Covenantal Diplomacy: Grace, Salt, and Wisdom Text: Colossians 4:5-6
Introduction: The Christian Embassy
The Christian life is not a private affair. It is not a quiet, personal hobby that we cultivate in the privacy of our own homes, like building ships in a bottle. We have been drafted into a great cosmic conflict, and we have been posted to a foreign land as ambassadors for a heavenly King. Every single one of us is in full-time Christian service, whether you are a pastor or a plumber, a mother or a magistrate. You are an emissary of the Lord Jesus Christ, and your life is a letter of commendation, or a letter of condemnation, for the gospel you claim to believe.
This means that our interactions with the unbelieving world are never neutral. We are always on duty. There are no casual Fridays in this embassy. Every conversation, every transaction, every relationship with those "outside" the covenant community is an act of spiritual diplomacy. The world is watching. They are listening. And they are desperate for an answer, even if they don't know the question yet. They are drowning in a sea of relativism, meaninglessness, and self-worship, and we are standing on the shore with the only life raft in existence.
The problem is that we often forget our role. We either go native, adopting the customs and language of the foreign land so that we are indistinguishable from the pagans, or we lock ourselves inside the embassy, shouting incomprehensible truths from the ramparts and wondering why no one is persuaded. Paul, in this brief but dense passage, gives us our ambassadorial charge. He lays out the foundational principles for our conduct toward outsiders. It involves Spirit-given wisdom, a shrewd grasp of the times, and speech that is simultaneously gracious and confrontational. This is not a call for bland niceness. This is a call for robust, intelligent, and winsome engagement with a world that is at enmity with our King.
The Text
Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, redeeming the time. Let your words always be with grace, seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should answer each person.
(Colossians 4:5-6 LSB)
Wise Steps and Bought Time (v. 5)
We begin with the first part of our diplomatic instructions:
"Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, redeeming the time." (Colossians 4:5)
The command is to "walk." This is biblical language for your entire manner of life, your day-in, day-out conduct. It's not about a few isolated moments of "witnessing," but rather the whole consistent pattern of your behavior. And this walk must be characterized by wisdom. Not worldly cleverness, not political savvy, but divine wisdom, which begins with the fear of the Lord. It is a practical wisdom that knows how to apply God's unchanging truth to the ever-changing circumstances of a fallen world.
This wisdom is to be directed "toward outsiders." The Greek is literally "them that are without." This is a clear line of demarcation. There is an "inside" the church, and an "outside." We are not to be naive about this. Those outside do not share our foundational commitments. They do not have the Spirit of God. They are, as Paul says elsewhere, alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds. Therefore, our interactions with them must be shrewd. We are to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. This means we are not to be gullible, nor are we to be needlessly offensive. We are to understand the culture we are in, to know its idols, its fears, and its false gospels, so that we can engage intelligently.
Then Paul adds this crucial phrase: "redeeming the time." The word for redeem here is exagorazo, which means to buy up, to purchase out of the marketplace. The picture is one of a shrewd merchant who sees an opportunity, a kairos, a strategic moment, and seizes it. Time, in this evil age, is enemy-occupied territory. The days are evil, Paul says in Ephesians. The world system wants to waste your time, to distract you with trivialities, to lull you into a spiritual stupor. To redeem the time means to purposefully buy back those moments for the kingdom. It means seeing every conversation with an unbeliever, every interaction with a neighbor, every crisis in your community as a strategic opportunity that God has placed before you. It is a call to intentionality. Don't just let life happen to you. Seize the moments God gives you for gospel purposes. This requires alertness, a mind that is not clouded with the fog of this world, but is sharp and ready to see the opportunity and make the most of it.
The Sacrificial Language of Grace and Salt (v. 6)
From the wisdom of our walk, Paul moves to the content of our words.
"Let your words always be with grace, seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should answer each person." (Colossians 4:6 LSB)
Notice the word "always." Our speech is to be consistently characterized by grace. This does not mean it must always be soft, but it must always be gracious. Grace is unmerited favor. Our speech, therefore, should be a verbal extension of the grace we have received from God. We, who deserved nothing but wrath, received a kingdom. How then can we speak to others with arrogance, with contempt, or with self-righteous superiority? All of it is grace upon grace. When we talk to nonbelievers, we are communicating that central reality. We are beggars telling other beggars where to find bread. This grace will manifest as patience, kindness, and a genuine desire for the other person's good.
But this grace is not a sentimental, syrupy niceness. It must be "seasoned with salt." This is a direct allusion to the Old Testament sacrificial system. In Leviticus, God commands that every grain offering be seasoned with salt. It was called "the salt of the covenant" (Lev. 2:13). Salt in the ancient world was a preservative; it arrested decay and corruption. It also had a purifying and stinging quality. Our speech, therefore, is to be a kind of verbal sacrifice offered to God, and it must have this covenantal saltiness.
What does this mean? It means our gracious words must have substance. They must have the tang of truth. Salt preserves, so our words must contend for and preserve the truth of God in a world that is rotting with lies. Salt stings, so our words, though gracious, will sometimes be sharp and uncomfortable to the unregenerate mind. The gospel is an offense. It tells people they are sinners under the wrath of God and that their only hope is to die with Christ. You cannot make that message palatable to the flesh. To remove the sting is to remove the salt, and to remove the salt is to offer an insipid, useless sacrifice that God will not accept and the world will trample underfoot. A Christian witness without salt is like a surgeon who is afraid to make an incision. He may be very gracious, but he will never heal anyone.
This combination of grace and salt is what equips us for the final task: "so that you will know how you should answer each person." This is not about having a pre-packaged evangelistic script. It's about having a heart so saturated with the grace of God and a mind so filled with the salty truth of Scripture that you can wisely and appropriately respond to every individual situation. The proud skeptic needs a different answer than the broken sinner. The belligerent atheist needs a different answer than the sincere but confused seeker. Wisdom, grace, and salt together give us this Spirit-led adaptability. It is the art of covenantal diplomacy, knowing what to say, how to say it, and when to say it for the glory of our King and the good of those who are perishing.
Conclusion: The Embassy is Open
So then, the charge is plain. We are to live wisely and intentionally in a hostile world. We are to buy up every opportunity God gives us. And we are to speak. Our speech is to be a beautiful paradox, full of the free grace of God and the sharp, preserving salt of His truth.
This is not something we can do in our own strength. It requires that we ourselves are constantly living by grace. It requires that we are continually being salted by the Word of God, letting it purify our own hearts and minds. We cannot give what we do not have. If your own life is not a testimony to the transforming grace of God, your words will be empty. If your own mind is not being preserved from the world's corruption by the salt of Scripture, your answers will be worthless.
We are ambassadors. The embassy is open for business. Our King has given us a message of reconciliation, a message of grace. But it is also a message of truth, a message with bite, a message that demands an unconditional surrender. Let us therefore walk wisely, speak boldly, and trust that our great God will use our faithful, salty, gracious words to draw citizens of this dark world into His marvelous kingdom of light.