Seasoned with Grace
I love cooking. It’s so satisfying to take a bunch of random ingredients and turn them into a cohesive dish. Plus, there is a tasty reward at the end. 😉 It’s amazing how important salt is when cooking. It’s something small that when forgotten can make dishes turn out bland. Interestingly, salt is used as an analogy for how we speak.
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. Colossians 4:6 (NASB)
The other day, my younger sister wisely advised me not to say some harsh words that I wanted to say to someone because they were not with grace. She was totally right; what I planned to say was much more about my own hurt than my fellow believer’s good. She encouraged me to focus on the other person’s needs, especially their spiritual needs, and that completely changed my perspective.
That conversation with my sister stuck with me, and I’ve been thinking about the importance of not only what words I speak, but how I speak them.
11 Therefore encourage one another and build up one another, just as you also are doing. 1 Thessalonians 5:11
12 Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. 13 But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called “Today,” so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Hebrews 3:12-13
We are called to encourage one another. It’s important to remember that encouragement is offering someone courage. And, as Hebrews shows, encouragement is important among believers so that we don’t fall into sin.
Speaking with grace and encouraging one another doesn’t mean that we are never bold or confident about what we’re saying. In fact, Scripture says to speak confidently about the Word and sound doctrine (Eph. 6:20; Col. 4:3-4; Titus 2:1; Titus 3:8). But we must remember that our words will be “judged by the law of liberty” (James 2:12).
Our words matter, whether spoken or written. Recently, while scrolling Instagram, I was reminded of James 1:19:
19 This you know, my beloved brethren. But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger;
Social media encourages us to have the opposite response—be quick to speak, quick to anger, and slow to listen. It’s so easy to post something thoughtless; there’s no face on the other end of a screen, so we don’t see the hurt we cause. (I would argue that it’s more important to season our words with grace online, since tone of voice cannot easily be communicated in short captions.) Whether in person or online, as ambassadors for Christ, our words must honor Him.
When I think of negative words, I’m often reminded of the words of Solomon:
It is better to live in a desert land than with a contentious and vexing woman. Proverbs 21:19
The Hebrew word for contentious is mâdôwn, which means “a contest or quarrel:–brawling, contention, discord, strife” (blueletterbible.org). Vexing is ka’as, which can mean anger, grief, or provocation. It’s interesting that both of these are related to our words—creating discord, strife, and provoking others. And that is what Solomon, the wisest man on earth, said was worse than living in the desert. It’s another reminder to season our words with grace.
Words are powerful. Proverbs 18:21 says that “death and life are in the power of the tongue,” and Matthew 12:37 says that we are justified or condemned by our words. May we always speak words of life that flow from the source of Life Himself.
With love,
Kelsey
