For each one in eating takes his *own* supper before [others], and one is hungry and another drinks to excess.
The Corinthians met to eat the Lord's Supper. Paul says that is not what they were eating at all. Each one took his own food first, and the gap between rich and poor showed at the table. How did a memorial of Christ's death sink this low? And what does it warn us about our own meetings?
Paul's rebuke turns on one small word: "own."
How very marked the distinction between "the Lord's supper" and "his own supper"! Does it not strike you, dear friend? The first holds the grand idea of the whole body. The second is a miserable, selfish individualism. We cannot eat "the Lord's supper" with spiritual understanding unless we hold in our hearts the blessed truth of the whole body and every precious member of it. In short, when we eat "the Lord's supper," we think of Christ and His beloved members. When we eat "our own supper," we are occupied with self and its interests.
The trouble started at a shared meal run on Greek social custom:
At these love-feasts they each brought their fare as at the festive shared meal (the eranos) of the Greeks. This was, in fact, a contribution-meal. What a descent from Christianity to pagan practice, when each would bring his own! So the rich came with plenty, and the poor had little or nothing to bring. When they came together for these feasts, selfishness marked them, not love. Those who had plenty soon proved how easy it is to have too much, and those who were poor felt it on these occasions.
The love-feast lay behind the disorder. One writer explains what it was, and where it led:
The love-feast was a meal the early Christians ate in common. Its aim was to build friendship among people who are strangers and pilgrims here, called to suffer on earth and to spend eternity together in glory with the Lord... The Corinthians, however, had lost that sense of being strangers here. So the principle of Christian fellowship was destroyed at the very meal that should have displayed it. And as they selfishly forgot why they came together, God gave them up to the deeper sin of degrading the Lord's supper, which they ate at the same time, through the effects of their licence in eating and drinking.
Commentators differ on how far the excess went. Some hold that the word means just what it says:
We consider the older Authorized Version's rendering of 1 Corinthians 11:21 quite correct. The word it translates "drunken" comes from the same root as the word rendered "do not get drunk" in Ephesians 5:18. That proves very clearly that the wine they used was intoxicating.
Others read it as excess falling just short of that:
Paul told them to "wait for one another." Each had been eating his own supper before his neighbour's came, making a picnic of it, as they pleased. I do not know that they became actually drunk, but some were what one calls carousing. It is all easily understood if you remember that they were taking a meal before the Supper.
The greed was only a symptom. Underneath lay a failure to discern the body of Christ. The same root can bear quieter fruit in us:
They failed to discern the body of Christ, and so each one thought only of himself... Here self was allowed to bear fruit so glaring and so monstrous that it shocks our natural feelings. But suppose I come to the meetings and sit there thinking only of the chapter I am to read, the hymn I am to give out, the part I am to take. Then self is the hinge on which my thoughts turn in spiritual things, just as much as if I had brought my own supper and eaten it, like the Corinthians in natural things, while my poor brother who could not afford one went away without.
Paul's remedy is practical: hunger belongs at home, and the assembly belongs to God.
But if they wanted to eat and drink independently of others in the assembly, could they not do this in their homes? They were despising the Church of God, and shaming others less privileged than themselves.
Paul does not stop at rebuke. He gives an order later in the chapter:
They made that sacred memorial so much a private thing that it became a scene of unfitting disorder, everyone eating for himself. So the apostle instructs in verse 33: "So then, my brothers... wait for one another."
- Self — The whole verse turns on one word: "own." Self took Christ's place at the centre, and the rest followed.
- Sink — Worldly class lines took over a common meal, and the holiest feast on earth went down with it.
- Split — Forget the body, and believers eat side by side yet apart: one hungry, one full, none in fellowship.
- Scandal — Shaming the poor at that table was not just bad manners; it was despising the church of God itself.
- Solution — "Wait for one another." Eat at home if you are hungry; come to the Supper for Christ and for each other.
Have ye not then houses for eating and drinking? or do ye despise the assembly of God, and put to shame them who have not? What shall I say to you? shall I praise you? In this [point] I do not praise.
Paul has just described the Corinthians' gatherings: private meals, some going hungry while others drank too much. Now he asks four blunt questions, and each one names a different wrong — misuse of the meeting, contempt for God's assembly, shame heaped on the poor, and praise he cannot give.
The trouble grew out of a shared meal held alongside the breaking of bread. One writer traces the collapse to class distinctions taking over that meal.
The love-feast was a meal the early Christians shared in common. Its aim was to build social fellowship among people who are strangers and pilgrims here, called to suffer on earth and to spend eternity together in glory with the Lord. But the Corinthians had lost the sense that Christians are strangers here. They had let in from the world the rivalry of the schools over favourite teachers. In the same way they degraded even the love-feast by holding to class distinctions. The rich feasted on their own contributions to the meal, and made those who had nothing to give feel their poverty keenly.
The first question is not a ban on eating. It sends ordinary hunger home, because something else was happening where they met.
The supper was a memorial of Him in His death, but it was a memorial of Him, the living One. It sent their hearts back to Calvary, but He was present; this was the point. They had houses to eat and drink in. If the question was satisfying hunger and thirst, let them eat their food at home. But at the Supper the Lord was there, while His death and the manner of His death filled their hearts.
Paul does not say they despised each other. He says they despised the church of God — and that possessive is the hinge of the whole charge.
These thoughtless rioters had done a double wrong. They had despised not only God, but His Church... They had gathered, but where was the Lord? It is a solemn thing to come together in that Name. An assembly of Christian worshippers is not simply a voluntary association. To the eye it is made up of people, but it takes its name and true character from God, who is always in the middle of His gathered people... To behave badly in His congregation is to insult Him in His house... His house would have fed them well. But while that spirit ruled, the gathering was their own, not His.
The second half of the question ties back to the first. Shaming the poor is not a separate failure from despising the assembly, because of who belongs to it.
Apart from these excesses, the assembly was no place for social feasting. "Do you not have houses to eat and drink in?" asks the Apostle. Or were they putting the poor to shame and despising the assembly of God, which holds rich and poor together?... They brought the social element into the assembly, and it led to social distinctions and self-indulgence. So their coming together denied in practice both the Lord's Supper and the assembly of God.
Paul asks what he should say, then answers himself. Refusing praise goes against his own wish for them.
They were a spectacle of greed. What made it more blatant: those who had money were the worse offenders, despising the church of God and putting the poor to shame. With all his desire to praise the Corinthians, in this the apostle could not.
The Corinthian scene is crude enough to feel remote. One writer finds the same root in a far more respectable form.
The moral root of the disorder was this: they failed to discern the body of Christ, and so each was occupied with himself... Here they let self produce fruit so glaring and so monstrous that it shocks our natural feelings. But suppose I come to the meetings and sit there, thinking only of the chapter I am to read, the hymn I am to give out, the part I am to take. Then self is just as much the hinge on which my thoughts and worries turn in spiritual things. It would be no different in natural things if, like the Corinthians, I brought my own supper and ate it, while my poor brother who could not afford this went away without.
- Self is the root. Each took his own supper first. Failing to discern the body of Christ leaves everyone busy with himself.
- Self despises. Bad manners here are contempt for God. The assembly takes its name and character from Him, and He is present in the middle of it.
- Self shames. The assembly holds rich and poor together. Class distinctions at the table humiliate the people it embraces.
- Self empties the Supper. Their gathering denied in practice both the Lord's Supper and the assembly of God. The form stayed; the reality was gone.
- Self forfeits praise. Paul wanted to commend them and could not. Ordinary hunger belongs at home. Where the Lord is present, His death fills the heart.