Walk in Wisdom

Scripture: Colossians 4:2–6

Read Colossians 4:2–6 before proceeding. Keep your Bible open throughout this session.

Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders, making the most of the opportunities.

Colossians 4:5

Be Devoted to Prayer

Be devoted to prayer, keeping alert in it with thanksgiving. (4:2)

The household table closed; the letter now turns toward its conclusion. Before Paul moves to the personal greetings, he gives the Colossians one last cluster of instructions: on prayer, on the apostolic mission, and on how the believers are to conduct themselves toward those outside the faith. The passage is brief, only five verses, but each one carries weight, and the cluster is one of the most quoted in the captivity letters.

Paul begins with prayer. Be devoted to prayer. The Greek verb is proskartereō: to persist in, to devote oneself to, to hold fast to with steady determination. The same verb appears in Acts 2 to describe the early Church’s devotion to the apostles’ teaching, to the breaking of bread, and to the prayers. Prayer is to be the believer’s steady occupation, not a sporadic activity to which he returns when difficulty drives him to it. The Greek tense is the present continuous: keep on being devoted. This is not a momentary command but the description of a habit Paul wants the Colossians to maintain.

What is striking is what Paul does not say. He does not give the Colossians techniques. He does not prescribe particular postures or formulas or times of day. He simply says: be devoted to prayer. The Christian life is a life lived in conversation with the God who has spoken first in his Word. Prayer is the response to that speaking. It is the breath of the believer’s daily relationship with the Lord who has addressed him. Lutheran theology has been careful here. Prayer is not a means by which the believer twists God’s arm to do what God would not otherwise do. Prayer is the believer’s exercise of his standing as one to whom God has spoken, and to whom God has invited the response of prayer. The Father has bidden his children to ask. They ask. The asking is part of how the relationship works.

The Lutheran tradition has prized the daily disciplines of prayer in a particular way. Luther’s morning and evening prayers in the Small Catechism are simple petitions that open and close the believer’s day under the cross of Christ. The Litany, the Lord’s Prayer, the prayers of the Divine Service: all of these forms the Lutheran heritage offers the believer as a scaffold for the steady prayer Paul commands here. Be devoted to prayer, Paul says, and the means of that devotion have been given. The believer who wants to obey this verse does not need to invent his prayer life from nothing; the Church’s heritage provides the language and the rhythm. He only needs to use what has been provided.

Keeping Alert with Thanksgiving

Keeping alert in it with thanksgiving. (4:2)

The prayer Paul has in mind has two distinguishing marks: it is alert, and it is with thanksgiving.

Keeping alert. The Greek verb is grēgoreō: to stay awake, to be alert, to keep watch. The word is the same one Jesus uses in the Gospels when he urges his disciples to watch, both in the practical sense (stay awake in the garden of Gethsemane, when Peter, James, and John kept falling asleep) and in the eschatological sense (watch for the master’s return, because you do not know the hour). Both senses are in play in Paul’s command. The believer’s prayer is to be alert prayer, attentive to what is going on around him and within him, not the half-aware mumbling of one who is going through the motions. And the believer’s prayer is to be eschatologically alert prayer: prayer that knows the day of the Lord is coming, that the times are urgent, that the believer is not asleep in his comfortable present but watching for the consummation that has not yet arrived.

Watchful prayer is not anxious prayer. The believer is not commanded to scan the horizon with dread. He is commanded to keep his eyes open, to notice what is happening in his own heart, in his own neighborhood, in his own time, and to bring it all into the conversation with the Lord. The man who is praying watchfully sees more of his own life than the man who is not. He sees opportunities for love that he would otherwise have missed. He sees temptations forming that he would otherwise have stumbled into. He sees the needs of others that he would otherwise have been too distracted to register. Prayer wakes the believer up. Watchful prayer is the alert mode of Christian existence.

With thanksgiving. And once again, thanksgiving. The Greek word is eucharistia, which gives us the word Eucharist and which Paul has been pressing through the letter: overflowing with thankfulness, be thankful, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Thanksgiving is the keynote of the letter, and Paul cannot mention prayer without mentioning it. The believer who prays without thanks is praying in a way that is somehow askew. The believer who gives thanks discovers that thanksgiving is itself a form of prayer, perhaps the deepest form. The two are not in tension; they belong together. The alert prayer of the watchful Christian is also the thankful prayer of the grateful Christian. He sees what is going on, and he gives thanks for what God is doing.

