‘Keep the Festival with Unfermented Cakes’

■ The Holy Scriptures emphasize the need for preserving the purity of the Christian congregation. Corruptive influences are to be removed. In his first letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul counseled: “Clear away the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, according as you are free from ferment. For, indeed, Christ our passover has been sacrificed. Consequently let us keep the festival, not with old leaven, neither with leaven of badness and wickedness, but with unfermented cakes of sincerity and truth.”​—1 Cor. 5:7, 8.

Under the Mosaic law arrangement, the Passover victim was sacrificed annually, and this was followed by the seven-day festival of unfermented cakes. Jesus Christ, however, offered up himself once for all time. (Heb. 9:25-28) Hence, the entire life course of the Christian should be like a continual festival of unfermented cakes, free from all injuriousness and wickedness. Within the Christian congregation there should be a willingness to maintain personal and congregational purity, and to remove everything that is corrupting to faith and morals.