Eternal Perspectives

An unsettling conversation the other day gave me pause and caused me to explore the issue of divorce and remarriage once again. I have done this in the past and do it periodically because (a) new resources come available almost daily, (b) I forget important aspects of the discussion, and (c) although the teaching of Scripture does not change, my own understanding of the teaching continues to develop and deepen. The last point reflects my conviction of my own fallibility and the need for periodic review of my “intractable” positions.

The conversation occurred when a friend told me of woman at a local church who has taken it upon herself to begin teaching that viewing pornography is tantamount to adultery and, since adultery is grounds for divorce, therefore viewing pornography is a valid reason to divorce. Her biblical basis for the teaching is Mt 5.27-28:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY’; but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (NASB).

This makes sense syllogistically:

All viewing of pornography is adultery.
Adultery is grounds for divorce.
Therefore, viewing of pornography is grounds for divorce.

Of course, what is logical is not always biblical, so it became important (for me, anyway) to examine the question once again. My primary resource for doing so, apart from the Bible, is David Instone-Brewer’s Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible. His book is an in-depth exploration of the cultural and religious context of the NT discussion of the issue of divorce; the context is critical in understanding what Jesus said and, just as importantly, what He did not say in His discourses and debates with His contemporaries.

Instone-Brewer is a research fellow at Tyndale house in Cambridge, England; interestingly, he wrote the book online, welcoming input while pleading for integrity from those who would “borrow” his findings and conclusions. It is an important and vital reference for any or all who find themselves confronted with the possible divorce of fellow believers. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations in this series is from his book.

In this series, I hope to address only a few of the many aspects involved in this troubling and all-too prevalent issue. The teachings of Jesus and Paul will be considered along with the context in which those teachings took place, as well as more contemporary interpretations and applications of the passages involved. It is necessary to understand first the background of the NT discussions.

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“From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and violent men take it by force” (Mt 11.12, NASB).

‘The full value of this life can only be got by fighting; the violent take it by storm. And if we have accepted everything we have missed something — war. This life of ours is a very enjoyable fight, but a very miserable truce.’ Gilbert K. Chesterton

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“Matt 11:12 From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it.

“THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN NEEDS FORCEFUL PEOPLE

“The word forceful means: Powerful, Dynamic, and Effective. God requires us as Christians, to have this type of attitude today. In essence Jesus is saying that since John the Baptist, the Kingdom of heaven has been forcefully pressing forward towards its goal, and in order to maintain this momentum, it needs powerful, dynamic and effective Christians!

“The proposal here is that before John the Baptist, the Kingdom of Heaven could only be seen in the light of prophecy, but now it is PREACHED and DEMONSTRATED, by people who are pressing into it, with a zeal and eagerness resembling VIOLENCE or DESPERATION, to get rid of SIN and all satanic powers that are trying to destroy God’s people. But we need to stand true against anything that opposes the Kingdom of Heaven and its coming!

“The devil will try and subdue usÂ… he does not want us to succeed. Our opponent will try everything in his power to stop us moving forward, but Jesus wants those who are possessed of enthusiasm and the passion for God, to fight the enemy on all fronts, reminding ourselves that…The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 2 Cor 10:4

“How do we achieveÂ… this FORCEFULNESS? Tomorrow we will look at implementing the first of four principles, which I believe will help us.” (emphases his)

John comes to the right conclusion but, it seems, takes a curious way to get there. The emphasis of the passage is on the kingdom, not violence; in fact, even “forceful” may be misleading.

Rather than offer up my own limited understanding of this verse, I’ll do what I have taken to doing lately: I’ll let Brad Young argue for me! If you have not read his books Jesus the Jewish Theologian and Paul the Jewish Theologian, I strongly encourage you to do so. Young will challenge your Western way of thinking and enable you to hear the words of Jesus and Paul more clearly.

Young begins with an explanation and rationale:

Without a sound approach to the translation of the Gospels, we lose something of great value from the words of Jesus because they are robbed of the rich imagery of the original language . . .

This saying of Jesus has been improperly translated, wrongly understood, and often removed from its original context concerning John the Baptist. Most of the time the verse has been given one of two interpretations. First, it was thought to describe how the kingdom was being attacked by men of violence. Second, and perhaps even more unfortunately, some scholars have suggested that Jesus advocated violence as a part of his kingdom message . . .

