Variety: Colossians 4:6

‘Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer everyone.’
COLOSSIANS 4:6

Paul’s attempts at conversations about Jesus have landed him in chains. So you could be forgiven for wondering about his evangelistic approach, whether a combative attitude has led to his predicament. But as Paul concludes this letter from prison to the fledgling Colossian community, he appeals to them to combine a wise lifestyle with grace-laced conversation.

Seeking to communicate the gospel in our everyday places through our actions and words can be challenging. In Britain it’s unlikely to land us in prison, but we often live with fear that it will not land well with our work colleagues, family, or friends. Paul’s encouragement is to let your conversations be ‘gracious’ and ‘seasoned with salt’.

Conversation that’s gracious comes from lives that know the amazing grace of God. And when we gather together in our church communities, we can remind ourselves of the depth of God’s grace, so that our everyday conversations will be even more gracious. Christian conversation can have a reputation for being full of judgement and seasoned with bitterness. But when the church’s teaching and people are gracious, that can form a disciple who talks with grace.

Paul’s instruction here points specifically to our ‘answers’ – in other words we are to accept opportunities rather than force them: a gracious approach to conversations. These are conversations that awaken appetite for the gospel in the opportunities that are offered to us.

Seasoning our conversation with salt is such a rich image – it makes conversations taste better, it whets the appetite, and it leaves those with whom we’re speaking with a thirst for more. How we conduct our conversations should display the love and joy that God has graciously shared with us.

So, what are we meeting for? We meet to remind ourselves of the good life that God has graciously invited us into so that we know how to answer anyone who asks us for the reason we live the way we do. And those conversations happen everywhere. We don’t go to work and our everyday places just to evangelise, but we go ready to respond, so that, through our gracious and salt-seasoned words, we might show what it means to live life in all its fullness.

Steve Rouse, London Institute for Contemporary Christianity