Passage Overview · Free · 1 Corinthians 5:6–8
Christ Our Passover: Remove the Old Leaven
Paul turns Israel’s festival imagery into a direct Christological argument. A little leaven works through a whole lump, so the community must remove corrupting evil. Then comes one of the letter’s clearest Old-Testament-to-Christ statements: “For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us.”
The background is Exodus 12 and the feast of unleavened bread. Israel removed leaven and marked deliverance through the Passover sacrifice. Paul does not say every festival detail is a secret prediction of Jesus. He explicitly applies the Passover pattern to Christ and then draws an ethical consequence: believers are to keep feast with “sincerity and truth,” not the old leaven of malice and wickedness.