Col

Col. 4:5-6

10/21/2007

“Speak Graciously”

Last week, we saw the close relationship between the commands in our passage and Paul’s request for prayer in the previous passage (4:2-4), between how Christians must conduct themselves toward outsiders and how Paul desires to proclaim the mystery of Christ, especially to the Gentiles in the flesh, who have never heard of the gospel. The similarities between the two show us that our interaction with those who are outside the faith must have at its deepest core an evangelistic thrust.

Paul calls us to “walk in wisdom toward outsiders” (v. 5). Walking is a biblical metaphor, which covers the entirety of our conduct. That is why the ESV translates the Greek verb for “walk” as “conduct yourselves”. What does it mean to walk in wisdom?

Wisdom here is connected to “making the best use of the time” (ESV) or “making the most of the opportunity” (NASB). At the least, walking in wisdom stems from recognizing our mortality. Time is a precious commodity: we do not have an endless supply of it. And opportunities are rare commodities, too: we would love to have the luxury of second, third, fourth chances--in fact, as many opportunities as we need to get it right finally--but we don’t. Moses said long ago, “The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty….So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Ps. 90:10, 12).

But the kind of wisdom Paul has in view is not about maximizing our life or living our life to the fullest in one way or the other. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? Paul here is addressing those who have been raised with Christ unto eternal life, heavenly life (3:1). Paul’s understanding of wisdom, therefore, cannot be divorced from the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which points to the reality of the world to come. Therefore, wisdom can be neither wise nor true unless it takes into account the ultimate reality of man’s existence: “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Heb. 9:27). He, who lives as if he would never grow old and die, is a fool. He, who lives his life to the fullest because he knows that his life will come to an end, may be much wiser than the first fool. But he is still a fool if he does not prepare for the life to come. Surely, to be considered the wisest of men profits him nothing if he stands condemned on the Judgment Day.

Therefore, he who walks in wisdom does not live as though his happiness depended on what he has or does not have of this world. If it did, all his efforts would be focused on acquiring as much as possible what this world has to offer. The problem with such an approach to life is obvious: no matter how much we manage to amass, there will always be someone who has more. Even if we were the wealthiest man in the world, we can still have more--after all, we still don’t have what others have and we can always try to take theirs as well. So if we learn the rare virtue of curtailing our insatiable greed and being content with what we have, is our trouble over? Far from it! For to keep what we have is as difficult as gaining things, if not more. The things of this world are perishable--moth and rust destroy them and thieves break in and steal. They are temporary--they grow old and they break down. And they change hands so much. We cannot hold on to the things of this world even if we tried. And even if we could, would we be truly content with the treasures of this world? We would not. For we have been made in the image of God. As long as God is missing in our life, we can never be truly satisfied in our soul. In fact, all of our (inordinate) desires can be traced back to God, or the absence thereof. That, of course, is an exercise in futility because God alone can meet that deep longing, not anything less and other than God Himself.

To possess God is to have eternity in the heart (Eccl. 3:11), for God is eternal. And He whose love is perfect could not have destined us for anything less than eternal and everlasting. Just consider the final chapters of the Bible, which show us our life of eternal glory in heaven. Can we view all that and say that it was just an afterthought on God’s part? No! There is no such thing as an afterthought to the perfect and all-knowing God! Our God is a God, who declares the end from the beginning! The final chapters of the Bible show us what God intended from the very beginning as the final destiny of man and the world!

Is it any wonder, then, that Christ came preaching, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”? He did not come to fix the fallen world and restore it back to its pre-Fall condition. This world, even before the fall, was temporary in nature. From the very beginning the Garden of Eden was not designed to be our eternal abode. So when we preach Christ, we do not preach the Christ of worldly prosperity and fame, comfort and ease. Rather, we preach “Christ crucified”--a Savior who died to bring us into the kingdom of heaven. He saved us according to a way that this world cannot understand--a way that is a stumbling block to the Jews who demand signs and foolishness to the Gentiles who seek wisdom. His way of salvation was contrary to the way of this world because He came to establish the kingdom of heaven, not of this world.

To walk in wisdom means that we live with the eternity in mind. When we walk in wisdom, the primacy of heaven ought to color all our actions and decisions. The Christian wisdom is characterized by that heavenly-mindedness and it is that heavenly-mindedness, which distinguishes our life and conduct as Christian. Our Christian witness, then, is to be marked by heavenly-mindedness. The challenge is to think not just generally but specifically and intentionally in all areas of our life. Why are we all here? Hopefully not because it is our weekly ritual but as an expression of our heavenly hope. And what about the way we spend the Lord’s Day? Is it just a day of physical, earthly rest? Or is it the market day of the soul, in which we engage and take part in the things that are above? And we are called to walk in this heavenly-minded wisdom.

