entire batch of dough. Leaven spreads. This is the point of the proverb. There are some things which are so dangerous to everyone around them that they cannot be permitted to stay in contact. Specifically, there are two things which act as spiritual leaven.
Sin is a spiritual leaven. It’s corrupting influence spreads, and it doesn’t take much to defile everything. This is the main point of the proverb in I Corinthians 5:6. There was a man in the church of Corinth who was openly living in sin. It was a grotesque sin (sleeping with his father’s wife), but it was just his sin. The whole church wasn’t involved in that sexual sin. They were innocent. Undefiled. Unleavened. But the church had remained in fellowship with this single individual rather than removing him from their midst (I Cor. 5:2,13). In that context, Paul warns of the outcome of a single sinner being permitted to coexist in the church. A little leaven, leavens the whole lump. What starts with one man, will spread to others.
Early history bears this out. The downfall of mankind began with one person. Eve decided she was going to eat of the forbidden fruit. Next thing you know, Adam has joined her. They did it once, but sin didn’t stop there. It kept spreading. Next, we see Cain killing Abel (Gen. 4). Then we discover that “the wickedness of man was great on the earth” (Gen. 6:5). What started with one person had spread and defiled everyone.
This truth is not limited to sexual perversions either. That may have been the focus with the Corinthians, but that wasn’t Adam and Eve’s problem or Cain’s either. Additionally, Jesus warns us of the leaven of the Pharisees, which he specifies on one occasion to be hypocrisy (Lk. 12:1). Even the Corinthians are warned about covetousness, idolatry, revilers, drunkards and swindlers in addition to the concern about sexual immorality (I Cor. 5:11). All of these have a defiling influence which spreads insidiously.
Sin can spread in multiple ways. First, it can spread by creating more of the same sin. Sexual immorality creating more sexual immorality. Second, it can spread by creating different types of sin. When a person sees that sin is not punished or rebuked, they might be encouraged to carelessly engage in a different form of sin, in which case the sexual immorality of one man leads to drunkenness in the next. Third, it can spread by making the innocent guilty. Those who do not engage in a sinful behavior but give hearty approval of it become guilty themselves. A clean man cannot hug a filthy man without becoming filthy. “The one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds” (II John 10-11). We do not want to “share responsibility for the sins of others” but rather to keep ourselves free from sin (I Tim. 5:22).
Which problem was the Corinthian church facing? We aren’t told. Maybe all of them. But the solution was obvious if you knew the problem. “Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump” (I Cor. 5:7).
If sin is a spiritual leaven, does that mean we must remove everyone who has ever sinned? If so, then we would all be hermits, removing everyone from our lives and being removed from everyone else’s lives. Paul clarifies, “I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world…for then you would have to go out of the world” (I Cor. 5:10). Total avoidance from all people is not the goal or the solution. However, if there is a Christian who publicly, willfully, and continually lives in sin, that man’s influence must not be ignored. He has become spiritual leaven and the whole church is in danger.
The second spiritual leaven we will examine another time.
