The Yeast Problem: 1 Corinthians 5
The Yeast Problem: Why the Church's Greatest Threat Comes from Within
My oldest son and I recently went searching for the world's best pizza dough recipe. We found Mark Vetri, author of Mastering Pizza, whose method requires making the dough and refrigerating it for three days while the yeast slowly transforms the entire ball, breaking down proteins, creating new reactions, producing something radically different from what you started with.
I looked at my son and said, "Ain't nobody got time for that. What can we do in 30 minutes?"
We had subpar pizza. But that image of yeast slowly permeating dough is exactly what Paul warns about in 1 Corinthians 5, except in this case, the transformation isn't something you want. It's a tension we sit with regularly at Redemption Gilbert as we think about what it means to be a healthy, honest community of faith.
The Situation: A Church That Should Have Known Better
Paul is writing to a church he planted in Corinth. He's spent four chapters reminding them they are God's temple, entrusted with the mystery of the gospel. Then he drops a bomb: someone in the church is in a sexual relationship with his father's wife, and the church isn't just tolerating it, they're proud. The behavior tolerated inside the church was shocking the world outside it.
That dynamic hasn't changed in two thousand years. The things that happen within the church by people who claim to be Christians continue to shock the watching world.
Why We Look the Other Way
Why do we tolerate what we know we shouldn't? Three reasons:
We avoid others' sin when it provides cover for our own. As long as someone else's failures are bigger and flashier than mine, nobody's looking at me. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that we are often most tolerant of the sins that provide a convenient shadow for our own.
We avoid it because the person gives us something we want. Validation, influence, a platform. We get so excited when someone prominent shows up that we'll overlook glaring problems to keep them around.
We avoid it because confrontation costs us. We know that speaking truth might mean losing the relationship, so we stay quiet until bitterness makes it unbearable, and by then we want vengeance, not restoration.
Charles Spurgeon warned that if we allow the leaven to remain because we're afraid of the trouble of purging it out, we'll find that the leaven will soon have the whole house to itself.
The Real Question: Are You the Yeast Problem?
Paul doesn't just list sexual immorality. He groups it with greed, slander, idolatry, and drunkenness. We love to fixate on the most scandalous sin while our own quietly festers. And critically, Paul isn't talking about judging the world, he corrects that misunderstanding directly. The mission is the world. He's talking about honesty and accountability among those who claim to follow Jesus.
The introspective challenge here isn't "Who do I need to go judge?" It's this: Are you the kind of person who allows the Holy Spirit to sift you? Would you let people who know and love you speak hard truth into your life?
The number one reason people leave the church is hypocrisy, the gap between what we claim and how we live. Paul's call is simple: Be who you claim to be. The greatest threat to the church has never come from outside. It comes from within, from the slow, quiet work of tolerated sin we're too afraid or too comfortable to address.
The call isn't coming from outside the house. It's coming from inside.