1 Corinthians 5:6

6 1Your boasting is not good. 2Do you not know that 3a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough?

1 Corinthians 5:6 Meaning and Commentary

1 Corinthians 5:6

Your glorying is not good
Their glorying in their outward flourishing condition, in their riches and wealth, and in their ministers, in their wisdom and parts when under such an humbling dispensation; and especially if their glorying was in the sin itself, and their connivance at it, it was far from being good, it was very criminal, as the consequence of it was dangerous:

know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?
This, in nature, is what everybody knows; and the proverb, which is much used by the Jews F6, was common in the mouths of all, and the meaning of it easy to be understood: thus, whether applied to the leaven of false doctrine, nothing is more manifest, than when this is let alone, and a stop is not put to it, it increases to more ungodliness; or to vice and immorality, as here; which if not taken notice of by a church, is not faithfully reproved and severely censured, as the case requires, will endanger the whole community; it may spread by example, and, under the connivance of the church, to the corrupting of good manners, and infecting of many.


FOOTNOTES:

F6 Neve Shalom apud Caphtor, fol. 41. 1.

1 Corinthians 5:6 In-Context

4 In the name of our Lord Jesus, when you are assembled, and I with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus,
5 I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.
6 Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough?
7 Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.
8 Therefore let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Cross References 3

  • 1. 1 Corinthians 5:2; James 4:16
  • 2. Romans 6:16
  • 3. Hosea 7:4; Matthew 16:6, 12; Galatians 5:9
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