While our Christian witness to outsiders encompasses all our life and all our conduct--thus Paul’s command to walk in wisdom toward outsiders--Paul brings our attention particularly to our word-witness. So we read in v. 6, “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.”

It is true that talks can be cheap, that an action speaks louder than words. But our Christian witness cannot be a matter of “either or”; it must be a matter of both our action and our words. What is important is the unity of our words and actions, not one or the other. Isn’t that the case of God’s own testimony to us? We praise God that He has acted in history to accomplish our salvation and will continue to act to bring it to its consummation. He did not just love us with His emotions. He acted upon His love to send His only Son to die in our place. His love would have availed us nothing if He did not act on it to save us truly, actually and historically.

But God did not just act in history. He has spoken and continues to speak through His Word. Herman Bavinck said, “Speaking is nothing more or nothing less than an essential attribute of God, His eternal, unchangeable work” (The Sacrifice of Praise, p. 87). We can understand why this is so. Our one and only true God is a triune God. He is one God in three Persons and as such He is a community in His being. Therefore, there is always from eternity to eternity the most intimate dialogue (or trialogue) among the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. So God speaks and, as speaking is an essential part of His being, He speaks to His people, who were created in His image. Can you imagine what kind of relationship we would have with God if He just acted for us without ever speaking to us? Think of all the words of comfort and encouragement you find in the Word of God. “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you” (Isa. 43:1-2). Such a promise is not some vain words of a liar or a well-meaning but incapable man, are they? No, they are the words of the almighty God, who is able to keep all His promises without fail! And it is His Word that we are holding in our hands, in our hearts! He has spoken in His Word and He continues to speak through the written Word and the preached Word. Why? Because He desires that we should know Him--His will, His wisdom, His power, His glory, His love, etc. For He is the strength of our life. He is our life.

And God spoke to us most perfectly and completely in His Son. And who is the Son of God but the eternal Word, who was with God in the beginning? It was through the eternal Word that all things were made (John 1:1, 3). “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth…. No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him” (John 1:14, 18). You can understand why our speech is so important: we were created in the image of that speaking God. “[Man] receives from His Creator not only an understanding and a heart, but also a tongue and a language and is therefore called, not only to think and to feel, but also to speak and to testify,” says Bavinck (The Sacrifice of Praise, p. 87).

With that in mind, read what Paul says in v. 6, “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.” About the importance of words in our Christian life and witness Herman Bavinck said,

“Yea, again and again in Holy Writ, all creatures are called upon to praise the name of the Lord. Bless ye the Lord, all ye, His hosts; ye ministers of His, that do His pleasure. Bless the Lord, all his works in all places of his dominion; bless the Lord, O my soul.

“In the midst of all those speaking and praising creatures, man, who has received the word for the utterance of his thoughts, may not remain silent. Indeed, he cannot remain silent. His silence is even counted as acknowledgment. Neutrality is as impossible for the mouth as for the heart. Whosoever does not confess Christ, denies Him. Silence soon passes over into doubt, unbelief, enmity. The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity; it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell; it is untameable, an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. If we do not bless God, even the Father, with it, then we curse therewith men, which are made after the similitude of God” (The Sacrifice of Praise, pp. 87-88).

The act of blessing God or confessing Christ, which Bavinck talks about here, consists not only of our worship toward God but also our Christian witness to others, both Christian and non-Christian. And this is a crucial aspect of our redemption. Adam and Eve fell when they listened to the lies, the false words, of the devil. After the Fall Adam and Eve speak in false words: instead of acknowledging their respective guilt, they blame others with their words. The effect of the Fall is obvious in the corruption of their words. So the commands were given not to take God’s name in vain, not to bear false witness. Our sinful words must be curtailed. But our redemption--particularly the redemption of our tongue--cannot be fully realized unless we speak the ultimate truth, until we use our mouths to declare the praise of our God in our worship and in our interaction with others, both Christian and non-Christian. In fact, God has ordained our words to be a means of salvation: Paul says in 1 Cor. 1:21, “It pleased God through the folly of what we preach [literally, “through the foolishness of the preaching”] to save those who believe.”

While this responsibility devolves primarily upon the ministers of the gospel, it does not do so exclusively. Let it be pointed out that the commands in our passage are directed to all the Christians in general, not just to the church officers or some special people with some special gift of evangelism. In fact, let us think about this matter of spiritual gifts for a moment. We will focus on the “ordinary” spiritual gifts, not the “extraordinary” ones, since the ordinary ones are directly relevant and applicable to us. We believe that the extraordinary, revelatory gifts have ceased with the passing of the apostolic era. So then, the ordinary spiritual gifts are so called not because they are uninteresting and unexciting; they are ordinary in the sense that they are present all throughout the history of the church, especially and more abundantly in the new covenant era. The gift of evangelism would be an ordinary spiritual gift. It is true that the gift of evangelism is not found in any of the lists found in the New Testament. Even so, there is a general consensus that the New Testament lists were not meant to be exhaustive. After all, what is a spiritual gift? As someone defined succinctly, “a spiritual gift is a God-given ability to serve the church effectively” (Fred Zaspel, “The Definition of Spiritual Gifts”, http://www.biblicalstudies.com/bstudy/spiritualgifts/ch01.htm).