The question of the Hebrew original of this saying of Jesus becomes of inestimable value when the Old Testament background is seen in Micah 2.13, “The breaker who opens the breach rises up before them . . .”

The Greek verb which is translated “suffers violence” in the KJV is biazo . . . the New International Version rendered this Greek verb as “forcefully advancing.” This translation of biazo is more appropriate than the passive idea from “suffers violence” because the active meaning correctly conveys both the force associated with the verb and also mentions the progressive movement of the divine reign . . .

The idea conveyed by the Greek verb biazo certainly includes the action of “breaking forth.” Moreover, the Hebrew background of this saying of Jesus actually denotes an action of breaking out with strong force. The best rendering of the term in this context is “breaks forth.” The action originates from within and moves outward.

. . . since biastai ["forceful men" in the NIV] comes from the same verb biazo and is closely related to Micah 2.13, it should be rendered as “the breakers,” that is, the ones making the break wider as they break out from within the wall.

“He who opens the breach” is one word in Hebrew, “the breaker,” haportez Both of them are connected to Jesus’ saying, “The kingdom of heaven breaks forth . . . ” The first part of the verse from Micah 2.13, “He who opens the breach (the breaker, haportez) will go up before them,” is related to the words of Jesus, “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven breaks forth . . .” The one who causes the kingdom to break forth is John the Baptist . . .

The mental image created by the verse in Micah 2.13 portrays a sheepfold full of sheep . . . After the sheep have been confined all night in the limited space of the makeshift sheepfold, the animals are anxious to break out. In the morning the shepherd will knock down a section from the piled-up stones. He will break open the barricade wall which penned up the sheep all night in a protective enclosure. Anxious to be released from the holding pen, the sheep will rush out as quickly as possible, knocking down more stones from the makeshift fence in order to break outside . . .

In the same way that the sheep are anxious for release after a night of confinement within the sheepfold, the people will respond to the divine initiative, “they will break through (partzu), and pass the gate, going out by it. Their king (malkam) will pass on before them, the LORD at their head” (Mic 2.13) . . .

The breaker makes a breach and the ones inside the sheepfold break forth from within. The idea of persecution, namely, that the sheep inside the fold are under attack after the breach has been made, is not possible.

Young now offers his own interpretation of Mt 11.12 and elaborates on its meaning:

“From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven breaks forth and those breaking forth are pursuing [seeking] it” . . .

When Jesus referred to John as the breaker, he was comparing him to Elijah who was to come. As a result of John’s work as the breaker, the kingdom of heaven was now breaking forth within Jesus’ own ministry of healing . . .

From the time of John, the preparation was being made. Now the kingdom of heaven breaks forth, and all are breaking out with it. The rule of God challenges each new generation with the dynamic message of Jesus . . .

The divine reign is realized when God’s people receive his power to accomplish his purpose. This power is not reserved for the end times; rather, the kingdom breaks forth in the present as men and women experience God’s redemptive power in their lives. They share what God has done for them as they help others. Jesus came to bring salvation and healing to hurting people in a world wracked by urgent human need.

Amen and amen.

At this rate, I’ll be typing all of Brad Young’s JESUS: THE JEWISH THEOLOGIAN on this blog. But as I continue to slowly read my way through it, savoring each chapter, I keep running into more and more valuable insights he offers into the teachings of Jesus. This time he’s opening my eyes to new aspects of what biblical faith and prayer are all about.

In a chaper entitled “Faith as Chutzpah,” Young explores two parables that Jesus used to get across His teachings about the relationship between faith and prayer: the “importunate friend at midnight” (Lk 11.5-8) and “the unjust judge” (Lk 18.1-8). He contends that Jesus used a word play involving two Hebrew words, one of which is chutzpah.

“The word chutzpah is difficult to define in a single word. It means headstrong persistence, brazen impudence, unyielding tenacity, bold determination, or what in current English terms might be referred to as raw nerve. Can faith be described by the Hebrew word chutzpah?

“But the real issue with prayer concerns God. These parables teach expectancy in prayer. The great Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel noted that the real issue of prayer is how one understands God . . . The difficulty of prayer is the way one views the divine nature.

“One prays with bold determination because God is good. He is not like the contemptible friend who would not help his neighbor. He is not like the corrupt judge who feared neither God nor man and refused to help a needy widow. True faith requires bold perseverance . . . True faith is committing all one knows about himself or herself to all he or she knows about God. Faith can be defined as chutzpah. Persevere with unyielding tenacity.”