Lutheran piety has been built on this combination. The daily services of the Church have prayers of intercession alongside prayers of thanksgiving. The Lord’s Supper itself was called the Eucharist by the ancient church, for the thanksgiving that surrounds it. What defines the Supper is not our thanks but Christ’s gift of his body and blood; the Apology is careful to distinguish the sacrament, in which God gives, from the sacrifice of thanksgiving, in which we respond (Ap XXIV). Yet the gift draws out the thanks. The believer who comes to the table of the Lord comes with thanksgiving, and the same thanksgiving infuses his daily prayer through the week. Keeping alert in it with thanksgiving describes not only an instruction in this verse but the basic posture of the Lutheran Christian’s life with God.

Pray for Us Too

At the same time pray for us too, that God may open a door for the message so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may make it known as I should. (4:3–4)

Paul now extends the command to prayer with a particular request. Pray for us too. The plural, us, covers Paul and Timothy, and probably Epaphras as well, who has been with Paul in his imprisonment. The apostle, whose own ministry has been the means by which the gospel has reached the Colossians and so many others, asks for the Colossians’ prayer for him. The request is striking in its humility. The apostle does not stand outside the body of prayer; he depends on it. He is in chains, and he wants the Colossians praying for him.

The content of the requested prayer is specific. That God may open a door for the message so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ. Two key images. A door for the message: an opportunity, an opening, an occasion when the apostolic preaching can go forth where it has not yet gone. Paul has used the door-image elsewhere; in First Corinthians he speaks of a door of great opportunity that stands wide open for him in Ephesus, but there are many opponents. The image is of God’s providential opening of opportunities for the gospel, and of the corresponding prayer of the Church that God would keep doing so. The Colossians, even from their position as a small congregation in a Lycus valley town, are to pray that doors would open across the empire and beyond for the apostolic word.

So that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ. And the content of what would go through the open door is named. The mystery of Christ is the same mystery Paul has been pressing throughout the letter, the mystery kept hidden from ages and generations and now revealed, whose name is Christ in you, the hope of glory. This is what the apostolic mission is about. Not the building of religious infrastructure, not the propagation of a moral system, not the spread of a culture, but the making known of the mystery, which is Christ.

For which I am in chains. And here Paul names again where he is. The chains have been in the background throughout the letter; here they surface explicitly. Paul is in chains for the mystery of Christ, meaning his proclamation of that mystery is the reason for his imprisonment. The same gospel that has reached the Colossians and given them their hope of glory is the gospel that has cost the apostle his liberty. The cost has not silenced him; he is, in fact, writing the very letter we are reading from his prison cell. But the cost is real. The Colossians are to pray for the apostle’s continued faithfulness even from chains.

Pray that I may make it known as I should. The final phrase is touching. Paul, the apostle whose preaching has shaped the Church across the Mediterranean, asks the Colossians to pray that he might make it known, that his speaking would be plain, accessible, comprehensible to those who hear. The Greek verb is phaneroō, to make manifest, to bring to light. The apostle wants to be clear, not impressive. He wants the gospel to land, not his rhetoric to dazzle. The Colossians are to pray for this kind of clarity in his preaching.

This is a model for the prayer of the Church for its ministers. Pray for the open door. Pray for the gospel’s content to be the substance of the preaching. Pray for the cost to be borne faithfully. Pray for clarity. These are the things the apostle himself wanted; these are the things every faithful preacher needs; these are the things the Church does well to keep praying for the ministers it sends out and the ministers it supports.

Walk in Wisdom Toward Outsiders

Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders, making the most of the opportunities. (4:5)

Paul turns now from the apostolic mission to the everyday conduct of the believers themselves. Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders. The NET says conduct yourselves; Paul’s verb is literally walk (peripateite), the same verb he has used for the whole shape of the Christian life (1:10; 2:6; 3:7). Paul’s phrase for the outsiders is tous exō, ‘those outside’: those who are not part of the believing community, those who do not yet share the faith of the Colossians. The believers’ conduct toward such people is to be characterized by wisdom, sophia, the practical discernment of how to act in particular situations. The Christian is not to be naive in his dealings with outsiders, nor is he to be hostile. He is to be wise: knowing what to say and what not to say, when to speak and when to be silent, how to live among neighbors who do not yet know the Lord.

