1 Corinthians 11:22 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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1 Corinthians 11:22

Comments

What Paul is doing here – under the inspiration and direction of God – is that he is separating the fellowship meal from the Lord’s Supper. In Corinth evidently they had combined the two. The church would come together for a fellowship meal and at the same time, there would be the Lord’s Supper. What this passage tells them is you cannot do that. This has not worked out. This is theoretically possible to do, but in practice it is wide open to abuse. People come in the wrong spirit; people come for the meal not for the worship; there is no clear separation. This is the traditional interpretation of the passage. You will first pick it up if you have ever come across a copy in the grand old Geneva Bible, the Old Testament translated in 1550, and the New Testament in 1590. It was the great Bible of the Reformers published on the continent, and then into English. It preceded the King James Version by about 50 years, the great Bible of the Reformers and the Puritans; it was their favourite Bible, full of notes, the first Bible incidentally – and what a wonderful thing for us – ever to separate the Scriptures into verses, and attach verse numbers throughout the passage. What does the Geneva Bible, the voice of the Reformers and the Puritans say? Here is the apostle’s inspired separation of the Lord’s Supper from the fellowship meals, and so it has been in the history of the church ever since. The Lord’s Supper has always been seen – until recent years – as a distinct service, separate from any fellowship supper. You may have fellowship suppers; Christian people may eat together every week. You can have fellowship over food, but not combine a fellowship meal with the Lord's Supper. This is so special and so different. It is a spiritual banquet, not for the sustenance of the flesh. So there is to be a separation. ‘What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this? I praise you not.’ The Greek is emphatic: not at all. It is not right. The love feast had been turned into a scramble to serve themselves first.

Application

We do not want too many fellowship meals in a church. We have our homes and our families for eating and drinking. From time to time there may be a fellowship meal for fellowship. It may be that it is convenient on the Lord’s Day for quite a lot of people to eat in the middle of the day, but that is for practical reasons, and it is supposed to be kept as simple as possible. It is for practical reasons: especially so that we can staff the Sunday schools, and carry out evangelistic work. But it isn’t for the sake of eating and drinking.

The so-called house church movement in this country which has been going for some decades now; they make a great thing of fellowship suppers, and they insist that the fellowship supper and the Lord’s Supper may be united; they do this in total defiance to the apostle’s words here. They mean well, but it is not right, and it is not Scriptural. Many, many charismatics do the same thing: fellowship supper and Lord’s Supper. They kind of give the game away in that you find their writers saying, ‘Oh, these Lord’s Supper meetings in the traditional churches are like going to a funeral. We want the Lord’s Supper to be merged with a fellowship meal, with more jollity, more like a wedding feast. That is what it should be like,’ they say, ‘a wedding supper, a wedding feast.’ Oh no. The Lord’s Supper is not supposed to be like a funeral, certainly, but it is to be serious. It is deep appreciation of the Lord and his work, and we keep tenaciously to the tradition which was begun on the authority of the inspired apostle, to keep the fellowship occasions separate from the Lord's Supper.

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1 Corinthians 11:22 Commentary and Bible Study