1Cor 11:20-22 - Straighten Up and Fly Right

20-22 When you come together, it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat. 21 For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk. 22 What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not.


Once more, the context must be taken into account here. It is still centred on public worship. The koinonia or "fellowship" of believers is in view. That which is held in common by all the believers. We all remember that the "common" Greek in which most of the NT is written is called "koine". It is the Greek of the people - the Greek that is shared by all, right down to the least and lowest member of the society. It is the language in which life was lived. No pretentious, high-fallutin’, artsy, snobbish, elitist, arcane, upper-crust stuff there. Plain-Jane, down to earth, practical, living language that was relevant and alive. Sort of like what King James language was in King James’ day, and what it is not like today.

Believers get together for worship, prayer and fellowship. It is what many have come to call "doing church". We are all members of the same body - that of Jesus Christ, purchased with His own blood for justification, sanctification and glorification in Him for eternity. We are not our own for we have been purchased with a price. We belong to Christ and to each other in Him. Just as a man must love his wife as his own body due to their being joined together as one - so Christ loves us and we must love the brethren, being all joined together under His headship, as if they were our own body. Of course, this is a spiritual picture as well as a physical one. It is the ultimate denouement of that which was foreshadowed in the marital arrangement.

Coming together to partake in the Lord’s supper is symbolic of all this. It reminds us of who it was that had saved us, and how, and why. And it reminds us, because it is a communal and highly social rite, of the commonality of the grace that had been given to all of us who believe - the same grace, the same forgiveness, the same undeserved mercy. Sitting down to eat together is social, familial, intimate, trusting, committed, open and loving. The family meal where all give thanks and share from the same pot.

Of course the Lord’s Supper is also much more than this - but it is never less than this. It is never less than what a good family meal ought to be like in atmosphere, attitude and intent. But what is happening in Corinth? Certainly there is a great abuse and misapplication of the spirit and purpose of the Lord’s supper. It is far from being even a proper family social event. There is no familial intimacy. No commonality. No actual sharing of the same food. The symbolism behind it all is totally obscured, or even lost.

The remembrance of Christ has become something utterly indifferent - something that does not touch the soul - something external, unordered, individual and personal - even carnal - in all the wrong senses of the word. It has become selfish, unfeeling, unaware - in other words what Paul says is absolutely spot-on; it is not the Lord’s Supper. They are serving themselves and their own individual appetites. They are once more behaving carnally.

Three things are lacking. Reverence for the Lord, self-control and regard for the koinonia of blood-bought brothers and sisters in Christ. Unchecked and unrepented of, this worldliness cannot escape the discipline of God. Later in this very chapter we read that some have died on account of such behaviour. {1Co 11:28-30} God has cut them off permanently from life in the here and now. He has been jealous for His glory in His church and He has acted. A warning to us all.

The Lord’s Supper was instituted for our benefit, not for God’s. Just as the Sabbath was made for man’s benefit and was not as something onerous, burdensome and restrictive by which man was to be bound up in slavish regulation. God is glorified through the gracious provisions He makes in love for His people. So, yes, it is for His ultimate glory - but the means by which he is glorified is through the un-self-serving gracious, generous, free gift of Himself. He did it in His Son in history and for eternity - and he does it in the giving of the observance of the Lord’s Supper, which is a reminder of what He has accomplished freely for those who believe.


The Corinthian behaviour here is condemned because of the lack of love for the saints themselves. There is real indignation about simple matters of brotherly consideration and caring. But these unloving behaviours betray an underlying disregard for the Lord, with which Paul deals later in this chapter. Mess with God’s church and you mess with God - because the church was bought with the blood of Christ and is infinitely and eternally precious to him. Causing one of His little ones to stumble brings a dreadful judgment upon the unbeliever (which some in Corinth may yet prove to be by the fruit of their behaviour) {Mt 18:6,Mr 9:42,Lu 17:2} and a severe chastisement upon disobedient saints. {1Co 11:28-30}

Note then, that Paul has nothing to say about the eternal state of the souls of those whom he is upbraiding. He points out the facts, which are indisputable - and he warns and admonishes, pointing to proper conduct and (ultimately) to consequences. He pinpoints sin, calls for repentance and makes clear what God requires. But it is important not to receive these things legalistically. A legalistic mindset would be just a bad as the one being displayed - that of the abuse of grace. Both errors still exist in the church today because they exist in every saint’s residual flesh principle. We are prone to error whenever we take our eyes and ears off Christ. If it does not come from and is not wrought in Him by grace through faith then it is likely to end up in a bad place and to be unfruitful.

Rather then being either legalistic or presumptuous, the true saints are to be changed by and on account of the Word, in the Spirit and through faith. The truth preached does not fall upon deaf ears in the truly spiritually reborn. Conviction leads to correction in the saints not because it is a legal requirement, but because true saints, when called to refocus on Christ, remember Who He is and what He has done. They see the humility, sacrifice, love - they see the grace and the example they see the perfect manifestation of all they can hope to be, and they know that it is only in and through Him that they can possibly be transformed. And they know that if they are not being transformed into His image then they cannot belong to Him. They cannot transform themselves, but they can abide in Him who will transform them.

On the other hand, the false professor is on dangerous ground whenever the truth is preached to him. Whitefield used sometimes to be most severely exercised by the thought that his preaching, unheeded, would add to the condemnation of the lost. But he knew perfectly well that preach he must, for the glory of God and for the salvation and sanctification of the true elect - whoever they might eventually be revealed to be. In this stern warning to the Corinthians Paul is exemplifying the same pattern. It is the very pattern that Christ himself laid down in His ministry. Display the grace of God and warn of His judgments, by preaching the truth in love. Not just love - for that could be taken as indulgence or sentimentality; nor yet just judgment - for that could be taken as cold, dispassionate, authoritarian and impersonal and merely intellectual. God is like neither of these, as Christ came to show - and we do a disservice to God whenever we stray into an unbalanced view of them because we misrepresent God.