The Lutheran tradition has thought of this in terms of the two kingdoms: the spiritual kingdom of the Church and the temporal kingdom of civil order. The believer lives in both. In the spiritual kingdom he is at home, among brothers and sisters in Christ. In the temporal kingdom he is a citizen and neighbor, working and trading and living alongside people who do not share his deepest convictions. Wisdom is what the Christian needs to live well in the second of these kingdoms without becoming captive to it. He is not to withdraw from the world; that would be the monastic impulse, which Lutheran theology has historically resisted. He is to live in the world wisely, faithful to his Lord, attentive to his neighbor, neither separated from outsiders nor swallowed by them.

Making the most of the opportunities. The Greek phrase is exagorazomenoi ton kairon, literally redeeming the time, or buying up the time. The image is from the marketplace. The believer is to buy up the time that is given to him, to make the most of the opportunities that present themselves, not to let the time of his life slip through his fingers wasted. Kairos is the Greek word for time in its qualitative sense: the right moment, the appointed season, the opportunity that, once gone, cannot be recovered. That is why the NET can render it the opportunities. The believer is to be alert to such moments, ready to use them well.

This is not a command to be relentlessly productive. Paul is not urging the Colossians to maximize their output. He is urging them to recognize that the time of their lives is a gift, not to be squandered, and that within that time there will be particular moments (conversations, opportunities for love, occasions for witness) that will not come again. The wise believer recognizes these moments and uses them well. The believer who is not alert to them lets them pass and never knows what he has missed.

Lutheran piety has held this insight in tension with its strong sense that the Christian is not justified by his productivity. The believer is not saved by how well he uses his time; he is saved by Christ alone. But the believer who has been saved is then free to make the most of the time God has given him, not under the lash of legal demand but in the freedom of grateful response. The verse is, in this Lutheran reading, descriptive of the natural movement of a redeemed heart. The Christian who has received what he has received does not waste the days that remain; he uses them well, because they are days held in love by the Lord who gave them.

Speech Seasoned with Salt

Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you should answer everyone. (4:6)

The last verse of the section turns to the believer’s speech. Let your speech always be gracious. The Greek word is charis, grace, the same word Paul has been using throughout for the gift-quality of the gospel. The believer’s speech is to bear the same character as the gospel that has reshaped him. It is to be gracious: generous in its tone, kind in its substance, free of cruelty and contempt. The Christian who has been forgiven much should not be a person whose speech betrays the forgiveness he has received. Where his words are harsh, where his tongue is sharp, where his comments are barbed and dismissive, something has gone wrong between his speech and his gospel.

Seasoned with salt. The Greek verb is artyō: to season, the way food is seasoned for flavor and preservation. Salt does two things in cooking. It adds flavor: the bland becomes interesting, the heavy becomes light, the various elements of a dish come into balance. And it preserves: what would have rotted is held back from decay by the work of the salt. The Christian’s speech is to do both. It is to be interesting, flavorful, not bland or dull. And it is to be preservative, keeping conversation from rotting into gossip, cynicism, cruelty, or empty noise.

Some interpreters have heard in seasoned with salt an echo of the Roman practice of salt as a metaphor for wit and good conversation. The Christian’s speech, in this reading, is not to be heavy or pious or off-putting. It is to be lively, well-chosen, the kind of speech that good conversationalists in the ancient world were prized for. The Christian who is gracious need not also be boring. He can have a sense of humor. He can choose his words well. He can be the kind of person whose conversation others enjoy, and in that enjoyment, the gospel makes its way into the soil of the conversation.

So that you may know how you should answer everyone. The purpose of the gracious, salted speech is named. The Christian who has cultivated this kind of speech will be able to answer each person, each unique individual with his particular concerns and questions, as he should. The NET says everyone; Paul’s phrase is literally each one (heni hekastō), and it suggests the discernment to match the answer to the questioner. The believer is not to have a single canned response that he gives to everyone. He is to know each person well enough, and to be present enough in each conversation, to know what to say to this person, in this moment, about this concern.

