Shalom family! I’ve been digging deep into 1 Corinthians 5 with some solid back-and-forth, and I need to lay this out fully for Facebook because the traditional Christian teaching that “the Torah/mitzvot are done away with” or “Paul is hyper-spiritualizing everything so we don’t keep the literal commands” is flat-out dismantling the plain text. I’m not omitting ANYTHING from our whole conversation thread — every point, every counter, every verse. But I’m emphasizing the truth: Paul is NOT telling us to ditch the physical Feast of Unleavened Bread (Chag HaMatzot) or any mitzvah (Commands). He’s showing the higher reality that fulfills and empowers the simple to the desired goal literal Torah observance because Christ our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed once for all and stands as a testimony pointing to the end goal.
Let’s start with the text itself.
Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 5:7-8 (Greek included for precision):
“Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Messiah, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep/celebrate the feast (ἑορτάζωμεν — heortázōmen), not with old leaven nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
My argument (and the grammar backs it 100%): That Greek heortázōmen is a present active subjunctive, first-person plural — the classic hortatory subjunctive (cohortative force). If you back-translate the heart of it into Hebrew, it lands exactly like a cohortative or jussive: “נָחֹג נָא אֶת־הֶחָג” — “Let us indeed keep the feast!” It’s not a weak suggestion. It’s Paul commanding the whole assembly (himself included) with imperative weight: PURGE THE SIN and KEEP THE FEAST in its higher reality. The Torah command in Exodus 12:17 is “ushmartem et ha-matzot” (“you shall guard/observe the unleavened breads”). Paul isn’t quoting that verbatim, but the force is the same — and the higher reality doesn’t cancel the simple literal mitzvah (Command). It deepens the reality we find in Messiah, not as a full conclusion but the establishment of the end goal should look like. Just as I have emphatically declared that the writings of the Notzerim gentiles call the new testament is not the reality of the new covenant, but the preparation instructions when it becomes full, when Yehovah makes a renewal of the covenant to the house of Jdah and the northern house of Israel, at the evidence of that renewed covenant is the nations pounding their swords into plowshares and the wolf lying down with the lamb where there shall be peace in Zion, when all Jerusalem will be called the throne of Yehovah, as you can clearly see we are not in that completed timeline.
The specific “leaven of malice and wickedness” Paul targets? Sexual immorality — the man sleeping with his father’s wife (1 Cor 5:1), a direct violation of Torah (Leviticus 18:8; Deut 22:30; 27:20). Sin = violation of Torah (1 John 3:4, which lines up perfectly with Paul’s Romans 7:7-13). So Paul is using the Torah’s own leaven-purging command as the parallel: just as you remove every trace of chametz before the feast (Exodus 12:15, 19; Deuteronomy 16:3-4), purge the sin and the unrepentant sinner from the assembly.
Purging explained fully: This mirrors Yeshua’s own words — “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off… if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out” (Matthew 5:29-30; Mark 9:43-48). First and foremost, it’s about our sinful nature (the root cause of stumbling, the “flesh” Paul battles in Romans 7-8). But it extends to removing unrepentant people from the assembly to protect the whole “lump.” The Corinthian believers were already in the context of doing the mitzvah — removing physical leaven and keeping the 7-day Feast of Unleavened Bread (lechem oni, the bread of affliction). Paul interjects the sin = leaven analogy into that practice, elevating it without nullifying the literal command.
Deuteronomy 30 connection (the heart of it all): Paul is steering us right back to “the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, that you may observe it” (Deut 30:14). “Sincerity (eilikrineia — pure, genuine, tested by light, the Torah is a light unto my path, a lamp unto my feet) and truth (alētheia — honest, reliable, Heb Emet means Yehovah’s commands and instructions are rock solid and are covenantal and established) this is not some new spiritual replacement. It’s the higher reality of heart-level Torah obedience — living the plain, simple instructions without hypocrisy. Yeshua’s sacrifice as the Passover Lamb empowers us to do exactly that: deal with our sins and leaven through the always-intended Torah instructions.
Now dismantling the traditional Christian arguments.
Some say Paul is not literally commanding the physical Feast — he’s only calling for a “perpetual spiritual feast” of sincerity and truth, not the 7-day ritual with physical matzah. They claim he’s not re-issuing the Sinai command “ushmartem et ha-matzot – and guard the unleavened feast” for the mixed Jewish-Gentile church in Corinth. They point to Colossians 2:16-17 (“festivals… are a shadow of the things to come; the substance belongs to Christ”) and Galatians 4:9-11 (warning against observing “days and months and seasons and years” as “weak and worthless elements” that lead back to bondage is speaking of pagan days weeks and years on pagan calendars, or it is showing that the outward only observance is just a shadow of the good things we wait for in faith in messiah). The balanced “middle ground” they push is that the physical observance is now “voluntary” at best — a nice teaching tool or memorial — but the real emphasis is on the heart reality, not binding mitzvot (Commands) for Gentiles to be done superficially.
I dismantle that completely: That view destroys the Torah that Paul himself calls “holy, righteous, and good” (Romans 7:12). It turns “Christ our Passover has been sacrificed” into an excuse to abolish the very pattern the sacrifice fulfills. Paul never says the Torah is destroyed — that’s a false Christian tradition that leads to antinomianism (lawlessness, without torah), which both Yeshua and Paul condemn (Matthew 7:23). The grammar doesn’t allow a hyper-spiritual disconnect: the hortatory subjunctive is a real command to keep the feast in the higher reality while the simple literal Torah stays in our mouths (Deut 30). The “shadow” language in Colossians doesn’t cancel the commands — it points to their goal in Messiah. And Galatians 4 is about pagan calendar bondage, not the God-given feasts Paul himself kept (Acts 20:6, 21:17-26).
Acts 15 seals it : The Jerusalem Council didn’t say “Gentiles, you’re free from Torah.” They gave four immediate prohibitions (idols, blood, strangled things, sexual immorality — Acts 15:20, 29) as the baseline for fellowship. Then James drops the BOOM, the key line: “For Moses has had in every city from ancient generations those who preach him, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath” (Acts 15:21). This is the expectation: Gentiles coming into the covenant will hear Moses for the rest of the commands. The four rules remove the big barriers; the long-term vision is ongoing Torah growth — exactly the “word in your mouth and heart” pattern. The sexual sin in Corinth was one of those four prohibitions, and Paul is enforcing the higher application of the same Torah.
No extremes allowed: I’m not pushing a “Jewish literal-only” side that ignores the heart. And I’m rejecting the “Christian hyper-spiritual-only” side that severs the New Testament from its Torah foundation. The higher reality Paul shows reinforces the simple literal observance: remove physical leaven as a memorial of the Exodus fulfilled in Yeshua, and purge sin (internal nature + unrepentant sinners) with sincerity and truth every day. The feast isn’t limited to one week — it’s perpetual because the Lamb has been sacrificed — but that doesn’t cancel the annual rhythm or the physical mitzvah. It’s both-and: the shadow and the substance working together until its appointed end.
Bottom line: Sincerity and truth steer us back to simple, literal Torah observance in whom Yeshua has been sacrificed. The mitzvot aren’t burdensome — they’re life (Deut 30). The traditional view that “Torah is destroyed” or “we’re not under the law” rips the foundation out from under Paul’s entire argument. Paul is showing us how to guard the feast in its fullest sense: purge the leaven of sin through the very instructions God gave.What do you think, family? Have you seen how this higher reality actually protects and empowers literal Torah walking? Drop your thoughts below — let’s discuss without the extremes. Share if this fires you up to keep the feasts with sincerity and truth!
