12:20 {8} For I fear, lest, when I come, I shall not find you such as I would, and [that] I shall be found unto you such as ye would not: lest [there be] debates, envyings, wraths, strifes, backbitings, whisperings, swellings, tumults:
(8) Having confirmed his authority to them, he rebukes them sharply, and threatens them also like an apostle, showing that he will not spare them from now on, unless they repent, seeing that this is the third time that he has warned them.
12:20 For I fear lest when I come, etc. He has been led to speak because he feared, unless he spoke plainly, that when he came he would have to rebuke severely on account of sins which he enumerates.
Debates, etc. The sins here given are those that belong to a divided state.
12:11-21 We owe it to good men, to stand up in the defence of their reputation; and we are under special obligations to those from whom we have received benefit, especially spiritual benefit, to own them as instruments in God's hand of good to us. Here is an account of the apostle's behaviour and kind intentions; in which see the character of a faithful minister of the gospel. This was his great aim and design, to do good. Here are noticed several sins commonly found among professors of religion. Falls and misdeeds are humbling to a minister; and God sometimes takes this way to humble those who might be tempted to be lifted up. These vast verses show to what excesses the false teachers had drawn aside their deluded followers. How grievous it is that such evils should be found among professors of the gospel! Yet thus it is, and has been too often, and it was so even in the days of the apostles.
