The words which come skipping off your tongue have a flavor. You might think of your tongue as an organ that merely receives flavor, but Paul would have you know that the tongue gives flavor by both the words and the manner of the words spoken. It’s possible to speak true words falsely, and false words truly. You can tell a truth in order to manipulate. You can also tell a lie for virtuous reasons (like the Hebrew midwives). You can speak gentle words with a harsh heart. You can also speak stern words with gentleness.
Your words matter and the manner you speak them matters. What Paul exhorts you to is speech full of grace. God fills you, entirely without your help and sometimes against your opinion, with grace. Your duty is to work out what God has worked in. You must live in accordance with the fact of His saving grace towards you, not with any of your personal feelings about it. Nowhere is this more evidenced than in your speech, for “out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.” At times you must speak tender words with toughness; other times tough words with tenderness are called for. This grace-filled speech, Paul says, is to be salty. The flavor of your words are to be salty.
Not sweet. Not spicy. Not bitter. Not sour. But salty. Why? To the Greeks, salt was equated with wit. Paul has in view the need for Christians to be sharp-witted like potent salt. The Spirit grants us wisdom to choose fitting witty words. However to the Jew, salt was to be offered with each meat offering, signifying the feast the worshipper enjoyed with God (Lev. 2:13). Paul links the words of our mouth sacrificial worship. Your words and how you say them are an offering to the Lord. The question is, are you words salty?
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