Speech seasoned with salt

Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. (Colossians 4:5-6)

Towards the end of his letter to the Colossians, the imprisoned Paul asks the faithful congregation to pray that God would “open a door” for Paul to herald his message of salvation (called the “mystery of Christ”) to the world in a clear, understandable manner. Notice: Paul doesn’t just ask that the door might be supernaturally opened for the message to be preached, but that the preacher of the message might be supernaturally allowed to make the message clear and plain. I think we churchgoers today would be much more likely to pray that our dear Brother Paul might be delivered from the unjust chains of oppression than for his vocabulary when presenting the gospel, but Paul sees the two as equal in their necessity to be brought before the throne of God.

But it doesn’t end at prayer. It never ends at prayer. There has to be a response, an action. Here the action is for the Colossians to be ever-mindful of how their conversations with everyone – regardless of standing in the church – must be continuously “full of grace.” This is more than advice that Paul is giving; this is a command from the Spirit-inspired pages of Scripture.

So what does this have to do with us? I wonder sometimes how we Christians can spend hours and hours cooking up evangelism strategies and outreaches on the one hand and then have anything but gracious conversations in our churches, in our homes, and around our company’s water coolers on the other.

With all due respect to the mid and late 1990s, our nation is right now more divided than it has been in any period since the Civil War. On one extreme we have those who are showing an almost militant devotion to their avarice. On the other extreme we have those who refuse to talk about any groups or individuals of a different ideology without resorting to cheap shots about intellect and childish name-calling. Our nation is mired in an inability to discuss important matters of politics and religion - don't get someone from our ESPN-saturated culture started on sports! - without neck veins being protruded and insults being hurled.

Paul says it shouldn’t be this way with the church. Our mission is just way too important to have our people caught in the mire. These people not only make up the mission field, but they make up the church: liberals and conservatives, Tea Partiers and Big Blue Dots, Alabama and Auburn fan. As counter-cultural as it is, we simply cannot afford to be biting and divisive within our fellowship if we intend to be about the mission of saving souls and brining glory to our God.