Romans 16:21-24 contains the last greetings to the church in Rome. The greetings conclude the letter. This is followed only by blessings, but these contain important explanations. It is therefore worth writing a separate article about the last verses of this letter and only mentioning the personal greetings here for the time being.

“Timothy, my coworker, and Lucius and Jason and Sosipater, my relatives, greet you. I, Tertius, who wrote this letter, greet you in the Lord. Gaius, my host and the host of the whole assembly, greets you. Erastus, the town’s rentmaster, and the brother Quartus greet you. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all! Amen.”
Rom 16:21-24

Surprisingly, Paul is not mentioned anywhere. His name appears at the beginning of the letter (Romans 1:1). Further employees are named here. First and foremost, Timothy, “my coworker” is mentioned. This is immediately followed by three of Paul’s relatives, “Lucius and Jason and Gaius”. Bear in mind that Paul was not born in Israel, but in Tarsus, in what is now Turkey (Acts 9:9; Acts 21:39; Acts 22:3). This city was located at the mouth of a river and it is obvious that his relatives, like Paul, were also traveling on the Mediterranean.

Tertius, who wrote the letter for Paul, is mentioned next. Paul had dictated the letter and presumably other letters of his. The profession of scribe was common and Paul had miserable vision. He could write and was a learned man, but he had trouble with his eyes. This can be deduced from the following passage:

“For I bear you witness that if it were possible, you would have plucked out your eyes and given them to me.”
Gal 4:15

However, Paul signed all his letters with a greeting, as attested here:

“The greeting with my, Paul’s, hand, which is the sign in every letter; this is how I write.”
2Thess 3,17

While Paul was dictating his letters, he wrote a personal greeting, from which the authenticity of the letter should be deduced. We find this similarly in 1 Corinthians 16:21 and Colossians 4:18. How and whether this was the case in Romans cannot, in my opinion, be directly deduced anywhere. However, there is some evidence that Paul handled it the same way in all his letters.

Grace be with you

“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all! Amen.”
Rom 16:24

Paul had already used the expression “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ” a few verses earlier (Rom 16:20). In 2 Corinthians, Paul describes this as follows:

“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that when he was rich, he became poor for your sakes, so that you through his poverty might become rich.”
2Cor 8,9

Greetings are concluded with a wish for grace and confirmed by an “Amen“. In Hebrew, the word amen means “faithful”. It is the confirmation of what was said before.

You can also find wishes of mercy like these in other letters. Verse 24 is not found in all manuscripts, however. For this reason, it is omitted from the Concordant New Testament.