Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadWilliam Burkitt Notes and Observations - 1 Corinthians 11:22 - 11:22
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
A twofold sense and interpretation is given of these words, Some paraphrase them thus; What! must you make the house of God the place of your feasting? If you be disposed for mirth and jollity, have you not houses wherein you may do it with more privacy, and less offence? Or despise you the church of God? Do you undervalue and thus profane and unhallow the place set apart for God's worship and service, by converting it into a common banqueting-house? Thus many expound it of the material church; and their opinion is favoured by the antithesis and opposition betwixt church and houses; Have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise you the church of God?
Learn, That holy duties, pious and public, are to be performed in the church or house of God.
Duties pious, but not public, better suit the closet than the church.
Duties public, but not pious, more befit a Guild-hall or Townhouse, than the house of God.
Others by the church of God understand the spiritual church, the poor members of Jesus Christ, and render the words thus; "What, have ye not houses to eat and to drink in, if need be, before you come? Or despise you those poor Christians, who are members of the church of Christ as well as you, and put to shame them that have not what you eat and drink, by excluding them out of your company for their poverty-sake? For since God adopts them into his family, and admits them unto his table, you ought not to exclude them from this feast of charity, which was originally designed for the poor's relief."
Learn, He that despiseth the poor, despiseth the church of God; yea, despiseth Christ himself; as he that pincheth the little toe paineth the whole body, so the disgracing the poor members of Christ is a despising of the whole church.
In these love-feasts the poor were the most proper, and should have been the most principal guests; but, alas! the rich gorged themselves plentifully, whilst the poor stood and looked on hungry.
Yet observe, lastly, With what lenity and mildness the apostle reproves these great disorders in the church at Corinth: Shall I praise you in this? I praise you not. It was the first time he had told them of their faults; therefore he doth it gently, in hope of amendment.
Learn thence, That though ministers must not commend but reprove people, when they do ill, yet they must use mildness, especially at their first reproving of a sin.
Some observe, That God so blessed the mild severity of St. Paul, that the Corinthians, upon the writing of this first epistle, reformed all their abuses: which they gather from hence, because no fault is taxed in the second epistle, which was reproved in the first.