5 Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders, making the most of the opportunity. 6 Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person.
Finally, before turning to his personal greetings and instructions, the apostle Paul gives one last burst of directions for the Christian life. He has covered much ground in this short letter, but he finishes with two parting admonitions.
First, their general manner of behavior among non-Christians, those outside of the community of faith, should be characterized by wisdom. There are only so many specifics Paul or any of the NT writers can lay down in writing. In some regards, the Scripture provides a framework, a skeleton for Christian maturity. To be sure, there are specifics that need to be obeyed, for all Scripture is inspired and is to be taken as our instruction manual for life (2 Tim 3:16). However, the mandates of Scripture, which are given within certain contexts of the life and times of the 1st century church, don’t always line up perfectly with the life situations we face today. Wisdom is the key for both interpreting Scripture as well as applying it to the specifics of our life situations. Paul prayed for this when he wrote earlier, “… we have not ceased to pray … that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord…” (Col 1:9b–10a).
Second, there are only so many things that can be taught about how we should communicate with others. The teaching has to be assimilated, internalized and applied in the individual episodes of life. For this, grace carries one beyond line-by-line speech principles. This comes with setting maturity as our goal. Grace exhibits when we resist one-up-manship; when we resist stealing the attention away from another person’s story; when we forbear another’s humorless tedium; when we allow slights to slide off us like the proverbial water off a duck’s back; when we turn our other cheek to insults and offenses; when we are quick to speak of another’s good fortune and successes.
Wisdom and Grace–is that not the desire of every Christian? Jesus came into this world, “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). If we understand wisdom to be defined as truth applied, then Christlikeness is tantamount to grace and truth in action. When we Christians behave with these characteristics, then truly we become like the salt of the earth (Matt 5:13), salt that has not lost its flavor.
Lord, I want to live with wisdom and grace, the salted kind of life that makes others thirsty for knowing God.
0 Comments