1 Corinthians 5:6

“Your glorying is not good; know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?”

There are two ways of understanding the connection between the following passage and that which precedes: either the apostle continues to dwell on the disciplinary obligation of the Church, and we must then regard the leaven to be taken away as either the incestuous person, or rather the vicious in general, or it may be held that Paul, after upbraiding the Church with its negligence, seeks to guide its finger to the true cause of the mischief: the want of moral sincerity and firmness. This is the state which must be remedied without delay. Then reaction against the presence of the vicious will take place of itself. The first words are better explained in the second sense, for they relate to the present state of the Church in general. I have translated καύχημα by vanterie (boasting), as if it had been καύχησις (the act of boasting), because we have no word in French to denote the object of boasting. Chrysostom thought the word should be applied to the incestuous person himself, assuming that he was one of the eminent men in whom the Church gloried. Grotius and Heinrici have reproduced this explanation. It seems to us untenable: the Church was satisfied with its state in general, and in particular with the wealth of its spiritual gifts, on which Paul himself had congratulated it (1 Corinthians 1:5-7), and of which chaps. 12-14 will furnish proof. But this abundance of knowledge and speech was no real good except in so far as it effected the increase of spiritual life in the Church, and the sanctification of its members. As this was not the case, the apostle declares to them that their ground of self-satisfaction is of bad quality; a being vainly puffed up (1 Corinthians 4:19): “Ye are proud of the state of your Church; there is no reason for it!” He thus returns to the idea of 1 Corinthians 5:2.

This judgment is called forth by the softness of their conduct in regard to the evil which shows itself among them. Should they who are so rich in knowledge fail to know the influence exercised on a whole mass by the least particle of corruption which is tolerated in it?

Paul clothes his thought in a proverbial form (Galatians 5:9). Leaven is here, as in many other passages (Matthew 13:33; Luke 12:1), the emblem of a principle apparently insignificant in quantity, but possessing a real penetrating force, and that either for good (Matthew 13:33) or for evil (Matthew 16:6; Galatians 5:9). Does Paul understand by this little leaven (the literal sense), the incestuous person or any other vicious member of the same kind, whose tolerated presence is a principle of corruption for the whole community? This is the meaning generally held. Or is he rather thinking of evil in general, which, when tolerated even in a limited and slightly scandalous form, gradually lowers the standard of the Christian conscience in all? It does not seem to me likely that Paul would designate as a little leaven a sinner guilty of so revolting an act as that in question (1 Corinthians 5:1), or other not less scandalous offenders. It is therefore better to apply this figure to all sin, even the least, voluntarily tolerated by the individual or the Church. This meaning, held by Meyer, de Wette, Hofmann, Gerlach, is confirmed by 1 Corinthians 5:7-8.