Young then turns to the twin parables and, as usual, provides valuable information about the times and cultural, thus bringing the stories into a different light. In the case of the persistent neighbor and his unreliable friend, Young explains he importance of hospitality in Jewish culture in the first century.

“In the Middle East the obligation of hospitality was highly valued as an essential requirement. At midnight the contemptible friend hears his neighbor’s voice outside the house. The neighbor does not knock because this would cause unnecessary alarm . . . By all custom and etiquette the neighbor must offer his guest traditional hospitality. In many ways, according to the culture, the visitor is not only the neighbor’s guest but the guest of the entire village. A dinner, including bread, the essential part of every meal, must be prepared for the visitor . . .

“What do the listeners expect? When they hear the story, they expect the friend to open the door for his neighbor . . . Instead of providing the anticipated result, however, the contemptible friend answers with a feeble excuse . . .

“The outrage of the audience will be directed toward the unacceptable behavior of this friend . . . His excuse is totally unacceptable. Everyone hearing the parable will view him with extreme contempt. They will complete the story because they know what the neighbor standing outside the house will do. Shamelessly he will pound on the door with bold tenacity . . . The man outside the house demonstrates his brazen tenacity as he reacts to his friend’s contemptible behavior in refusing to answer a simple request in the time of an emergency.”

The Greek word translated as “shamelessness,” “impudence,” or “persistence” in this passage (describing the friend at the door) is used as a synonym for faith in the story of the unjust judge. This word, Young says, is comparable to chutzpah. In each of the parables faith is “being as defined in a mini-drama in which steadfast perseverance is depicted as the perfect example of true faith in the goodness of God.”

What makes the judge so bad in the second parable is the Jewish view that rulers and judges are stewards of God’s justice and authority on earth. It was required of judges to rule fairly and faithfully. God is concerned about the welfare of people and the judge, as His representative, should reflect God’s love for less-powerful members of society. “Saying that a judge does not fear God is a most serious charge,” Young says, adding later that “tenacity was the only weapon the widow possessed.”

Young provides numerous examples of rabbinical teaching on chutzpah, but the best illustration is the story of a famous rabbi named “Choni the Circle Drawer.”

“Because of a severe drought, the people approached Choni and asked him to pray for rain. When Choni prayed and no answer came, he took decisive action, which offended some of the religious leaders of his day. Choni had the audacity to draw a circle in the dirt and pray to the Almighty, ‘I will not move from this circle until You send rain.’ The miracle happened! The much-needed rain fell . . . Choni’s strong-willed perseverance is a true expression of his devout faith in the goodness of God.”

The message of the two parables is to be bold and confident when praying, knowing that God is good and will answer the prayers of His children. Young cites numerous examples from the ministry of Jesus that show His delight and approval of tenacious, brazen, and determined prayer and faith:

“In a number of the healing stories in the Gospels, Jesus responds to an individual who has demonstrated strong-willed determination by saying, ‘Your faith has saved you’ . . . the friends of a paralytic . . . the woman with a hemorrhage . . . the woman who burst into the house of Simeon with a bottle of ointment . . . the Canaanite woman who steadfastly begged Jesus to heal her child . . . the blind man in Jericho . . . The firm determination of these individuals who approached Jesus with their needs and Jesus’ affirmation of their faith demonstrates the qualities of the Hebrew term chutzpah.”

In these two parables, Young says, Jesus employs the Jewish concept of “kal vechomer.” Kal is the “light” side of an argument, while chomer is the weighty and significant side. The principle is characterized by the phrase, “How much more . . . !”

“If it is true that a contemptible friend who will not even assist his neighbor with three loaves of bread at midnight will be moved to action by the tenacity of the petitions of his neighbor, how much more, on the weighty side, will the merciful God be moved by the prayers of his people. If, on the light side, a corrupt judge will give an equitable decision in favor of a helpless widow because of her bold persistence, how much more, on the weighty side, will God grant the steadfast petitions of those who serve him.”

Young ends his discussion of faith where he began, focusing on the determining factor in prayer:

“The issue of prayer is God. People mistakenly pray as if God is a friend who does not care or a judge who does not deal justly . . . in many ways the theme of these colorful illustrations can be summarized by saying, ‘God is your good friend.’ Because God is good, perseverance in prayer will receive the answer.”

