Philemon 1:3

1:3 Grace and peace to you ¹  from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!

Philemon 1:23

Concluding Greetings

1:23 Epaphras, ²  my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, greets you.

Philemon 1:25

1:25 May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be ³  with your spirit. ⁴ 

[1:3]  ¹ tn Grk “Grace to you and peace.”

[1:23]  ² sn Epaphras is probably a shortened form of the name Epaphroditus. This is probably the same individual whom Paul spoke of as “my brother, coworker, and fellow soldier” in Phil 2:25 (see also Phil 4:18). He is also mentioned in Col 1:7 and 4:12, where he is a founder of the church in Colossae (BDAG 360 s.v. ᾿Επαφρᾶς).

[1:25]  ³ tn Grk “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ with your spirit.” The elided verb, normally an optative, has been rendered as “be.”

[1:25]  ⁴ tc Most witnesses, including several excellent ones (א C D¹ Ψ 0278 Ï lat sy), conclude this letter with ἀμήν (amhn, “amen”). Such a conclusion is routinely added by scribes to NT books because a few of these books originally had such an ending (cf. Rom 16:27; Gal 6:18; Jude 25). A majority of Greek witnesses have the concluding ἀμήν in every NT book except Acts, James, and 3 John (and even in these books, ἀμήν is found in some witnesses). It is thus a predictable variant. Further, several good witnesses (Ì⁸⁷ A D* 048^vid 6 33 81 1739* 1881 sa) lack the ἀμήν, rendering the omission the preferred reading.