Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.
– Colossians 4:5–6
Wow, what an exhortation! To govern, to guide our interactions today and every day with people who don’t know Jesus. Those are outsiders, those who are outside the faith. So just think about the people in your sphere of influence, some that you know maybe closely… Family members, close friends or coworkers you spend a lot of time with or neighbors. Then just think about people you’ll interact with today that you don’t even know… Maybe total strangers who may be outside the faith.
Colossians 4:5–6 Is a Guide to Interacting with Outsiders
The Bible calls us in Colossians 4:5 to walk in wisdom toward them, making the best use of the time. What does that mean? Well, there’s a lot that it means we don’t have time to dive into. But at the very least, doesn’t this mean that we want to make the most of every interaction with people who are outside the faith to point them to Jesus?
That doesn’t mean we necessarily share the gospel with them. Although I would encourage us to weave gospel threads into the fabric of our everyday conversations. Radical just released a resource along those lines. If you just search Gospel Threads, it’s my attempt to help you maximize conversations. Just everyday conversations with threads of the gospel in a way that puts Colossians 4:5 into practice. It helps you to make the best use of the time.
But also not just in weaving threads of the gospel into the fabric of our everyday conversations, but to show the character of Christ in our everyday interactions. To make the most of time with people who are outside the faith. To show them the life and the love of Jesus in our interactions with them. This leads to our words specifically in verse 6, Let your speech always be gracious. Oh, just think about that phrase. For you to speak all day long with grace. That people would walk away from any interaction with you, having heard words from you or even seen things you post on social media and think, well, that was gracious.
Colossians 4:5–6 Commands Us to ‘Flavor’ Our Conversations
Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt. Just think of the difference between food that doesn’t have any flavor and then food that has flavor. It’s like, well, I enjoyed the latter a lot more than the former. For there to be flavor in your conversation that is pleasing, not that you have to spice up a conversation, but that people would walk away from every interaction with you having been encouraged, built up, helped, cared for, loved.
Season your conversations with salt so that you may know how to answer each person. This implies that people notice something different about you and are asking questions about why you live the way you live, why you talk the way you talk. So let’s just pray these verses right now over all of our interactions today with outsiders, with people who are outside the faith. God, we pray that you would help us to walk in wisdom today toward every outsider, every person outside of faith in Christ today. We pray that you would help us to make the best use of the time that we spend with others today.
Help us to be salt and light with our character, with our actions, with our demeanor and with our words. God, help us to speak all day long in ways that are gracious. Help us speak in ways that are seasoned with salt, in ways that draw people to you, in ways that point people to you.
This Verse Encourages Us to Respond to Others with Grace
Lord, we do pray you would help us to weave the threads of the gospel into the fabric of our conversations today with outsiders, that we would speak about you and who you are and humanity as those made in the image of God, that we would build up others as men and women made in your images, people who are loved by you and separated from you by sin and help us, God, to speak today about our love for Jesus and the difference he has made in our lives, the salvation he has brought in our lives, that he will bring in others’ lives and anyone’s life who trusts in him and what it means to walk by faith and to live by faith in Jesus.
God, we pray that our conversations today would be seasoned with these gospel truths all day long and God, we pray that you would draw outsiders to faith today through our lives, that you would draw people around us who don’t know you right now to faith in you that they might not be outsiders anymore and God, we pray this not just for outsiders right around us. We pray this for outsiders around the world who don’t have Christians around them who are able to share the gospel with them.
Prayer for the Qazilbash People
God, we pray for the Qazilbash people of Turkey and Pakistan. There are hundreds of thousands of them with no known followers of Jesus among them. God, we pray that you would raise up laborers to walk in wisdom toward the Qazilbash people. Raise laborers to make the best use of the time with the Qazilbash people, to speak with grace, with the grace of Christ, with the Gospel of Christ among the Qazilbash people, that they might be saved, God. We pray for the salvation of the Qazilbash people, that they might be brought into your family through faith in Jesus is Lord.
God, please bring that about. Lord, we pray for everyone who’s working on the front lines of unreached people in the world. Help them to walk in wisdom toward outsiders around them. Help them to make the best use of the time. That their speech might always be gracious and seasoned with salt. That they might be able to point people to Jesus. We pray this over our lives. God, we pray this over their lives. We pray this for the spread of your grace and your glory in the world through us as your people. In Jesus’ name, according to Colossians 4:5–6. Amen.
David Platt serves as a Lead Pastor for McLean Bible Church. He is also the Founder of Radical, an organization that makes Jesus known among the nations.
David received his B.A. from the University of Georgia and M.Div., Th.M., and Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Some of his published works include Radical, Radical Together, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Don’t Hold Back, and How to Read the Bible.
He lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area with his wife and children.
