Therefore let us keep the feast, not with the old bread, leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and of truth.
8. Now, in the solemnity of this sacred feast we must abstain from leaven, as God commanded the fathers to abstain. But from what leaven? As the outward passover was to them a figure of the true passover, so its appendages were figures of the reality which we at this day possess.
Here the apostle exhorts them to purity, by purging out the old leaven. In this observe, I. The advice itself, addressed either, 1. To the church in general; and so purging out the old leaven, that they might be a new lump, refers to the putting away from themselves that wicked person, Co1 5:13. Note, Christian churches should be pure and holy, and not bear such corrupt and scandalous members.
Commenting on 1 Corinthians 5:7-8
Therefore let us keep the feast,.... Not the feast of the passover, which was now ceased, though this is said in allusion to it; when the master of the house used to say (l), "everyone that is hungry, let him come and eat; he that hath need, let him come "and paschatize", or keep the feast of the passover:'' but rather the feast of the...