Let’s start with a quick quiz. One question, multiple choice:

Which of the following beliefs were closest to the teachings of Jesus in the parable of the Good Samaritan?

A. The theology of the priests and Levites
B. The theology of the Sadducees
C. The theology of the Pharisees
D. The theology of the Samaritans
E. A and B
F. None of the above

To find the answer, let’s look at the familiar story another time (Lk 10.25-37):

25 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
26 “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
27 He answered: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
28 “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
30 In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead.
31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side.
32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him.
34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him.
35 The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’
36 “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
37 The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

BRAD YOUNG will HELP US think our way through the parable, beginning by getting us to hear it with the ears of Jesus’ original audience: first-century Jews.

In the mind of the people, “Samaritan” was anything but good. The Samaritan was understood to be an enemy. Though Samaritans accepted the five books of Moses as authoritative for faith and practice, they rejcted the oral law and were not considered to be Jewish . . .

In contrast to the Samaritan, the Levite and the priest were true members of the Jewish communty and served in the temple. Alhough they were descended from the priestly families, they had one thing in common with the Samaritans. The priestly class from the time of Jesus was almost exclusively composed of Sadducees, and like the Samaritans, the Sadducess rejected the oral law.

Because we know the end of the story, we “know” that the Samaritan is the good guy. Not for the people then. To modernize it, substitute your favorite enemy for “Samaritan:” Democrat? Republican? Muslim? Abortionist? American? Mother-in-law? Whoever that person might be, that’s how the Samaritans were viewed by the Jews.

Young continues his emphasis on the oral law during the times of Jesus:

The oral law, which was accepted by the Pharisees and the majority of the people during the period, taught that preservation of of life supersedes all other laws. The Sadducees, having rejected the oral law, interpreted the Scriptures in a literal fashion. They emphasized religious and ceremonial purity. Unlike the Pharisees who interpreted the law in a way to give it practical application in daily living while preserving its validity, the priests and the Levites preferred to adhere to the letter of the law.

So the priests and Levites – who were likely Sadducees – rejected with oral tradtion and held to the letter of the law. The Pharisees, in contrast, promoted the spirit of the law and had a hierarchy of values.

There is another cultural issue to uncover. Jesus says that they left the man “half dead.” Young explains:

The term “half-dead” probably refers to the Hebrew word goses which had a technical meaning in the Jewish oral law. The goses is a dying man who is in agony. According to the Jewish oral law, most of these individuals will die . . . The rabbis were concerned that the goses would not receive adequate care. They ruled that the goses, i.e., dying person, must be treated as a living person in every respect . . . According to the oral tradition, every law in the Torah may be broken if it will extend and save life . . .

What if the Levite and the priest thought that he was dead? The written law teachs that a priest and a Levite cannot become ritually impure even for a member of their own family (Lev 21.11) . . . At least a literal interpretation of the written law would prohibit a priest or a Levite from burying an abandoned dead corpse. But this violated the oral law.

The Pharisees lived by a different code. In the oral law they have another tradition. The Oral Torah teaches that a person is required to bury an abandoned corpse . . . In fact, they taught that though the high priest himself may not become ritually impure to bury a member of his own family, he is required to become impure in order to bury an abandoned body . . .

In either case, whether the unclothed, beaten man in the middle of the road was dead or alive, the priest and the Levite were required to stop. According to the oral law, they either had to bury the dead or give life-sustaining assistance to someone in need. But they are Sadducees, and they reject the Oral Torah.

So the Pharisees have the same approach to helping people as Jesus. But what about the Samaritans’ theology? What was their position (and, thus, the position of the anonymous Samaritan in the parable)? Young explains:

One must not miss the connection between the Samaritan and the Sadducean priest and Levite. Not only do the priest and the Levite reject the oral law but also the Samaritans lived only by the written letter of the five books of Moses. From a religious perspective the Samaritan was endangering his ritual purity in the same way that the priest and the Levite may have become ceremonially unclean.

The theologian who had posed the question “Who is my neighbor?” understood Jesus parable. Although he could not bring himself to say the name, he knew that it was the Samaritan who was the true neighbor to the half-dead man in the road.

So, how did you do on the quiz? I had no idea prior to reading Young’s treatment of the parable, and the cultural information he provides puts the story in a different and clearer light. As Young says, “my enemy is my neighbor!”

The parable teaches that the neighbor is not the man in need of life-giving assistance but the enemy. The key for understanding the parable is Matthew 5.43, where Jesus teaches us to love our enemies . . .

