have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? i.e. If all you came together for were to satisfy your own hunger, you might just as well eat and drink at home. But the Lord's Supper was instituted for a threefold purpose. It was (1) a practice intended to bind Christian people together in mutual love (see Acts 2:42-47; Acts 4:32-35), (2) it was designed as the solemn commemoration of the great Act of Love whereby Jesus Christ offered Himself upon the Cross for the sins of men (see 1 Corinthians 11:26), and (3) it was the means whereby He fed His people with the "spiritual food of His most blessed Body and Blood." See ch. 1 Corinthians 10:15-16.

or despise ye the church of God Not the material building (see above, 1 Corinthians 11:18), but the Church gathered together in it, called out of the world, or called together (the Greek favours the first, the analogy of the Hebrew the latter explanation) to be the habitation of God through the Spirit. To introduce into this the petty jealousies and antipathies of human society was to despise the great and glorious Body, in which God was pleased to dwell.

and shame them that have not Not "those who have no houses," "han noone" Wiclif, but as the margin, them that are poor; qui sont pauvres, De Sacy. The word in the original is rather stronger than shame; it is equivalent to disgrace.

Continues after advertising
Continues after advertising