(6) Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? (7) Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: (8) Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
I am the more inclined to think, that the delivering of the person, before spoken of by the Apostle, to Satan, referred to the separating him from Church communion and ordinances, by what is here said of keeping the feast on the Passover, inasmuch as the Apostle bids them, at the same time he calls them to observe the feast, to purge out the old leaven. But whether so or not, it is very blessed, the authority which God the Holy Ghost hath here given to call Christ our Passover, because it clearly and decidedly proves, that that sacred service in the Jewish Church, was wholly typical of Christ. And again in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the blessed Spirit confirms the same, when telling the Church, that Moses kept it by faith. What faith? Surely an eye to Christ. See Exodus 12:42; Hebrews 11:28. Now the Christian feast is a feast upon Christ's sacrifice. That sacrifice, as Christ our Passover, was once offered, Hebrews 10:14; Hebrews 10:14. But the feast is to be kept continually, For as often as we eat of this bread, and drink of this cup, we do shew forth the Lord's death till he come, 1 Corinthians 11:26. And it is a beautiful direction the Apostle gives of keeping this feast, that there is to be no leaven with it. For, as the Jews of old, before the celebration of the feast of the Passover, searched by the light of a lamp every secret corner and part of their houses, to see if there was any leaven hid away, and which if they found, they at once removed; so the true believer in Christ, is to have no leaven to mingle with Christ. His heart, he prays the light of God's Spirit to search, and take away everything of his that might be mingled with Christ and his righteousness, that he may receive a whole Christ into a broken heart. Christ, and Christ alone, is the Lord's Passover; and Christ, and Christ alone, is his also. Reader! it is very blessed when a child of God views Christ as God the Father views him, and makes him as Jehovah makes him, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end of salvation.