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Jun 25, 2025 06:00am

A Little Yeast: How Sin Grows When Unchecked

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Have you caught on to the whole sourdough craze? If you’re not in the know on this whole thing, let me enlighten you. There’s a whole slew of people who are getting their “starter” and becoming bakers. They’ve got Facebook groups, TikTok videos, and YouTube channels just for sourdough bread making. It’s been said that “sourdough is the new Tamagotchi for millennials.” (Just look it up.)

While I don’t know a lot about it, I have gleaned a little here and there from friends who are making it. What I do know is that it has to be fed in order to grow. It will rise and rise and rise, all thanks to one little ingredient: yeast.

Yeast is an active fungus that feeds off of sugar and water. As it feeds, carbon dioxide is released, creating little bubbles that give bread the fluffy, airy texture we so love.

But it doesn’t take much. Just a little yeast mixed in, and the batch of dough is ready to grow.

1 Corinthians 5:6
“Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough?”

What in the world is Paul talking about? Well, it’s not about those delicious cinnamon rolls the lunch ladies make.

Here is a great example to show you why context is important. We’re just seeing a little portion of Scripture, and based on it, we don’t know who is speaking, who is being spoken to, what the comparison is, or why it’s being used.

Paul wrote the book of 1 Corinthians as a letter to the believers in Corinth. Together, they were the church. But because the church is made up of people, issues were arising, and there was great division in the church. Chapter 5 is about immoral behavior and church discipline.

So, what was this immoral behavior?

One of the members was having an affair with his father’s wife. Paul was correcting their behavior because they were trying to ignore it.

And this is why he gives the example of the yeast in the dough.

Yeast is used throughout Scripture to represent sin. Remember how the Israelites were instructed by God to not put yeast in the dough when they made their bread before escaping from Egypt? They wouldn’t have time to let it rise. They were to clean all the yeast from their homes. Deeper than just making bread, God was telling them to leave behind the sins of the world (Egypt) and follow Him.

Every year, during the Passover festival, they would eat their unleavened (without yeast) bread. It’s like the crackers we eat during communion or the Lord’s Supper.

Christ is our Passover. He was the perfect sacrifice needed for our sins. And because of that—because He gave it all for us—we should not have a desire for the old ways (the leavened bread).

This church of young believers wanted to ignore the flagrant sin of this young man. They wanted to believe that it wasn’t hurting anyone else, that it was a family matter.

But Paul knew better.

And this is why he said, “Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough?” They couldn’t ignore the sin. If they did, they were teaching the whole body of believers that it was okay for this to be done. They would be doing whatever they felt was right in their own eyes instead of what God said was right.

All are sinners, but blatant sin within the church left uncorrected can bring confusion, division, and can affect the whole “batch.” And Paul went on to say that he wasn’t talking about the outside world that sins. Those aren’t the issue. The issue was someone who claimed to be a brother or sister in Christ and was openly continuing in sin without remorse.

He gave instructions to the church leaders about how to discipline appropriately to provide correction. It should be done lovingly and with restitution in mind. But if the person refuses to repent time after time, then you can’t force them. They are to be left to their own choices and removed from the fellowship.

There’s a lot to say about church discipline, and goodness, we could spend days trying to cover the issues—even the ones within churches—but that’s not what I want to share with you today. What I do want to share is that no sin is secret. And our sins, whether we want to believe it or not, affect others. Left uncontrolled, they spread like yeast throughout the dough, growing and growing—tearing lives apart little by little. What may have started out with a seemingly small sin will grow, leaving mass destruction in its path.

What sin is it that is plaguing you? What is it that God has been convicting you about, but you want to just ignore it? Take it to the Lord in prayer. Confess it. Ask for forgiveness, and then seek restitution. And if it’s a sin you struggle with consistently, get help. Don’t let it keep growing until it’s out of control.

If you want to know more about a relationship with Jesus and becoming His disciple, go to follow.lifeword.org.
And now in Spanish! follow.lifeword.org/spanish