City Life Starter

The Word: 1 Corinthians 5:6-8 (NIV)

6 Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough?

7 Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.

8 Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Philippians 3:4-8 (NIV)

4 though I myself have reasons for such confidence. If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more:

5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee;

6 as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.

7 But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.

8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ.

By Stefan Johnsson

Paul, a Hebrew of Hebrews, and faultless in the sight of the law, considered everything he had achieved as worthless compared to knowing Jesus Christ. To him, it was garbage. He, after experiencing the power of the resurrection, realized that there is nothing in life worth boasting about except Jesus. Paul knew that his old life had been crucified with Jesus and he now lived a life in service to Him. He was bought with a price, as we all are. You cannot live as you did before and keep on sinning and boasting in things that are not holy or right.

So when Paul saw that the Corinthian’s were boasting in sinful behaviors that were not of God, he had to remind them that even a little boasting in things that should not be can affect the entire congregation just like a little yeast can affect an entire loaf of bread. We are not to encourage others in behavior that is not of God.

This lesson is essential to understand in our current society. Churches are told by seculars that we are not loving or accepting of everyone and their behavior. That God loves everyone for who they are and does not require them to change. Correcting bad behavior is not considered love in our society. Yet, if we are to boast in the things of God, we have to encourage each other to live more like Christ and less like how the world wants us too. We cannot be the light of the world if we encourage sin. We will tarnish the name of Jesus and remove its power.

Even a loving father will discipline his children.  Hebrews 12:5-6 says, “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.”

Let us not boast in sin, let us instead boast in the power of the Cross and thank God for changing us from the inside. We have died to our former selves and have been born again. We should not boast in the sin of others or in ourselves. Instead, push each other to live more like Jesus. So, let us boast in how God has changed us from our prior behaviors, forgetting what is behind and straining towards the prize that is heavenward in Christ Jesus.