1 Corinthians 11:22

“Have ye not then houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the Church of God, and shame them that have not? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you? In this point, I praise you not.”

One feels in the lively succession of these accumulated questions the indignant emotion which fills the apostle as he calls up the scene before him. The γάρ, for, refers to an idea which is understood: “It ought not so to be, for have you not...?” Paul points out three principal sins in this conduct. First, the feast itself so celebrated; the agape, with the Holy Supper terminating it, is not a meal taken for support; it is a religious rite expressly instituted, and that for a religious purpose. If any one wishes to satisfy his hunger, he has the means of doing so otherwise. We learn from this first rebuke how thoroughly distinct in the apostle's eyes was the feast of the Supper from a common feast, even when taken in the most Christian spirit and hallowed by thanksgiving. To hold, as Vinet somewhere has done, that every Christian meal should become a Holy Supper, is an ultra-spiritualistic error, the thoroughgoing application of which would inevitably compromise the existence, first, of the ministry, then of the Church itself. The second rebuke refers to the want of respect to an assembly like the Church; the third to the offence in particular given to a portion of its members, the poor who are humiliated.

The formula μὴ... οὐκ signifies: “It is not so however that you have not?” The other two questions, closely connected as they are, might contain only one rebuke, in the sense that the dishonour to which the Church was subjected consisted precisely in the humiliation of its poor members; for the whole body feels the contempt with which one of its members is treated. But it is better to regard the two ideas as distinct. There is first contempt inflicted on the Church, as such, in this transformation of one of the most solemn acts of its worship into a means of gross and sensual enjoyment; the complement of God brings out the gravity of this profanation more forcibly. Then comes the humiliation inflicted on the poor; it appears in all its force if we take the expression μὴ ἔχειν, not only in the sense of poverty in general, but as having a direct application to the present case: Those who have nothing, that is to say, no food with them.

The question: What shall I say? indicates the embarrassment the apostle feels when he would characterize such conduct without using terms too severe. There is a litotes full of irony in the last words: Shall I praise you? Then returns the tone of the most sorrowful earnestness: “ In this I praise you not. ” We think, with Meyer and Holsten, that the words ἐν τούτῳ, in this, must be connected with the following verb I praise you not, rather than with the preceding, shall I praise you? as is done by Heinrici and many others. “On other points I can praise you (1 Corinthians 11:2), but on this, not!”

To make the Corinthians blush at their profane spirit, the apostle brings them face to face with the scene of the institution of the sacrament. But his object, in relating this solemn event, is not merely to contrast with their selfish and frivolous disposition the spectacle of Christ's sufferings and devotion. Paul, in going back on the solemn institution of the Supper by the Lord, wishes above all to bring home to them the difference between this feast and a feast intended to satisfy bodily wants. Here is a religious rite, a true ceremony, for it was positively instituted.