Paul is shocked, and he wants the Corinthians to see what their behavior really says. His questions come in a rush. The first asks why they treat the church gathering like a private dinner when they have homes for that. Barnes says the point is that the church of God "is not designed to be a place of feasting and revelry." The second asks whether they despise God's church and shame its poorer members. Barnes explains "them that have not" as those with no accommodations at home, "who are destitute and poor." The last two questions ask how Paul should respond and whether he could possibly praise them; Barnes reads them as an expression of surprise and strong disapproval.

Paul answers his own last question at once: "I praise you not" (1 Corinthians 11:22). He then reminds them what the Lord's Supper is, passing on what he "received of the Lord": Jesus' words over the bread and the cup, "this do in remembrance of me" (1 Corinthians 11:23-25). He calls each person to "examine himself" (1 Corinthians 11:28). He ends with plain direction: "when ye come together to eat, tarry one for another. And if any man hunger, let him eat at home" (1 Corinthians 11:33-34).

When the Corinthian believers came together for the Lord's Supper, it involved a meal, and "every one taketh before other his own supper" (1 Corinthians 11:20-21). Matthew Henry describes what went wrong: "The rich despised the poor, and ate and drank up the provisions they brought, before the poor were allowed to partake." Gill pictures some sitting down and filling themselves before others arrived, so that latecomers went without. The Greek verb for "shame" is kataischyno, to put to shame, and "despise" is kataphroneo, to look down on.

The Lord's Supper shows "the Lord's death till he come" (1 Corinthians 11:26), and it is meant to show that "we being many are one bread, and one body" (1 Corinthians 10:17). At Corinth the meal that should have shown oneness was showing division. Matthew Henry puts it this way: "What should have been a bond of mutual love and affection, was made an instrument of discord and disunion."

That is why Paul treats the shaming of poor members as contempt for "the church of God" itself. How believers treat the poorest among them reveals what they think of God's church. Paul's answer is not a new ritual. He takes them back to Jesus, who gave Himself "the same night in which he was betrayed" (1 Corinthians 11:23).