1 Corinthians 11:17-19

"But in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse. For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you. And I believe it in part, for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized."

How pitiful it would be for a Christian to faithfully go to church week after week, even multiple times a week and for God to say to him, "Your going to church was a waste of time," or perhaps closer to the text, "Your going to church hurt your walk with Me." Such a statement would be devastating, but the seriousness of these instructions warrants the severity of the warning.

The Corinthians were observing the Lord’s Table (or communion) in a fashion that was so damaging that it made church attendance counterproductive. Before addressing the specific problems with their observance of the Lord’s Table, Paul shows us the foundational problem—divisions among the believers.

Verse eighteen says, "when you come together as a church, . . . there are divisions among you." They were coming together, and yet they were not together. The divisions mentioned in earlier chapters were among factions within the church. Groups of believers had aligned themselves with this or that person. But here the divisions are social and economic. People were allowing what they had to make a clear distinction between them and their fellow believers.

There are some distinctions that are natural and beneficial. For example, there are some people in churches who passionately follow after God. When they come to church, they sing from their heart, and throughout the week you can see that God has done something special and humanly unexplainable in their lives. Other people in churches profess to know God, but when you look at their lives, you cannot see anything different in their lives from the life of an unbeliever. That kind of natural distinction must be recognized because it helps us know how to better minister to the different types of people in our church. However, separating believers on the basis of something as spiritually irrelevant as economic status, is in no way beneficial. In fact, those kind of distinctions can make church attendance worthless.