¹ tn Or “without Christ.” Both “Christ” (Greek) and “Messiah” (Hebrew and Aramaic) mean “one who has been anointed.” Because the context refers to ancient Israel’s messianic expectation, “Messiah” was employed in the translation at this point rather than “Christ.”

² tn Or “covenants of the promise.”

³ tn Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

⁴ tn While the sense of the passage is clear enough, translation in English is somewhat difficult. The Greek says: “by the trickery of men, by craftiness with the scheme of deceit.” The point is that the author is concerned about Christians growing into maturity. He is fearful that certain kinds of very cunning people, who are skilled at deceitful scheming, should come in and teach false doctrines which would in turn stunt the growth of the believers.

⁵ tn Grk “but if something good for the building up of the need.” The final genitive τῆς χρείας (th" creia") may refer to “the need of the moment” or it may refer to the need of a particular person or group of people as the next phrase “give grace to those who hear” indicates.

⁶ tn Grk “be knowing this.” See also 2 Pet 1:20 for a similar phrase: τοῦτο πρῶτον γινώσκοντες (touto prwton ginwskonte").

⁷ tn Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

⁸ tn Though the Greek text only has αὐτούς (autous, “them”), the antecedent is the slaves of the masters. Therefore, it was translated this way to make it explicit in English.

⁹ tn Grk “do the same things to them.”

¹⁰ tn Grk “giving up the threat.”

¹¹ tn Grk “because of both they and you, the Lord is, in heaven…”