So that, my brethren, when ye come together to eat, wait for one another.
The meetings at Corinth had become so disorderly that what they called the Lord's Supper was no longer that at all. This verse is Paul's practical conclusion, and it comes down to one command: wait for each other.
What Paul corrects is a meal that had drifted into a private free-for-all, with the poor left out of it.
When they came together, they claimed it was to eat the Lord's Supper. In practice it was to enjoy a feast of their own. The Apostle says, "Each one in eating takes his own supper." ... At this earlier feast they let the poor go hungry, while some drank to excess. But apart from these excesses, the assembly was no place for social feasting. "Have you not houses to eat and to drink in?" the Apostle asks. Or were they putting the poor to shame, and despising the assembly of God, which includes rich and poor?
This is not a stray rule of good manners. It gathers up everything Paul has said since verse 20 and turns it into one action.
To work out the force of this exhortation you must pay attention to the connection. It refers back to verse 21. There the apostle describes the abuses that had crept into the Corinthian assembly in connection with the Lord's Supper. Some had gone so far as to eat their "own supper" by themselves. This, he plainly tells them, was not to eat the Lord's Supper (v. 20)... They lost all sense of unity and fellowship in their own selfish practices and pleasures... The next verse (33rd) gives the conclusion: wait for one another, and do not go on eating one before another as you have been doing. Let there be unity, so that all may eat together in remembrance of the Lord.
Why wait at all? The answer is in what the waiting shows: that those who eat are one.
The sin at Corinth was their not waiting one for another. This is clear from the words the apostle uses to sum up the whole question (1 Cor. 11): "So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another." Why were they to wait for one another? Surely, so that they might express their unity more clearly.
The command reaches further than the clock. It shapes how believers treat each other when they meet.
And we have to consider each other too in this connection. We read, "So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another." That does not only mean waiting until everyone can be present. There is much more in it than that. It means we are to be marked by consideration, forbearance, love and grace. In fact, the way the Lord has treated us is the way we are to treat each other... Wait for one another when you come together. By mutual forbearance and sympathy and love and grace, be to each other what the Lord has been to you.
One writer carries the words past the meal itself. The same self-centred haste can show in how each person takes part when the church gathers.
In the body of Christ each one is only a member. If the Corinthians had recognised and taken this in, the one who had a supper would have waited for those who had none, and shared it with them. In the same way, my soul may take in this precious unity of the body, and my own humble place in it as one member. Then I will not be in such haste to act in the assembly that I stop others from acting... "Wait for one another" will surely apply to this as well as to the breaking of bread.
The next verse draws a line: a plain appetite has its place, and that place is not the gathering. And one person's self-indulgence does not stop with him.
The apostle closes his serious rebuke and instruction by urging them to wait for each other when they come together to eat. In this way self would be judged, and love would be at work. "If anyone is hungry, let him eat at home, so that you may not come together for judgment." When one person indulges the flesh, it stirs up the flesh in another. The Lord must then judge more than the one who first dishonoured Him.
- Cause. Each Corinthian took his own supper first, so the poor went hungry — the meal was theirs, not the Lord's.
- Correction. "So then" ties the command to everything before it. Self-judgment must show in how you treat the believer beside you.
- Content. Waiting is more than delaying the start. It is consideration, forbearance, love and grace — treating others as the Lord has treated you.
- Consequence. Waiting shows the unity of the one body. Rushing ahead denies it.
- Reach. The same deference covers the whole gathering, not only the bread and cup. If you are hungry, eat at home.
If any one be hungry, let him eat at home, that ye may not come together for judgment. But the other things, whenever I come, I will set in order.
Paul closes his correction of the Lord's Supper at Corinth with two instructions and one promise. Behind the simple wording lie real questions. What was a shared meal doing in their meeting? What does "judgment" mean here? And why would an inspired letter leave some matters unwritten on purpose?
The trouble started with a custom that was good in itself. Their common meal had become tangled up with the Lord's Supper.
The love-feast (or Agape) was a meal which the early Christians shared together. Its aim was to build social fellowship among people who are strangers and pilgrims here. They are called to suffer on earth and to spend eternity together in glory with the Lord. The Corinthians, however, had lost the sense that Christians are strangers in this world. In their zeal for favourite teachers they had let the world's rivalry between schools into the church. In the same way they degraded even the love-feast by keeping class distinctions. The rich feasted on the food they had brought, and made those who had nothing to give feel their poverty sharply.
This was no temporary patch. It settled the matter for good.
The Lord led the apostle to do two things. First, to explain that His hand had been dealing with some in sickness, and others in death or falling asleep. Second, to separate the Lord's Supper from any such feast in future.
Sending the hungry home is not a snub to the body's needs. It marks off what the gathering is for.
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 it was a question of satisfying hunger and thirst; let them eat their necessary food at home. But at the Supper the Lord was there, while His death and the manner of His death filled their hearts.
The command follows the call to wait for one another, and the two work together.
We are to depend on the Lord in a way that makes the saints depend on each other too. That is true consideration for one another. We must be careful not to push ourselves forward, and equally careful not to leave all responsibility to others. If it was the physical appetite that needed satisfying, they were to satisfy it at home. Then merely selfish desires would not enter the sacred feast of the Lord.
The older English rendering "condemnation" has misled readers here. Commentators point out that the word is not the same as the eternal verdict spoken of two verses earlier.
"Condemned" is right in verse 32. But a man eats and drinks judgment, or fault, or crime, for it is the thing he is accused of to himself. "Condemnation" is not right in verse 34, where the older translation read, "that ye come not together unto condemnation." The sense is judgment, or fault. Our word "crime" comes from the Greek word. It means the judgment passed on someone, but people also use it for the fault itself.
One person's self-indulgence does not stay contained.
Self would in this way be judged, and love kept in active exercise... The indulgence of the flesh in one person provokes the flesh in another, and the Lord must then judge more than the one who first dishonoured Him.
The whole closing section offers a simple escape from the Lord's discipline.
The closing verses of the chapter give us an example of God's chastening in response to wrong done. God chastens His children so that they may not be judged with the world. If only we judged ourselves, we would escape the evil and would not need the hand of God on us. Let us note that! How excellent is the holy art of self-judgment, and how little we practise it.
The last line of the verse leaves some things for a later visit. That was on purpose.
The apostle did not say everything he might have said. "The rest I will arrange when I come." It would not have served the best interests of the assembly to lay everything down formally. The written word is the unerring standard. The Spirit in living power, not tradition, is its true supplement. We need the Holy Spirit as well as Scripture, and we have Him. But Scripture is the rule, not the Spirit — though we cannot use it rightly without Him. This keeps up practical dependence on God. He would not have us act, alone or together, without the clear light of His word. If we do not have that light, we ought to wait for it.
The size of the correction says something about the church that received it.
Among the Corinthians there was much disorder in their assembly life and gatherings, so that a long passage (1 Cor. 11:17–14:40) is taken up with corrective instruction, and even then the apostle has to say, "The rest will I set in order when I come."
- Cause — class distinction spoiled a shared meal that should have pictured fellowship, and dragged the Lord's Supper down with it.
- Correction — natural hunger belongs at home. Paul cut the common meal away from the Supper for good.
- Consideration — waiting for one another turns a gathering from self-service into interdependence.
- Clarification — "judgment" here is not the world's condemnation. It is the Lord dealing with His own, and self-judgment is the way to avoid it.
- Continuation — Paul left some matters unwritten on purpose. That keeps us depending on God, guided by Scripture and not by tradition.