Salt in What You Say

The last instruction of the household list belongs at the top of this chapter, and it is the one the chapter division nearly hides.

Masters, supply your slaves with what is right and fair, since you know that you also have a Master in heaven.

Paul has just been telling slaves how to work. Here is the other half, and it is addressed to the man who owned them. Give them what is right and fair, he says, and the reason is not compassion or good management. It is that the master is standing in front of somebody too. The word is the same one on both sides of the sentence, and a man who reads it carefully has just been told where he sits in the arrangement.

Then the letter turns outward.

Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful, as you pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains.

Compare what Paul asks them to pray for with what he would probably ask for himself. He is in prison. He does not ask them to pray that the door of the prison opens. He asks for a door for the word, which is a different door entirely, and then he asks that when it opens he would say the thing clearly. A man in chains asking for clarity rather than release is either very odd or very convinced.

Act wisely toward outsiders, redeeming the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

Outsiders is a plain word for the people who are not in the church, and the instruction about them is about behavior before it is about words. He says act wisely first, and only then gets to what they say. He does not tell this church to go and start conversations, and he does not tell them to keep their heads down either; he tells them to live in a way that makes the question worth asking, and to have something ready for when it comes.

Gracious and salted is an odd combination and both halves are needed. Speech that is only gracious goes soft and says nothing anybody remembers. Speech that is only salty is the kind that wins arguments and loses people. Paul wants both at once, and the purpose he gives is that they would know how to answer everyone, which assumes questions are coming.

That last phrase does a quiet thing to this church. A congregation Paul has never visited, in a town he has never seen, is told to expect to be asked. Not to go out and argue. To be ready when somebody wants to know.