2Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. 3At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the Word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison — 4that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak.
Colossians 4:2-6
5Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. 6Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.[1]
Christ Has Come: The Promised King & His Gift of Peace (Advent 2025) – Refresh & Restore | A JustKeithHarris.com Podcast
Greetings Sojourners!
Whew! I blinked, and 2024 is over!
I don’t know about y’all, but last fall and early winter were so busy. We’ve been traipsing back and forth across the South following my daughter and the high school band, writing this past year’s Advent guide (hopefully you got to follow along with the “Good News of Great Joy” readings in Luke), preaching a revival, serving the Lord at Christ Community and wherever else opportunity has arisen, started writing the #dailyPSALMSchallenge posts, and managed to work teaching school, too. Busy, busy, busy. It had been my intention to be finished with our Colossians study by now, but I am finding the older I get that things get done when they are done. Additionally, things worth doing well are worth working on until they are ready (even if I was ready to get it done before it was complete).
This closing exhortation (Bible word that is a mixture of warning, encouragement, and coming alongside someone to help them) of Paul’s here in Colossians 4:2-6 has been working on me throughout my busyness. The way I study these days – whether to write or preach or teach or whatever – is to work through the cross-references for a passage in my notebook, and I carry that notebook with me most places. I study and ponder on the passage and the verses throughout Scripture that give its context. I dwell with the passage. I meditate on it. Really, it is not as academic or spiritual as that sounds but more like the action of a crockpot where I simmer in the passage and its connecting verses until it’s done and ready to serve. I said Colossians 4:2-6 has been working on me; maybe the better way to say it is God has been working it into my life.
To understand this closing exhortation, you need to think of it in the context of the whole letter of Colossians. The first two chapters focus on doctrine, teachings about Jesus, His gospel, and the eternal life He gives, that the church at Colossae was missing. False teachers were coming in, taking advantage of the gaps in their knowledge and seeking to fill them with dangerous teachings and practices meant to lead them away from Christ. The last two chapters focus on putting that doctrine into practice. The church at Colossae needed to learn what it is to put our focus on Christ, namely taking off and putting to death the sin that belonged to their old life and putting on Christ, being adorned in and with Him, and living as His Spirit and Word direct. The biggest part of that application is where Paul helps the church at Colossae – and us – to be adorned in Christ in all areas of our lives, marriages, families, vocations, and so on. This exhortation fits at the tail end of how to be adorned in Christ in all areas of our lives.
As I said earlier, an exhortation is a kind of like coming alongside someone to help them. Picture being on a battlefield and your brother or sister soldier injures their leg and cannot walk on their own. You don’t just leave them there and save yourself. No, you reach down, grab their arm and put it across your shoulder, and you become a leg for them. They cannot walk, but y’all together can. This is recognition that in this spiritual battle, those who belong to the Kingdom of God lift one another up. In this case, Paul is writing to them from his place on the battle field in prison to lift them up and encourage them to keep the faith as they go through life and to lift up one another.
You might read this and be startled by the imagery of battle, but that is the reality of living in Christ for His Kingdom while we still live among the kingdoms of this world. Much of Paul’s letter to Ephesus mirrors aspects of the letter to Colossae. Where we have the exhortation in Colossians 4:2-6, this portion of Ephesians describes the need for putting on the “whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil” (Ephesians 6:11) and recognizes that we are wrestling – literally fighting – against an enemy that is not of this world – not “against flesh and blood, but against the rulers and authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).
We will walk through three ways in which we can lift one another up as we are on the Church’s mission, through prayer, preaching, and practice.
Prayer is Imperative to the Mission (vv. 2-4)
Prayer is literally the most we can do. A lot of times folks are willing to neglect prayer so that they can do something or make something – like praying or serving or whatever, but when you really get down and think about it, what more can you do than take your petitions to the almighty God of the universe?
That’s not a rhetorical question: what more can you do than take things in prayer to God Most High? The obvious and only answer is a resounding “no”.
Look at the way the author of Hebrews describes prayer in Hebrews 4:16:
Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need….
and again in Hebrews 7:25:
Consequently, He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.
Prayer is an opportunity to approach the throne of God with the same level of confidence of a toddler approaching a parent’s bed in the middle of the night, scared from some lurking shadow or bad dream. That baby knows they will not experience reproach even though they rouse the sleeping parent in the middle of the night. They know they will find mercy and grace, love and peace. We get to approach God’s throne knowing He will not reprove or rebuke but dispense the mercy and grace in our “time of need”.
Furthermore, Jesus not only meets our needs but saves “to the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him”. Read that again – “to the uttermost”, meaning completely and at all times. Also, if we aren’t careful, we can miss that last part of Hebrews 7:25; Jesus “always lives” – ALWAYS LIVES – “to make intercession” for His people, “those who draw near to God through Him”. That phrase “make intercession” means that Jesus is appealing to the Father on our behalf, to give us mercy and grace in our time of need.
That’s what Paul is telling the Colossian church – and us to do: “Continue steadfastly in prayer”. It is clear that Paul wants them, and us, to pray for each other and him, but he is specific in how he wants them to do it.
