“Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you should answer each person.” (v. 6)

Your speech should be gracious, but not just gracious.

Your speech should be “seasoned with salt,” but not just salty.

Your speech—if it be faithful speech—has to be both.

If everything you say is only ever gracious, then it might be sweet—but it will also be overly permissive. It will lack clarity in a morally hazy world. And, worst of all, it might relativize the message of Christ by making it sound like anything goes.

Conversely, if everything you say is only ever salty, where is the compassion in that? Where is the welcome? When the wounded come to you, do you skip the salve of kindness—and rush to rub the salt in?

Faithful speech has to be both. It ought to welcome, to encourage, to strengthen and to cheer. You should be known as someone who encourages and who loves—someone to be turned to when times are tough. And, seasoned through that, the clarifying, purifying, and beautifying truth should shine. It is the salt that flavors your graciousness, so that your neighbors might know the One whose love inspires your own.

So let it be gracious. And let it show off what a little salt can do.

That’s faithful speech.

— Tyler