<p>12:18 <i>I urged Titus to go and I sent the brother with him. Did Titus take any advantage of you? Did we not act in the same spirit? Did we not take the same steps?</i>- The accusation was apparently that Titus was Paul's instrument and part of his crafty plan to extract money from them for his own benefit. Paul agrees that Titus had visited Corinth as a result of his 'urging', perhaps implying that Titus himself had doubted the wisdom of the visit. And Paul agrees that Titus shared Paul's spirit to the extent that effectively, his visit was Paul's visit. They 'took the same steps'. But he goes on to say that his spirit was solely to upbuild them (:19). Paul has elsewhere explained that he had changed his plans to personally visit them because he feared that the Spirit would lead him to severely judge the Corinthians if he visited them. But here he says that the visit of Titus was effectively Paul's visit, because they took &quot;the same steps&quot;. Both Titus and Paul were motivated by the same Spirit and therefore their steps were identical. This same association of the Spirit with &quot;steps&quot; is found in Gal. 5:25: &quot;If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk in step with the Spirit&quot;. His refusal to personally visit Corinth was therefore surely playing some kind of game with God's Spirit, a form of brinkmanship. He and Titus were led by the same Spirit and therefore the visit of Titus was as it were the visit of Paul. They took the same steps as they were in step with the same Spirit- for &quot;the same spirit... steps&quot; refers to the Spirit and steps of the Lord Jesus (1 Pet. 2:21 &quot;That you should follow His steps&quot;). But Paul did not go personally because he feared the Spirit would lead him to judge and condemn the Corinthians for their unspirituality. Perhaps Paul would have done better to follow the Spirit's lead and recognize Corinth for who they were, and judge them as the Spirit led him to- rather than wilfully misinterpret the reception of Titus by the Corinthians (see on 2 Cor. 7) and hold on to his own obsessively positive view of them against all evidence.</p>