God’s special messenger, Paul, exhorts you and me, “Purge out the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened” ( 1Cor. 5:7-8). Remember, the word leaven in the Bible represents evil. As to this exhortation, it seems a contradiction, does it not? The apostle Paul tells us to purge out the old leaven and then telling us the reason: because we are unleavened. However, it is not a contradiction. Here is why. The moment we are saved by faith in Him we are complete in Him. God looks at us as IN CHRIST. But we have a long way to go before we are unblameable in our selves.

The nation of Israel coming out of Egypt and slavery into the Promised Land illustrates. The Promised Land granted by God to Abraham and his descendants was bounded by the Mediterranean Sea and continued all the way to the Euphrates river in what is now Iran. Joshua led the nation in great success , taking walled cities for Israel in the Promised Land, but he and Israel took only a small portion. Their conquest was bounded, for the most part, by the Jordan river, far from the Euphrates river. At the Lord’s coming the promise of the land to Israel will be fulfilled. God who promised can not lie.

Believer, our grant is to be like Him. In the meantime we have walled cities to take in spiritual warfare. By that I mean faults in our way of acting and thinking to overcome as we fulfill the Lord’s prayer in John 17:17, “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth”. Paul sums it up,”To the end he may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints” (1Thess.3:13). The old Spiritual has it right, ” I shall be changed from this creature that I am.” Praise God!