A Little Leaven

In the old days, when people made bread, they included an ingredient called leaven. Leaven is a yeast that makes bread rise. It creates air pockets in the dough, which end up being the tiny holes of air in finished bread. Have you ever had bread that had air pockets in one end of the loaf, and none in the other? No. Bread that has these air pockets has them evenly distributed throughout the bread. That's because when you put leaven in dough, it affects the whole loaf.1

The symbolism of leaven is used many places in the New Testament. Jesus was the first to teach about it in the form of a parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened” (Matt. 13:33). The obvious point is that leaven characterizes something that starts out small but permeates the entire thing in which it is introduced. Now we just need to learn what leaven symbolizes.

What does leaven symbolize?

Leaven was used by Christ and His apostles to symbolize a few different things. On one occasion Jesus warned His disciples to “beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (Matt. 16:11), and they understood it to be false doctrine (v. 12). Therefore, false doctrine, like leaven, can spread and permeate wherever it is present.

On another occasion, Christ explicitly stated that leaven is hypocrisy, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. For there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, nor hidden that will not be known” (Luke 12:1, 2). In a similar way that leaven is “hidden” in dough until all of it is leavened, hypocrisy is a trait that hides the heart and true intents of a man. The Pharisees were hypocrites; they appeared righteous before men but hidden inside was rottenness.

“Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?” (1 Cor. 5:6). Paul used leaven to refer to sin. This passage is about a Christian in the Corinthian church who was living with his father’s wife. Paul was having to rebuke the church for not dealing with this man’s sin by way of proper discipline prescribed by Christ (Matt. 18:15-19). His point seems to be that when a church doesn’t discipline its sinning members, the sins of those individuals becomes a reproach upon the entire body of believers. Thus, “a little leaven leavens the whole lump.”

Leaven in Galatia

There are a few possible interpretations of Paul’s statement to the Galtians, “A little leaven leavens the whole lump” (Gal. 5:9). The leaven could be sin in the life of the Galatian believers and the warning is that a little bit of it will affect their whole life. On a sub point, it might be speaking about the keeping of the whole law for righteousness. In other words, to seek righteousness by the law requires perfect righteousness and a little bit of sin corrupts the entire effort, “For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all” (Jam. 2:10).

The leaven could also be the false teachers who are few in number but infiltrated the whole church. On the other hand, it may be speaking more about the characteristics of these false teachers: that the leaven is their false doctrine which eventually infects the whole church or that it is their hypocrisy which hides their true motives.

The context seems to bear out that the leaven is false doctrine. Just prior to his analogy of leaven, Paul indicated that someone had “hindered you from obeying the truth” (v. 7) and referred to it as “persuasion” (v. 8). Earlier in the letter he had warned the Galatians about heeding “a different gospel” or “any other gospel” (1:6-9) than what they had received.

Conclusion

Christ taught us: “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven.” The Passover was celebrated by eating the flesh of the sacrificial lamb and eating unleavened bread. This was a type of the true sacrifice of Christ and the “unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Cor. 5:8). In other words, Christ took away the penalty for our sins and we are now to live sincerely without hypocrisy or sin. We are to keep the true Passover feast.


1 http://www.ebibleteacher.com/children/lessons/leaven.htm