1 Corinthians 11:20-21

“When ye come together therefore into one place, this is not to eat the Lord's Supper. 21. For in eating every one taketh before other his own supper: and one is hungry, while the other is full.”

On the connection with what precedes, see on 1 Corinthians 11:18. Here would stand the ἔπειτα δέ, but next, if Paul had expressed it. This preamble, 1 Corinthians 11:20, is not without solemnity. The very first words make us feel that we are coming to a grave matter.

The term ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό, into the same place, denotes, like the words ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ, in Church (1 Corinthians 11:18), a meeting of the whole Church gathered together in the same place; comp. 1 Corinthians 14:23. So it assembled to celebrate the Supper. This rite was preceded by a feast in common, called δεῖπνον, supper, a term from which it follows that the celebration took place in the evening. It was thus wished to reproduce, as faithfully as possible, that feast of the Lord at which He instituted the Supper, and which took place on the last evening of His life. Those feasts, of which the Holy Supper formed the close, were called agapoe, that is to say, love-feasts (Jude, 1 Corinthians 11:12). Each one brought his quota. And certainly, according to the idea of this institution, all the provisions should have been put together and eaten in common by the whole Church. But selfishness, vanity, sensuality had prevailed in this usage, and deeply corrupted it. These agapae had degenerated at Corinth into something like those feasts of friends in use among the Greeks, where men gave themselves up to drinking excesses, such as we find sketched in the Symposium of Plato. And what was still graver, and which had certainly not been witnessed even at heathen banquets, each was careful to reserve for himself and his friends the meats which he had provided; hence it was inevitable that an offensive inequality should appear between the guests, becoming to many of them a source of humiliation, and contrasting absolutely with the spirit of love of which such a feast should have been the symbol, as well as with the rite of the Supper which formed its close. Chrysostom supposes that the agape took place after the Holy Supper; evidently a mistake. It was not till later that this different order was introduced, till at length the meal itself was totally abolished.

This is not to eat the Lord's Supper, says Paul. We need not here take ἐστί, as many have done, in the sense of ἔξεστι, it is allowed, it is possible, as if Paul meant that in these circumstances it is no longer morally possible to celebrate the communion rightly. It is simpler to understand the words in this sense: “To act as you do (1 Corinthians 11:21), can no more be called celebrating the Supper; it is indeed to partake of a feast, but not that of the Lord.” The adj. κυριακόν, the Lord's, reminds us that it was He who founded the feast, who gives it, who invites to it, who presides over it.

The following verse explains the severe judgment which has just been expressed regarding this way of celebrating the agape.