The following thoughts started churning after reading a chapter in Richard Hays’s Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as Interpreter of Israel’s Scripture. Hays was one of the first theologians who made studying the Bible fun for me.
My working hypothesis is that much of Paul’s understanding of how a church should be structured and run came from Paul’s interpretetation of the Old Testament through a church-as-true-Israel lens. (Replacement theology watchdogs, don’t @ me.)
Let’s start with 1 Corinthians 5. Some guy in the church at Corinth is sleeping with his father’s wife. And guess what the Corinthians are doing? Celebrating! (v.2) Why? I have heard/read some scholars say that they are proud that they can now celebrate the freedom they have in Christ. Tracking that down isn’t necessary at this point.
What Paul says next is that the Corinthians ought to mourn that this sin is polluting the fellowship of faith and that they must come together and remove this man from the church (vv. 2–5).
But the really interesting part of the whole thing is what comes next.
Verses 6–8 talk about the passover festival. Why? Well, first of all, Paul is saying that sin is like leaven (yeast). Just a little bit works its way throughout the whole dough. And the church…