The parable communicates its message to the uninitiated, but it also reaches the scholar and the theologian on a deeper level. Everyone should abandon prejudice ad love all people – even someone who may be considered to be an enemy. The message of Jesus in the parables seeks a response. Jesus said to the theologian, “Go and do likewise.”

Taken from Brad H. Young Jesus: The Jewish Theologian (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995), pp. 165-169. Available through Christian Books Distributors (click link above).

He was a big man with a broken heart; his wife, sitting next to him, was equally crushed by the events of the last few days.

The teenage daughter of these two Christian people had just informed them that she was a lesbian, had always felt like a lesbian, and was going to pursue being a lesbian. The big man and his wife were devastated: faithful members of their church, Sunday School teachers, the envy of other parents with struggling teenagers, they believed that their daughter loved Jesus Christ. They had no categories to deal with the news that had invaded their home with all the irresistable force of a spiritual tsunami.

The father was, understandably, angry: he had responded well to his daughter at first, but now the anger was beginning to overwhelm him. He wanted to punish her, to take away things that she valued, and to not give her things that had been promised. He couldn’t stand, he said, to even look at her picture anymore and wanted to leave the room whenever she came into it.

“She doesn’t know what she’s doing,” he protested, “she doesn’t know how hard her life is going to be or how this is going to affect her relationships with the family and her friends.” He was probably right, since their daughter is barely seventeen. Most teenagers don’t grasp long-term ramifications for choices.

“She’s like a leper,” he said with disgust and sorrow mixed together.

Yes, I thought to myself, she is exactly like a leper. And, as Christians, we know what we should do.

The scene, although modified to disguise the family, is true. It is played out in my office with tragic regularity as parents try to face the horrifying reality of what their children are telling them. These are, for the most part, Christian families whose children have been raised in the church and in ostensibly Christian homes. They come to me for help, hoping I can somehow make it all go away or, at the very least, tell them what to do and how to handle the situation.

There are a lot of homosexuals in the Christian church, some practicing and some not. They are, for the most part, in the closet: they know that Christians have a reputation for shooting their wounded; they know that they are deeply wounded. And bleeding profusely.

The father of the teenage girl wanted to pull away from her, to essentially excommunicate her from the family. Something like that may be necessary in the future, but it’s not the place to start. Their daughter may be trying this on to see how it fits; rejecting her now throws her into the arms of people who will be all-too happy to confirm her confused sexual feelings.

Homosexuals are the present-day lepers of the Christian church. We don’t like them, they scare us, and we don’t know what to do with them or for them. AIDS comes to mind almost immediately.

In Jesus’ time, there were genuine lepers walking around the streets and paths of Judea. They were ostracized and shunned by the religious people of their day, too. Here is part of the leprosy law of Lev 13.45-46:

“As for the leper who has the infection, his clothes shall be torn, and the hair of his head shall be uncovered, and he shall cover his mustache and cry, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ He shall remain unclean all the days during which he has the infection; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.” (NASB)

Contact with a leper resulted in ceremonial uncleanness; to be cleansed from the defilement meant sacrifice, loss of privileges regarding the temple, and isolation. Leprosy was contagious, after all.

It is this that makes Jesus’ reaction to the man with leprosy in Mark’s history so remarkable.

“And a leper came to Jesus, beseeching Him and falling on his knees before Him, and saying, ‘If You are willing, You can make me clean.’ Moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I am willing; be cleansed.’” - Mk 1.40-41 (NASB)

Jesus touched the leper. The ceremonial law – which governed the religious life of the community – was superceded by the law of love. Jesus didn’t chastise the man for not announcing his approach, for endangering others; He didn’t send him away in shame or turn His back and walk away. Jesus stretched out His hand, the text says, and touched him. This is amazing. Would you touch a leper? Do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a homosexual?

It is also an example for us to follow. For the most part, the church has failed to embody the love and compassion of Christ in touching the untouchables in our midst. We, too, have had a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy with regard to sins such as homosexuality. And so these particular damaged people (as we all are) leave the church and disappear in the shadows of life. Or death.

Our job – and the job of the father who came to me – is to move toward the unlovely people in our lives, to embrace them, to show them the love of Jesus Christ, and to help them in their struggle against their own personal variation of Sin. Whatever reasons we might have or offer for not helping these people, it will not hold up at the judgment seat of Christ. The church is to be a healing community. That means there are going to be sick people in our midst. We need to help them.