First, he tells them to be “watchful” in prayer “with thanksgiving”. The idea of being watchful there reflects Ephesians 6:18 and his command to the church at Ephesus to “keep alert [in prayer] with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints”; to be “watchful” or “keep alert” in “perseverance” in prayer means to be alert to the needs of people around you and to lift them up specifically to God rather than being vague and unfocused. Sometimes we are tempted to almost have a prayer genealogy of be with so and so and be with this one and be with that one, never pleading with God (supplication) for what they need or seeking God on their behalf (intercession) in their time of need or even peril. We should be aware of what’s going on in our brothers’ and sisters’ lives – or at least aware something is going on – and approaching the “throne of grace” for them. This should be done “with thanksgiving” because 1)we can already be thankful that we have a place to go where we can be confident to receive help and 2)that we know God wants to dispense mercy and grace in the time of need.
Second, Paul asks them to pray for him and gives a specific prayer request. Keep in mind that Paul penned this letter from prison. He could have easily asked them to pray that he be released or that God would supernaturally get him out of prison; many of the apostles and early church folks experienced all of that. But Paul didn’t. He was confident that he was right where God had him. His prayer request was for God to “open…a door for the Word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which [he was] in prison”; he wanted God to provide an opportunity for preaching the gospel where he was.
This is a big deal because it differs from how we pray sometimes. We often pray to be delivered from our trying times – and there is nothing inherently wrong with that. As I said, Paul could have prayed for that as well. He didn’t though, and that reveals something to us that reflects how Jesus told us to pray in His model prayer in Matthew 6:10 – “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” While we pray to be delivered, as Paul obviously desired in Philemon 22, let us pray, like Paul, to have an opportunity for the gospel in the midst of the situation we are in, right where God has us. And Paul is also specific to his desire for this gospel opportunity: that he “may make it clear”. He wanted them not only to pray that the gospel would be preached but that it be preached clearly and people understand it (Nehemiah 8:8). Just as we should be “watchful” in prayer, attentive and not vague, for our brothers and sisters in Christ, we should be specific in our prayer for people to hear the gospel – that God would save specific people through the preaching of His Word. If we pray for specific people to hear the gospel and get saved, it’s possible we will finally be alert to the fact that God may have placed them on our minds and us in their lives that we may be the one to share the gospel with them, which leads us to our next point.
Preaching is Imperative to the Mission (vv. 3-4)
Preaching is important. You might have heard this quote (falsely attributed to St. Francis of Assisi), “Preach the gospel wherever you go, and – if necessary – use words.” Well, if being clear with the gospel is how Paul says he “ought to speak”, words are definitely necessary. Paul’s language here reminds me of Nehemiah 8:8, the verse that drives how I seek to write about or preach/teach the Word:
They read from the book, from the Law of God, clearly, and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.
At this point in Nehemiah, the captives had returned home after Babylonian captivity and had to rebuild walls, houses, and essentially their lives as a people. They had just brought out the “book”, the Law of God, and read it in one sitting. They could have called it a day and thought that they had accomplished something, but they didn’t. Ezra had a group of guys ready to help the people understand “the reading”.
This is important in understanding the sort of preaching and teaching Paul was asking to get to do. This was not one-off revival preaching where you show up and visit a place, preaching a few times or even once and going on your way. This was not a Sunday morning proclamation that can be heard and promptly discarded to take up our real lives when we leave. No, this is discipleship. This is answering the call of the Great Commission to “make disciples” (Matthew 28:19). Paul is wanting God to open a door for the Word to be taught, people to be saved, and for opportunity to be given to teach them similarly to what Paul is doing in the letter to the Colossian church. Remember what Paul prayed for the Colossian church in Colossians 1:9-10?
And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God….
He had prayed that for them, and now, as part of bearing fruit of the life of Christ, they are to live out their faith and pray for others in the same way, which takes us to the practical, real nature of our last point.
Practicing Our Faith in Real Life is Imperative to the Mission (vv. 5-6)
This last exhortation is meant to be practical and affect the way they live their lives in Colossae. We have talked many times about how easy it is to do these things within our local churches but that it is another thing entirely to carry them out in the real world. It is Paul’s intent here to help them see that they were never meant to keep it within their local church family but to carry it out, that making disciples was never meant to stay where we are or where we are comfortable but to be for “all nations” (Matthew 28:19) – all people everywhere, wherever we are going (Matthew 28:18). To do that, we need to be careful how we carry ourselves and use our time wisely.
I want you to notice how carefully I am being in my wording here. I said be careful how we carry ourselves and not act right. This is not about acting right or acting at all; it’s about living the life that Christ has given you. It’s about all of life being adorned in Christ. Just as we looked at in the last few studies in Colossians, we do not only need to be adorned in Christ in our marriages, in our families, and in our vocations; we need our lives to be adorned in Christ when we go out into the world. Just as we would not walk out into public naked but rather adorned in an appropriate level of clothing, we need not walk out unadorned of Christ.
