I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand — the autograph conclusion is both a personal authenticating signature and a reminder of his circumstances: remember my chains. The personal handwriting (idiotōi cheiri) at the close of a letter dictated to an amanuensis was a standard ancient authentication practice; Paul uses it in 1 Corinthians 16:21, Galatians 6:11, and 2 Thessalonians 3:17 to confirm the letter's genuineness. The two-word appeal — remember my chains (mou tōn desmōn) — compresses into the briefest possible form what the letter's entire theology of Christ's supremacy and the believer's freedom in him has been working to establish: Paul writes from imprisonment, yet his chains are not the final word. The benediction is characteristically Pauline in its simplicity: grace be with you — the same unmerited divine favor that grounds justification, grounds also the practical ethics of putting on the new self in chapter 3 and every household relationship in chapter 3-4. The closing word of Colossians is grace, the word that opened it (1:2), forming a bracket around the entire letter's argument.

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