The all-sufficient Christ enables us to live lives of prayer and wisdom
Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. 6 Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.
Paul concludes this final series of admonitions with a word about Christians’ relationship to unbelievers, or, as he terms them here, “outsiders.” In the spirit of doing everything in the name of Jesus, Paul urges Christians to be wise in the way they act toward unbelievers.
In the days of the early church, Christians were often viciously slandered by those outside the church. NonChristians accused them of being atheists, because they served an unseen God, and of being unpatriotic, because they refused to burn incense to the emperor. The best way for Christians to defeat such slander, Paul says, is by wise conduct. The reputation of the gospel depends to a large extent on the conduct of those who claim to believe it. People may not read the Bible, but they read Christians.
Christian wisdom will lead believers in their daily conduct to avoid anything that might prejudice outsiders against the gospel. Indeed, the positive testimony of believers’ service to the Lord and to their fellow men might well touch the consciences of some outsiders and help win them for Christ. The most effective way for Christians to advertise the gospel is to conduct themselves in a way that will make it evident that Christ’s love has filled their hearts and lives.
Not only is living wisely important for Christians; there is also an urgency about it. Do not put off advertising the gospel with your lives, the apostle pleads, but make the most of every opportunity. The days are evil. The battle is difficult, and the Lord is coming soon.
Believers’ testimony to the world, not just their speaking about Jesus but their speaking about everything else as well, should be full of grace, seasoned with salt. Gracious speaking is speaking that imparts grace to those who hear it. Such speaking is not necessarily conversation dotted with witty or clever remarks. It is conversation that results from the operation of God’s grace in our hearts. “Seasoned with salt” refers to the wholesomeness of what we say. Salt is a preservative; it prevents decay. And it makes food more tasty. Seasoned speech coming from the mouths of Christians is speech that Paul describes in Ephesians 4:29 as “only what is helpful.”
A Christian’s speech should be marked not by the foul and improper language that is so characteristic of worldly society but by language that is distinctively Christian, language patterned after the gracious speaking of Christ. It is for that kind of speaking that the Lord has placed us Christians on earth. The most important kind of speaking Christians can do is the speaking they do on behalf of their Savior, explaining their Christian conduct and testifying of their heavenly hope.
It takes a great deal of tact and wisdom for Christians to live in such a way that their entire behavior and all their speaking glorifies God and gives to outsiders a positive testimony to the gospel. With the encouragements with which he closes this section on Christian living the apostle would ask each of us to look closely at his life in the world. Can the fact that we belong to Jesus be seen by others, especially by others outside the Christian faith, as they observe our lives and listen to our conversations? Do the lives we live and the words we speak sparkle with the love of Jesus and our joyful commitment to him? Or have we beenso thoroughly influenced by the world around us that we could easily pass for worldly-minded people?
Throughout this entire epistle, the apostle has, in a lofty and eloquent manner, pointed us to the all-sufficiency of Jesus for our salvation and our Christian living. May Christ’s sufficiency continue to fill us with the desire and the ability to glorify him with our speech and our lives, so that our whole being may give evidence of the wondrous life and sure hope we have in him.