“Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt” (Col. 4:66Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man. (Colossians 4:6)). These are plain statements of Scripture — statements found in immediate connection with some of the most elevated doctrines of inspiration. It will be found that where those plain statements are not allowed their full weight on the conscience, the higher truths are not enjoyed. I can neither enjoy nor walk worthy of my “high vocation” if I am indulging in “foolish talking and jesting” (Eph. 5:44Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient: but rather giving of thanks. (Ephesians 5:4)).
I quite admit the need of carefully avoiding all affected sanctimoniousness (a pretense of holiness) or fleshly restraint. The sanctimoniousness of nature is fully as bad as its levity, if not worse. But why exhibit either the one or the other? The gospel gives us something far better. Instead of affected sanctimoniousness, the gospel gives us real sanctity; instead of levity, it gives us holy cheerfulness. There is no need to affect anything, for if I am feeding upon Christ, all is reality, without any effort. The moment there is effort, it is all perfect weakness. If I say I must talk about Christ, it becomes terrible bondage, and I exhibit my own weakness and folly. On the other hand, if my soul is in communion, all is natural and easy, for “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” It is said of a certain little insect that it always exhibits the color of the leaf on which it feeds. So it is exactly with the Christian. It is very easy to tell on what he is feeding.
Our Habit of Conversation
But it may be said by some that “we cannot be always talking about Christ.” I reply that just in proportion as we are led by an ungrieved Spirit will all our thoughts and words be occupied about Christ. If we are children of God, we will be occupied with Him throughout eternity. Why not now? We are as fully separated from the world now as we shall be then, but we do not always realize it, because we do not walk in the Spirit.
It is quite true that in entering into the matter of a Christian’s habit of conversation, one is taking low ground, but then, it is needful ground. It would be much happier to keep on the high ground, but we fail in this, and it is a mercy that Scripture and the Spirit of God meet us in our failure. Scripture tells us we are seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:66And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: (Ephesians 2:6)); it also tells us not to steal. It may be said that it is low ground to talk to heavenly men about stealing, yet it is necessary. The Spirit of God knew that it was not sufficient to tell us that we are seated in heaven; He also tells us how to conduct ourselves on earth, and our experience of the former will be evidenced by our exhibition of the latter. My walk here proves how much I enter into my place there.
Hence, I may find in the Christian’s walk a very legitimate ground on which to deal with him about the actual condition of his soul before God. If his walk is low, carnal, and worldly, it must be evident that he is not realizing his high and holy position as a member of Christ’s body, and a temple of God.
Wherefore, to all who are prone to indulge in habits of trifling conversation, I would affectionately but solemnly say, Look well to the general state of your spiritual health. Bad symptoms show themselves —certain evidences of a disease working within—a disease, it may be, more or less affecting the very springs of vitality. Beware how you allow this disease to make progress. Go at once to the Great Physician and partake of His precious balm. Your whole spiritual constitution may be deranged, and nothing can restore its tone, save the healing virtues of what He has to give you.
The Beauty of Christ
A fresh view of the excellency, preciousness and beauty of Christ is the only thing to lift the soul up out of a low condition. All our barrenness arises from our having let Christ slip. It is not that He has let us slip. No; blessed be His name, this cannot be. But practically, we have let Him slip, and our tone has become so low that it is at times difficult to recognize anything of the Christian in us, but the mere name.
We have stopped short in our practical career. We have not entered, as we should, into the meaning of Christ’s “cup and baptism”; we have failed in seeking fellowship with Him in His sufferings, death and resurrection. We have sought the result of all these, as wrought out in Him, but we have not entered experimentally into them, and hence our melancholy decline from which nothing can recover us, but getting more into the fullness of Christ.
C. H. Mackintosh (adapted)