The church has also been leavened with nationalism and racialism. Today in this country there are still so-called black churches and white churches. The whites and the blacks do not meet together. Socialism with class distinctions is also prevalent in Christianity. Liberalism and politics are other forms of leaven in Christendom. This is Satan's corruption, so in the recovery we cannot allow anything like this to exist.
Satan's corruption is also seen in his leavening the church with the believers' natural man and their flesh and its lust. This leaven is also the sin in their nature, the sins in their deeds, and all the evil things listed in Galatians 5:19-21. One of the evil things listed in Galatians is sects, or schools of opinion (see v. 20 and note 4—Recovery Version). Even in a little church of eleven or twelve meeting together, there can be a number of opinions as a leavening factor of corruption.
The enemy Satan's leavening of the church is to corrupt the church in its nature and contents. Even the life element (the entire meal made of the grains produced by the wheat), of which the church is constituted, is leavened. This disease of the church is in its constituents. Such a disease of being corrupted by being leavened is incurable.
This chapter shows us the schemes of God's enemy, Satan, with his frustration, damage, and corruption. We see his frustrating work in the human heart, his damaging work in adding false believers and in changing the church's nature, and his corrupting work in leavening the whole content of Christianity. We must give up all these negative things so that we may be pure and be freed from all kinds of frustrations, all kinds of damage, and all kinds of corruption to grow Christ that Christ may be multiplied among us and through us to enter into many others that they might be regenerated.
I hope that all the saints in the recovery could see clearly that we need to be freed from all the frustrations of Satan, from all the damage of the enemy, and from all the corruption of the devil. May the Lord be merciful to us. We are different from others not because we like to be different but because we like to be purified and freed that we may grow Christ for His multiplication and for His constitution and building up of the Body of Christ by the transformation in life.