Charles Ellicott Commentary 2 Corinthians 12:18

"I exhorted Titus, and I sent the brother with him. Did Titus take any advantage of you? walked we not in the same spirit? [walked we] not in the same steps?" — 2 Corinthians 12:18 (ASV)

I desired Titus, and with him I sent a brother.—Better, the brother. The Greek has the article, and he refers definitely to the first of the two unnamed brothers alluded to in 2 Corinthians 8:18–22. The Greek idiom of what is known as the “epistolary aorist,” hinders the English reader from seeing that St. Paul is referring to what was being done at the time when the letter was written.

It would therefore be better rendered, I have urged Titus to go; I am sending the brother with him. The ungenerous suspicions of some of the Corinthians had made him almost morbidly sensitive, and he repeats practically what he had said before (2 Corinthians 8:20–21), that his motive in sending these delegates was to guard against them.

Having stated this, he can appeal to their past knowledge of Titus as a guarantee for the future. Had he “sponged” on any man, or tried what he could get out of him? Had he not identified himself with the Apostle, both in the general spirit that animated him and in the details of his daily life? It is a natural inference from this that Titus also had worked for his own maintenance and lived in his own lodging. If we may assume the identity of Titus with the Justus into whose house St. Paul went when he left the synagogue at Corinth (see Note on Acts 18:7), the appeal to the knowledge that the Corinthians had of him gains a new significance.