3. Good will and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ are yours!
4. ⌊Philemon,⌋ I always thank my God when I mention you in my prayers because
5. I hear about your faithfulness to the Lord Jesus and your love for all of God’s people.
6. As you share the faith you have in common with others, I pray that you may come to have a complete knowledge of every blessing we have in Christ.
7. Your love ⌊for God’s people⌋ gives me a lot of joy and encouragement. You, brother, have comforted God’s people.
8. Christ makes me bold enough to order you to do the right thing.
9. However, I would prefer to make an appeal on the basis of love. I, Paul, as an old man and now a prisoner for Christ Jesus,
10. appeal to you for my child Onesimus [Useful]. I became his spiritual father here in prison.
11. Once he was useless to you, but now he is very useful to both of us.
12. I am sending him back to you. This is like sending you a part of myself.