What Does 1 Corinthians 11:20 Mean?
So when you come together in one place, it is not to eat the Lord's supper.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
When ye come together therefore into one place, this is not to eat the Lord’s supper.THE KEY
Gathering in one place does not make what happens there the Lord’s meal.
THE MEANING
You can be present in the same gathering and still miss what the meal is meant to be. The verse names a gap between coming together and sharing a meal that belongs to the Lord.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that assembling under a sacred name automatically makes a gathering embody what that name means.
THE ROOT
συνερχομένων
synerchomenōn
GROWS FROM
ἔρχομαι
erchomai
come, go, arrive; joined with συν- (syn, together), it forms the verb συνέρχομαι (synerchomai), come together or assemble
“come together” in this verse is synerchomenōn. The verb already holds togetherness inside the act of coming: it is more than arriving at the same place. The verse exposes the difference between gathering together and sharing a meal that truly belongs to the Lord.
ALSO GROWS
synerchomai: come together, assemble
συνέρχομαι
This is the verb behind “come together”; its repeated use in verse 33 links the gathering to the call to wait for one another.
eiserchomai: enter, come in
εἰσέρχομαι
This compound uses the same verb for coming, with a prefix that turns the movement inward; it shows how the base verb takes its direction from what is joined to it.
exerchomai: go out, come out
ἐξέρχομαι
This compound uses the same verb for coming, with a prefix that turns the movement outward; the root itself names movement, while the compound gives it a path.
THE PATTERN
Scripture measures a shared gathering by the life people share there, not simply by their presence in one place.
A Song of degrees of David. Look, how good and how sweet it is for brothers to settle also together!And they, holding fast day by day with one passion in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, took their food with gladness and singleness of heart.For there is one bread, and we, being many, are one body, since we all share in the one bread.THE THREAD
So, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another.Both verses use συνέρχομαι (synerchomai, “come together”). Here the gathering is not yet the Lord’s meal; the same verb returns with a concrete marker of shared regard: waiting for one another.
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