I’m not suggesting that churches throw doctrine or discipline out the window; I am suggesting that churches think long and hard about how to come to the aid of Christians who have fallen prey to whatever behavior is currently labeled as unacceptable in our subculture. Homosexuals are not valueless people; they are people for whom Christ died. And they not only desperately need our help, they are entitled to it.

If a pastor were ever so desperate as to allow me to speak on Easter morning, Paul’s above charge to the Corinthians would be my text.

Now, I recognize that the overflowing pews on Easter morning are a target-rich environment, a veritable killing field of an opportunity to preach the gospel to all those strange faces that find their way to church for this one Sunday out of the year. And because Easter is such a great social and cultural event in our country, most messages on that Spring morning tend to have an evangelistic thrust to them.

There is certainly nothing wrong with evangelistic messages, and preaching them to unbelievers is a good idea. But is Easter always the time for that? I didn’t become a Christian until I was 25 and, for the most part, only darkened the doors of churches on Easter mornings – if then. To be honest, though, I didn’t think there was much reason to come back on any other Sunday: every time I came to church on that one day out of the year, the message sounded a whole lot like the one I had heard the year before and the year before that and . . .

It made me wondered why people came every Sunday: didn’t they get tired of the same basic sermon week after week?

But now as a Christian (for 30 years) it seems to me that Easter – if it is to be singled out and celebrated on a particular day – should be an in-house event, something to be observed by those who are members of the Body of Christ because they have trusted in Jesus as their Savior. It should be a memorial for believers, not unbelievers.

This, however, seems to get lost in an effort to “get the gospel out” yet again to people who have already heard it so many times that they’re immune to it. For many it has become a yearly innoculation, kind of a spiritual flu shot: come to church on Easter Sunday, hear the gospel (or not hear it, more accurately), make sure nothing’s changed, and then go home with the confidence that you’re good for another year.

That is not what Paul’s command is about, of course: he was not telling the Corinthians to observe Easter and the resurrection of Christ. Nor is it a call to dwell on the true Passover Lamb who was slain for the sins of the world. The feast in view here is not Passover: that feast is over – “our Passover also has been sacrificed” – and the immediately following feast is what Paul is telling the Corinthians to observe.

The question, then, is what feast is he talking about?

To find that out, we have to look at the Jewish calendar and what followed Passover. Moses commands the Israelites in Ex 13.3-10 to observe the week-long festival in remembrance of their delieverance – salvation – from Egypt as a result of the Passover. They were to eat only unleavened bread; not only that, there was not to be any leaven anywhere within the community of believers during this time.

Leaven – or yeast – in the Bible is usually (but not always) a symbol of sin. Grain offerings at the Temple were not to contain any leaven, and when Jesus warned the disciples about the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod, He was talking about their sinful influence. The Feast of Unleavened Bread was a call to eliminate sin in each Israelite’s individual life and in the corporate life of the nation.

Christ did not save us so that we might gorge ourselves with yeast-filled bread. A person might choose to do this as a Christian, but it is unbelievably stupid. It is to remain in the worst imaginable prison after the price for our freedom has been paid and we have been given the keys to the door.

What Paul is saying, and what the celebration of Easter should remind us of and call us to, is a life of holiness and purity. It is because we have been redeemed, forgiven of our sins, given eternal life, and made into a dwelling place of the Holy Spirit that we are to respond by setting ourselves apart from sin. We are not, as Paul says, to live a life characterized by malice or wickedness; we are to live in sincerity and truth.

(The order here is critical. An unleavened life is supposed to follow salvation, not be the means of salvation, and a leavened life affects our fellowship with God and other believers. It does not diminish or negate the efficacy of the blood of our salvation.)

Easter, then, should be a time to look forward and consider what should be our reasonable response to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. It is a day to examine ourselves carefully, to identify the leaven that may have slipped undetected into our lives, and to turn from it and walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which we have been called (Eph 4.1). It is a time to remember that we are not our own, that we have been purchased with a price, and that we ought to therefore glorify God in our lives (1 Co 6.20).

Even as the Israelites were to avoid leaven and to rid their nation of sin, so individual believers must turn from sin and to cleanse the church from sin. This is the feast to be celebrated following salvation.

Our Passover has been sacrificed. Our immediate response should be to celebrate with a life free from sin.