2.5.25 ~ Spring Cleaning Time, Almost

Good morning!

To the most carnally minded of all the assemblies among Paul's letters (1 Cor. 3:1-4), we ask the question: "What are you"?  Not, “Who are you?”

Cleanse out (like a catheter) the old leaven (it's an imperative command) that you may be a new/neos (fresh, young, a new state of position) lump, as you really are unleavened.  For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. (1 Corinthians 5:7)

Do you see the answer to our question for the morning? You are a new lump. I don’t imagine most of us think of ourselves as a lump. But Paul’s analogy is placed in the culture of Israel, not ours. His language depends on his readers knowing about Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. If he were writing to ignorant Gentiles, none of this would make any sense. It’s Middle Eastern, Hebraic, culture through and through.

He's telling us, it’s about new wine (Matt. 9:17) a new reality (2 Cor. 5:17) and a new man (Eph. 2:15; 4:24; Col. 3:10). He's not being prophetic, he's emphasizing that it's new now, in the present, not new later when the Messiah comes, but now; now! Now! Now! Whatever we are, when we cleanse out the old leaven, we are right now new, fresh and young.

Through the sacrifice of the Lamb (Ex. 12:21,22), He has made it possible for you to have the leaven removed from your life (Ex. 12:14-20). Through His death you are already new.  His death accomplished what you and I could never do (Gal. 2:19).  It took away the pollution that defiled us in the Lord's presence.

Great! What a blessing! Finished! Or is it? Does that mean we have nothing more to do? Ah, not quite. Look how Paul begins this verse. Did you notice my 'imperative' insert? You and I have to remove in practice what has already been removed in theory. Yeshua’s death, the death of the Passover Lamb, gives us legal status as free from the world of Egyptian enslavement. In this freedom, we are obligated to make that legal status a practical reality. We are called to live up to the standard God has already placed upon us. “Cleanse out” commands us to get the junkie leaven out (see Monday's study)! Purge yourself! Remove every form of leaven that defiles. That’s the symbolic meaning of removing leaven (yeast) from your home before the feast of Unleavened Bread.

It's imperative, we need to do that on the inside as well as the outside (Matt. 23:25,26). It is not possible to simply wait until God shows up with the spring cleaning equipment, but it is a commandment on how to start the new year (Ex. 12:1); to make yourself a place where the purity of the Spirit may reside without concern.

Generally we agree. We should get rid of the bad stuff. We are to be purified. But we are far removed from the culture where these words recalled a yearly practice; so we might overlook the fact that this implies a knowledge of what is clean and what is unclean. You see, this action is not simply good heart-scrubbing, it is also about my environment. It includes ritual as well as moral purity. Everyone in Paul’s reading audience would have known this. It’s clean on the outside and on the inside.

Individuals who have left Torah behind often think that this process is only an interior one. It is, of course, but it also includes aligning myself with what God calls clean. That is the process of ritual purity and it cannot be separated from the inner disinfecting. The Passover Lamb makes it possible. Now you and I have to make it real.

What's in my house is what's in my heart...the time of spring cleaning is coming :-) The Passover season is coming!

Shalom

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