Your Partnership in the Gospel

The standard Greek letter opened with three words:
Name of sender (nominative)
Name of recipient (dative)
chairein (“greeting”)

So the standard Greek letter would open,
Paulos
Philippois
Chairein.

There are hundreds – nay, thousands of letters from the ancient world that begin this way: "Paul, to the Philippians, greetings."

The pattern could be expanded to give more precision – (or often enough, to flatter the recipient) – but this is the basic pattern of the Greek epistle.

And Paul follows this basic pattern, but gives it three distinctively Christian twists...