1 Corinthians 11:18 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

For first of all, &c.— To understand this, we must observe, first, that they had meetings sometimes on purpose only for eating the Lord's supper, 1 Corinthians 11:33. Secondly, That to those meetings they brought their own supper, 1 Corinthians 11:21. Thirdly, That though every one's supper was brought into the common assembly, yet it was not to eat in common, but every one fell to his own supper apart, as soon as it was ready, without staying for the rest of the company, or communicating with them in eating, 1 Corinthians 11:21-23. In this St. Paul blames three things especially. First, That they ate their common food in the assembly, which was to be eaten at home in their houses, 1 Corinthians 11:22-34. Secondly, That though they ate in their common meeting-place, yet they ate separately, every one his own supper apart; so that the plenty and excess of some shamed the want and penury of others, 1 Corinthians 11:22. Hereby also the divisions among them were kept up, 1 Corinthians 11:18 they being as so many separated and divided societies, not as one united body of Christians, commemorating their common Head, as ought to have been the case in celebrating the Lord's supper, ch. 1 Corinthians 10:16-17. Thirdly, That they mixed the Lord's supper with their own, eating it as a part of their ordinary meal; where they made not that discrimination between it and their common food, which they ought to have done, 1 Corinthians 11:29.