Friday 14 April 2017

Let Us Keep the Feast

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.
Some claim this as a basis that Christians should celebrate the Jews' Feast of Passover. That's not how most commentators take it though. For example:

Wesley's Notes

5:8 Therefore let us keep the feast - Let us feed on him by faith. Here is a plain allusion to the Lord's supper, which was instituted in the room of the passover. Not with the old leaven - Of heathenism or Judaism. Malignity is stubbornness in evil. Sincerity and truth seem to be put here for the whole of true, inward religion.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 8.
 - Therefore let us keep the feast. Let us keep the Christian feast of Christ's resurrection in that spirit of holiness - of purging away sin from the midst of us - which was symbolized by the Jewish removal of leaven. Not with old leaven. For now ye are "in Christ," and, therefore, are a "new creation." Leaven is the type of hypocrisy (Luke 12:1) in its secret workings, but more generally it is a type of every corrupting influence. Of sincerity and truth. "All that corresponds to an unsullied, uncontaminated, and genuine Christian character." The beautiful Greek word for "sincerity" means freedom from all admixture. It is, perhaps, derived from "testing in the sunshine," and is used by St. Paul in 2 Corinthians 1:122 Corinthians 2:17. "Truth" means "reality."

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