Our words should be always with grace, and prove themselves such by ministering good to others, "grace unto the hearers" (Eph. 4:2929Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. (Ephesians 4:29)). This, however, will be many times in the pungency of admonition or rebuke, and at other times with severity or decision, or even with indignation and zeal. In this character they will be seasoned with salt. And having these fine qualities, being gracious and yet salted, they will be such as will bear their own virtues, that we may know how to answer every man.
The Lord Jesus, among all others, illustrated this form of moral perfection. He knew how to answer every man with words which always were with grace or to the sours profit, but at times seasoned, or seasoned highly, with salt.
In answering inquiries, He did not so much aim at satisfying them, as at reaching the conscience or the condition of those who asked them.
In His silence as well as in His words, when He had to stand before the Jew or the Gentile and at the last before the Priests or Nate or Herod, we can trace full moral beauty and perfection. He was One among the sons of men who knew when to keep silent and when to speak.
Great variety in His style presents itself to us in all this. Sometimes He is gentle, sometimes peremptory, sometimes He reasons, sometimes He rebukes at once, and sometimes conducts calm reasoning up to the heated point of awful condemnation and judgment.
He knows the moral of the scene before Him. "By Him actions were weighed" in their value as before God, and His words as well as His doings answer them accordingly.
Matt. 15 is a chapter in which this perfection is specially shown us. In the course of the action there, the Lord is called to answer Pharisees, the multitude, Peter, the Syrophenician, and the disciples again and again in their mistakes, and stupidity and selfishness. His tone of rebuke and of reasoning, of calm, patient teaching, of deep, wise and gracious training of the soul are all precious and admirable in their place and occasion.
And let me ask, is there not a fitness in its not being said of the Lord in Luke 2 That He was either teaching or learning, though it is said that He was hearing and asking questions? It seems that there is. To have taught would not have been in season. To have learned, would not have been in full fidelity to the light, the eminent and brighter light which He knew He carried in Himself, for He was wiser than His teachers, and had more understanding than the ancients. We may surely say of Him, I do not mean as God but as man, He was One "filled with wisdom.”
But here again we get the grace of which that Scripture speaks, "Let your speech be always with grace." For of this child, in the temple with the doctors, we read that He was "strong in spirit, filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him." In perfection of grace, He knew how to use the fullness of wisdom that was in Him. He is, therefore, not presented to us as either teaching or learning. Elihu, the young man in the book of Job, comes to remembrance here. Elihu was silent while "years"
were before him, and while "multitude of days" was speaking. But he knew that he had the Spirit of God, and he must assert the truth through the Spirit, though he waited until the proper time to present it.
Words of Truth