Paul continues his letter writing to a church in one of the largest, richest and most multi-ethnic cities of the Roman Empire. It is a church with great gifts and talents and a church with many problems!We, like the Corinthians, live in a society where sex dominates. It dominates our advertising and our TV and our papers and magazines. The Corinthians thought that they were superior to others and that they had already gained all that Jesus had to offer – that what they did wasn’t important as they were spiritually gifted and that was the most important thing.Paul hauls them up. Their focus was all wrong. We are called to be a holy people following a holy God. God’s grace and love is intended to create a people who will start to live and reflect His grace and holiness. It is not intended that we tick the box and then do whatever we like! Yet often we live as if what we do is ok and that sin isn’t real or important “because we are all sinners”. Paul would say – yes, we’re all sinners – but if live in ways that don’t please God and boast that is ok then we’ve missed it. Paul makes an analogy with the week-long Passover festival. When preparing to celebrate the festival the Jewish people clean out their homes of all yeast in order to be ready to eat and celebrate the week when God brought the people of Israel out of captivity from Egypt. Paul says a similar thing. We need to cleanse ourselves, not to gain freedom but to be prepared for it, to be able to live it, as a response to a Holy God who calls us to imitate the life of Jesus.Paul then points out that this is not judging those in the wider society (becoming a holiness clique) – this is about the people of God living up to their calling.