1 Corinthians 5:6-8
16 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.
1 Corinthians 3:16-17 (ESV)
1. The Illustration of the Passover and the Church
2. The influence of sin on the Church
6 Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?
1 Corinthians 5:6 (ESV)
3. The instigation of discipline in the Church
7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump… 1 Corinthians 5:7 (ESV)
4. The identity holiness and the Church
7 . . . as you really are unleavened . . . 1 Corinthians 5:7 (ESV)
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 2 Corinthians 5:17 (ESV)
1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Romans 12:1 (ESV)
5. The implication of Christ’s death for the Church
7 . . . For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 1 Corinthians 5:7 (ESV)
29 The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! John 1:29 (ESV)
16 beware lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves . . . 20 But the LORD has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be a people of his own inheritance, as you are this day. Deuteronomy 4:16-20 (ESV)
6. The integrity of truth in the Church
8 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 5:8 (ESV)
17 Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 19 They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. 20 But that is not the way you learned Christ!— Ephesians 4:17-20 (ESV)
The excellence of the church does not consist in multitude but in purity. John Calvin