Fatherly Admonition, Entreaty, and Warning. The tone of mingled severity, irony, and pathos disappears; yet the affection is combined with sternness, and he warns them not to presume on his mildness. He has no desire to shame them, but only to give them his paternal admonition. For he is their only begetter in Christ, though tutors in Christ they may have by the myriad. Let them take after him as good children should; he is sending Timothy, another of his dear children, but a loyal one, who will revive by his conduct their fading memories of their father's real character and behaviour. Some have been inflated by the news that Timothy is coming, as if Paul would not face the church himself. But he means to come, and try the issue with the boasters, not in word but in power, for power not utterance is the note of the Kingdom. It is for the church to decide whether he comes to chastise or in gentleness.
1 Corinthians 4:15. tutors: we have no word to represent the Gr. which is the original of our pedagogue. But the paidagogos was not a teacher, he was a slave entrusted with the supervision of the child's conduct. The office was temporary (till the child was sixteen), menial, and, of course, unpopular with its victims. Paul uses it to illustrate the temporary, servile, irksome, and disciplinary character of the Law in Galatians 3:24 f. :
1 Corinthians 4:17. Timothy had apparently already started for Corinth, but was taking the land route through Macedonia, while the letter would be sent across the sea and arrive before him.