Pay attention to the word “effectively”. We must keep in mind that spiritual gifts are about effectiveness, not about some kind of exclusive responsibility. This is what I mean. That a certain member has a certain spiritual gift does not mean that the work associated with the particular spiritual gift--for example, hospitality--devolves upon him exclusively. He who has the gift does it easily and well, of course. But hospitality is something that all Christians should exercise toward other saints and even toward outsiders and strangers. The same is true of other spiritual gifts as well. Take, for instance, the gift of teaching. Whether someone has the gift or not is quite obvious. But does this excuse any father from catechizing and teaching God’s word to his children? Of course not! The lack of giftedness does not excuse him from his parental duty to his children. Instead it requires more work from him. In the same way, that some Christians obviously have the gift of evangelism does not mean that it is to be carried out only by them. Yes, some can evangelize with such ease and finesse! But that does not mean that we, who may have a hard time due to our personality or the lack of the gift, are exempt from bearing witness to Christ.

All we have to do is to remember what it feels like to be silent when we ought to speak and laugh when we ought to be silent (C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Letters, p. 50). We knew instantly that we were failing at a very important task. We might have tried to justify our silence, either by appealing to our personality, which we believed was just not cut out for witnessing, or to our lack of giftedness in this area. But deep inside we knew that we were not acknowledging Him before men as we were supposed to. There was something wrong with our silence and timidity. We had a hard time believing, deep down in our hearts, that the sense of uneasiness and shame we felt was the way it was supposed to be for some, for many, Christians.

Jesus said, “So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven but… whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels” (Matt. 10:32; Mark 8:38). Do you sense how strong Jesus’ words are here? “Whoever is ashamed of me…, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed….” The context of these words (in Mark) is none other than a matter of life and death (Mark 8:35), of the futility of gaining the whole world and forfeiting his life (Mark 8:36). For the Son of Man to be ashamed of someone in this context is to denounce him unto eternal condemnation. So then, the sin of being ashamed of Christ is not about not having the courage to share the gospel with someone else. We know how Peter denied Jesus three times in one night and how Jesus dealt with him later at the Sea of Galilee: Christ forgave him and restored him fully and completely. So then, being ashamed of Christ in Mark 8 is not about the lack of courage. Here, it means being ashamed of the cross of Jesus Christ as the way of salvation, to be ashamed the foolishness of the cross. Jesus’ words here were given in response to Peter--even after he confessed that Jesus was the Christ and the Son of the living God, he rebuked Jesus when Jesus began to talk about the suffering and death He must endure before rising again from the dead on the third day.

Even so, we cannot dismiss Christ’s words as irrelevant to us as long as we deny the gospel to ourselves. Should we be content with our Christian life as long as we don’t commit the unforgivable sin, as long as we manage not to “lose” our salvation? Of course not! Christian life is not about barely hanging on to our ticket to heaven. It is about becoming more and more of who we are in Christ! We must not be silent. We cannot be ashamed of the gospel, as if the good news of Jesus Christ were not good enough to be shared!

Also think about what are we doing when we are ashamed of Christ? We are ashamed of Him who was not ashamed to take the place of our shame, guilt and condemnation! Out of the most amazing and incomprehensible love, Jesus suffered our shame and misery; Jesus died our death of ignominy! What act of betrayal can be worse than to be ashamed of such a Redeemer and Friend?

So then, “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.” Remember how Christ has spoken to you so graciously:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16);

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28);

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Matt. 5:3-12);

“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also” (John 14:1-3);

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (John 14:27);

“I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33);

“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:25-26).

And Christ, who speaks these gracious words to you, wants you to speak graciously to outsiders. We need to speak graciously because we are speaking the truth--the truth that convicts the world of its sin and its desperate need--the truth of sin and righteousness, the reality of heaven and hell. We need to speak graciously to outsiders because we are speaking the truth of the gospel, the gospel of grace for sinners, and because we ourselves have been saved by the grace of God. We need to speak graciously because Christ has spoken to us the truth of God in grace: He not only convicted the world of its sin but He also bore the guilt of our sin so that He might speak to us the words of grace unto our salvation.

Brothers and sisters, listen to the gracious words of Christ everyday. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly so that the words that flow out of your mouth may be seasoned with God’s grace so that you may testify to the wonder and glory of God’s grace until that day when we shall stand before the presence of His glory, when our mouths, fully purified and glorified, will declare God’s praise through all eternity! That is what we are destined for! Let us live in a manner worthy of that glorious future!