“Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
1 Corinthians 5:6-8 ESV

Once we are in Christ, we are cleansed from our old ways, and moving toward our perfection in Him, ultimately finding it when we see Him face-to-face after judgment. Until that day, we are supposed to be moving away from sin, day by day elevating behind the old self, the old ways of sin and pride. We stumble and fall from time to time as we grow in Christ, but there is always meant to be a heart that is seeking Him out, desiring purity and the wholeness that comes from Him.

As the church, we cannot tolerate open, willful sin in our midst either. Christ’s bride is likewise meant to be whole and pure, seeking Christ and her perfection in Him.

In either case, whether as an individual, or as the Church, this apathy toward sin, or a willful including of it in our midst, deadens our feet as we walk. It kills our positive momentum, and drags us back into the complacency of sin. We instantly begin looking more like the world and less like the redeemed.. Resembling sin, we allow more and more, and the grace that once covered us gets traded out for the ‘comfort’ of a sinful status quo.

“You’re okay, I’m okay.” Is not the mantra of Christ’s bride.

We seek out the harmful habits, the hurtful hang-ups and the habitual sins that once plagued us, as we give them over to God, seeking to be purified, refined and cleansed in the blood of the Lamb. Why we look at sin, in the light of there cross and tomb, and pronounce it acceptable isn’t a mystery, but it should be. Do we come ‘just as I am’ to Christ? Absolutely. And does He love us enough, and have power enough to change us from the inside out? You bet your life on it!

When we switched from walking on the wide path of sin, self destruction & pride to walking instead on the narrow path of righteousness, we agreed that this new life we have been baptized into was to be markedly different from the one we had previously lived. We proclaimed to the assembly that we were repenting of our sins and seeking out our new life, lived under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, under the authority of the Scriptures and within the accountability of the people of God. This new life we were baptized into is not a mix of old and new, it is all new, all in pursuit of God and all meant for righteousness.

We cannot be complacent in sin and be taken seriously or expect to be effective in our mission for Christ as we daily GoLove others for His sake.
We are not perfected yet, but in our heart of hearts, we should desire it and daily seek it out. Like the cliché says, ‘He isn’t finished with me yet.’ But, He also isn’t willing to share us with the world. We cannot serve two masters.