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How Should Speech Be Seasoned With Salt? by Pastor Kevin Feder

By Anonymous

Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. - Colossians 4:6 

Salt has many functions. It flavors food. It preserves food. It also rusts cars. Assuming camels or donkeys didn't deal with rust issues we can be confident Paul wasn't thinking about our Toyotas or Fords. When Paul talks about salt in this passage it probably has to do with flavoring. Just like salt makes food taste good so speech should taste good to other believers. 

The passage begs the question: how does a believer season their speech with salt. I know how to do it on French fries, not so much on the words exiting my mouth. To answer, let’s ask a question of the text, namely, what's the connection? What's the connection between letting your speech be gracious and knowing how to answer each person? This is the way the verse is constructed. Let your speech be gracious so that you may know how to answer each person." In other words, Paul equates gracious speech with the skill of offering good answers to people. 

This is a bit of a strange connection, don't you think? I would expect Paul would say "let your speech always be gracious so that people will be encouraged and built up." Paul doesn't make that connection. He suggests that gracious speech that is seasoned with is equal to knowing how you ought to answer each person. 

Even though Paul doesn't use the word "listen" this is what he seems to angle at. Paul suggests that seasoning salt on your speech is the act of listening. For Paul, gracious speech is "knowing how you ought to answer each person." Paul isn't talking about answering people in general, he is talking about answering each person to their uniqueness. No two people or their situations are alike and to speak with grace requires that there is plenty of understanding. How else does someone know how to answer the uniqueness of each person? 

Here are some suggestions to more gracious speech: 

Assume you don't have enough data on a given person to really understand them. This will drive you to get more data before you try to solve a problem you don't even understand. 

Learn to ask questions. Most people enjoy talking about themselves. Only Toby Keith was so bold as to say “I want to talk about me.” Yet, most people like talking about the things they are interested in, sharing their thoughts and their opinions. Asking questions is a way to learn and love another person because it allows you to talk wisely and graciously to them. 

If you have something nice to say to someone, don't withhold it. There are many things you should keep to yourself, words of encouragement or blessings are not one of them. Just as you shouldn’t share certain things, other things you should. May God help his church to listen and understand so that our speech will always be gracious.

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