I thank my God always, making mention of you in my prayers,

I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective and powerful because of your accurate knowledge of every good thing which is ours in Christ.

For I have had great joy and comfort and encouragement from your love, because the hearts of the saints (God’s people) have been refreshed through you, my brother.

I appeal to you for my [own spiritual] child Onesimus, whom I have fathered [in the faith] while a captive in these chains.

Once he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you as well as to me.

I have sent him back to you in person, that is, like sending my very heart.

I would have chosen to keep him with me, so that he might minister to me on your behalf during my imprisonment for the gospel;

but I did not want to do anything without first getting your consent, so that your goodness would not be, in effect, by compulsion but of your own free will.

no longer as a slave, but [as someone] more than a slave, as a brother [in Christ], especially dear to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh [as a servant] and in the Lord [as a fellow believer].

So if you consider me a partner, welcome and accept him as you would me.

But if he has wronged you in any way or owes you anything, charge that to my account;

I, Paul, write this with my own hand, I will repay it in full (not to mention to you that you owe to me even your own self as well).

Yes, brother, let me have some benefit and joy from you in the Lord; refresh my heart in Christ.

At the same time also prepare a guest room for me [in expectation of a visit], for I hope that through your prayers I will be [granted the gracious privilege of] coming to you [at Colossae].

Greetings to you from Epaphras, my fellow prisoner here in [the cause of] Christ Jesus,

and from Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke, my fellow workers.