As I said, this is not an act. We are to walk “in wisdom”, meaning we live the life God has called us to how He called us to live it. The proverbs are extremely helpful for this. In our time in the Daily Wisdom Challenge back in October, we talked about that a lot, and much of what we looked at in Proverbs was concerned with, just as Paul is here, our speech. Here are a few practical applications for how we can use our words and conversations to point people to Jesus:
- “making the best use of the time” – Be mindful of the time you have. Sometimes we waste time talking about unimportant things because we are unwilling to make an awkward transition in a conversation or because we might be afraid to broach a subject folks might be uncomfortable talking about (namely the gospel and even mentioning Jesus). We do not, however, have unlimited time to wait for whatever we think the right moment is. I read an anonymous quote on social media a while back that has plagued my thoughts and impacted my life in big ways: “Time is the only currency we spend without ever knowing the balance.” If God has put you in a position to share Him with others and put folks on your heart to share His gospel with, the time is now. We are not guaranteed another opportunity and tomorrow is not promised. Let’s get busy living in and for Him.
- “Let your speech always be gracious” – Our speech should be characterized with grace. Now, this is the part where folks begin excusing their ugly talk by explaining that folks deserve this or that. I will agree that there are times when harsher speech is necessary, but God considered this when He chose the words Paul would use here. He said “gracious” meaning that the content and intent and substance of our speech, in the context here to “outsiders” but also to our church family, should be grace – undeserved favor. This should not be something we are unfamiliar with because if we are in Christ we have received grace. We have also just talked about how when we go to Him in prayer He has grace in our time of need. Here he reminds us of the grace we have received and tells us to extend it to others in how we talk to them.
- “Let your speech…be…seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.” Salt doesn’t mean the same thing for us today as it did to Paul’s original audience. Salt is a preservative. It could be used to keep meat from spoiling. The idea here is that our speech should be a benefit – a blessing – to others and be used of God for good, echoing Jesus’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount that we are to be the “salt of the earth” (Matthew 5:13). In the context of Jesus’s teaching, salt that has lost its “saltiness” is to be thrown out and trampled underfoot, meaning that speech that is not good and edifying is worthless and once again echoes Ephesians, specifically Ephesians 4:29 that tells us not to let “unwholesome talk” come from our mouths but only speech that is “helpful for building others up according to their needs”.
How we talk matters. Elementary kiddos are often taught the adage about sticks and stones being able to damage but “words can never hurt me”. By the time we are adults, we realize that is a lie. Words hurt. They wound us deeply. Furthermore, we often mean our words to be mean. But this is a deeper issue than conversation or its substance. It’s a bigger deal than merely being willing to talk about good, gospel things or to be nice when speaking. The content of our speech ultimately reveals whether or not we are in Christ or of the world. Jesus Himself said “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34, Luke 6:45) to reference that speech is fruit that reveals whether we are good trees (saved; in Christ) or bad trees (lost; of the world).
Wrapping Up
This little section seems like it is light and simply a final exhortation, but when you take it in context, Paul is getting real with them. The Christian life goes beyond religion and definitely beyond the fringes of our lives, relegated to weekends and some evenings of our weeks. When he taught them, and us, that we are to put on Christ and have our lives adorned with Him – our whole lives, he wanted us to see how Christ as Lord commands our life and desires to see us minister to the lost world around us as well as to each other.
Paul wrote this letter from prison and sought to exhort, to come alongside and help, the Colossian church. He wanted to reach out and disciple them, and us, so that we not be hoodwinked by false teaching that replaces relationship with Christ with religious distractions and busyness. At the same time, he sought to be ministered to by them, asking them to pray for him to be able to live the life Jesus had called him to in his own time of need. How about us?
If you are a member of a local church (if you are saved, you are meant to be), your relationship with Christ is to impact your real, everyday life and the lives of your brothers and sisters in your faith family are meant to intersect and interact with one another. We are not meant to do this alone. We are Sojourners, but rather than being a heavenly hobo traipsing through this world alone we are pilgrims journeying together and making disciples as we go.
Consider how you can pray specifically for your brothers and sisters in Christ. Pray for your pastors and church leaders. Pray for the lost you know. Pray for someone to have the opportunity to share the gospel with them and for the Spirit of God to work on their hearts and help them understand. Pray that if God has called you to share the gospel with them that he will open a door for the Word and give you words seasoned with salt rather than merely salty speech.
Consider how you can be a beacon of God’s Word where God has planted you.
Consider how the teachings of God’s Word are (or are not) showing up in your real, everyday lives and repent where necessary. Consider this exhortation from Paul and exhortation from me as well. I may be one of your pastors if you are a member of Christ Community, but whether I am or not, let me come alongside you and help lift you up. Be encouraged by the counsel in this Bible study and not beat down. If you recognize that there are things in God’s Word that need to be changed in your life, consider that an opportunity to grow closer to Him. Know this, dear Sojourner, that I am praying for you as specifically as I can and have hope that God is not done working on us.
[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Col 4:2-6.
Just Keith Harris 