“Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one.”
“seasoned with salt”
The secular Greek used “salt” in the sense of witty. If this is the usage here, then God wants pizzazz in our speech. Grace is salt that seasons speech. Grace makes our speech palatable and keeps us from emitting a sense of venom toward those without Christ. It makes our communication discreet.
Talk seasoned with salt is like well-seasoned food — it is tasty and savory. We make our message palatable when we use talk seasoned with salt.
“Salt” is also a preservative. It preserves us from unwise talk. Salt loses its flavor when we use worthless talk (Mk 9:49f).
Principle:
God wants us to create a taste for the gospel.
Application:
God expects our speech to be more than sloppy sentimentalism. Our speech should cease from corrupt talk. Our witness should whet the appetite so people will want a second helping. Sadly, we can talk about football, hockey, business, and politics with animation, but we bore people to death regarding the gospel.
If resisting either decomposition or adding flavor is the meaning here, then wholesome speech is the idea. Ephesians 4:29 speaks of “corrupt speech:” “Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers.” Today we talk of speech that is “salty.” These are people who throw coarse talk into a conversation.
God wants us to communicate with people in a way that makes our ideas attractive and appealing to stimulate the listener’s interest in Jesus Christ.
