Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Corinthians 16:10

"Now if Timothy come, see that he be with you without fear; for he worketh the work of the Lord, as I also do:" — 1 Corinthians 16:10 (ASV)

Now if Timotheus come . . .—Timothy and Erastus had been sent (see 1 Corinthians 4:17) by Saint Paul to remind the Corinthians of his former teaching, and to rebuke and check those evils of which rumors had reached the Apostle. However, since they would travel through Macedonia, delaying en route at the various churches to prepare them for the visit Saint Paul then intended to pay them after he had been to Corinth, they might possibly not reach Corinth until after this Epistle, which would be carried there by a more direct route.

The Apostle was evidently anxious to know how Timothy would be received by the Corinthians. He was young in years. He was young also in the faith. He probably had a constitutionally weak and timid nature (see 1 Timothy 3:15; 2 Timothy 1:4), and he was, of course, officially very subordinate to Saint Paul. Therefore, in a Church where some members had gone so far as to question, if not actually repudiate, the authority even of the Apostle himself, and to depreciate him compared with the elder Apostles, there was considerable danger for someone like Timothy. By reminding the Corinthians of the work in which Timothy is engaged, and of its identity with his own work, the Apostle anticipates and protests against any insult being offered to Timothy because of what a great English statesman once called, in reference to himself, "the atrocious crime of being a young man."