This is one of the most practical verses in the New Testament about Christian witness. The Christian does not need to memorize an evangelistic script. He needs to be a person whose speech is gracious, seasoned with salt, and discerning. The conversations of his daily life will provide the opportunities. The Spirit will give him what to say. The Word that has dwelt richly in him from chapter 3 will surface in the appropriate moments in chapter 4. The wisdom toward outsiders that Paul commanded in the previous verse and the gracious speech he commands in this one belong together. The Christian who has both is the kind of Christian through whom the gospel travels in the ordinary world: quietly, persistently, gracefully, one conversation at a time.

Luther’s catechism has a famous passage that touches the same nerve. The Eighth Commandment, You are not to bear false witness against your neighbor, Luther expounds as a command not only to refrain from lying about our neighbors but also to come to their defense, speak well of them, and interpret everything they do in the best possible light. The Christian whose speech follows the Eighth Commandment in this Lutheran exposition is already most of the way to the speech Paul commands here. Gracious, salted, discerning, and interpreting everything the neighbor does in the best possible light. This is the speech the gospel produces.

Gathering the Threads

The passage we have walked is short, only five verses, but rich with practical wisdom for the Christian life. Paul has commanded devoted, alert, thankful prayer. He has asked for prayer for the apostolic mission: that God would open a door for the message, that the mystery of Christ would be proclaimed, that he himself would make it known as he should even from his chains. He has called the believers to walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the most of the opportunities. And he has shaped the believers’ speech: always gracious, seasoned with salt, attentive to each particular person they encounter.

For the Lutheran reader, the passage is the practical extension of all that has come before. Prayer is the steady occupation of the believer who lives by means of grace. The apostolic mission is the proclamation of the mystery hidden for ages and now revealed. Wisdom toward outsiders is the conduct of the Christian in the temporal kingdom, alongside neighbors who do not yet share the faith. Gracious speech is the natural overflow of a soul that has been forgiven and is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. None of this is new doctrine; all of it is the daily working-out of what the letter has been confessing since chapter one.

The section that follows in the letter is the closing greetings: the personal names, the warm valedictions, the final note from the apostle’s own hand. We will take that up in the next session. For now, the believer is given his marching orders for the ordinary day: pray steadily, pray alertly, pray with thanks. Pray for the missionaries. Walk wisely among the outsiders the Lord has placed in your daily orbit. Speak graciously. Let salt be in your words. Be the kind of Christian whose conversation gives the gospel a hearing it would not otherwise have. The apostle in his chains has done his part. The Colossians in their ordinary lives are now to do theirs.

For Discussion

The following questions are for group discussion or personal reflection.

1. Be devoted to prayer, keeping alert in it with thanksgiving. What does steady prayer look like in your own life? Where have you found the alertness and thanksgiving most difficult to maintain?
2. Paul asks the Colossians to pray for him: that God would open a door for the message and that he would make it known as he should from his prison cell. How often do you pray specifically for the ministers and missionaries of the Church? What would it look like to take Paul’s request as a model for your own intercession?
3. Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders. The Lutheran tradition has thought of this in terms of the two kingdoms, with the believer living as a citizen and neighbor alongside people who do not yet share his faith. What does wisdom look like in your own daily encounters with such neighbors?
4. Making the most of the opportunities. The believer is not justified by his productivity, but the redeemed believer recognizes the gift-character of his days and does not squander them. Where in your life do you find yourself most likely to let the kairos pass unrecognized?
5. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt. Honest self-assessment: what is the dominant flavor of your speech in ordinary conversation? Where would you say it falls short of the gracious, salted speech Paul commands?
6. So that you may know how you should answer everyone. Paul’s phrase is literally each one: he assumes that Christian witness happens person by person, in conversations attentive to the particular hearer. Who in your life right now is that each one (the specific neighbor or coworker or family member) to whom you are being given the opportunity to speak?

Looking Ahead

Next session brings us to the close of the letter, Colossians 4:7–18. Paul ends with the personal greetings that mark the end of an ancient letter: Tychicus, Onesimus, Aristarchus, Mark, Justus, Epaphras, Luke, Demas, Nympha, and the others. These names are not filler. Each one is a window onto the apostolic mission in its concrete texture: the people who labored alongside Paul, the churches that received his greetings, the personal warmth that ran through the apostolic correspondence. And the letter closes with a line that has been quoted by Christians for two thousand years: Remember my chains. Paul, even at the end, will not let his readers forget that the gospel he has preached has cost him his liberty.

Before next session, read Colossians 4:7–18 at least twice. Pay particular attention to the way Paul names each person: their character, their service, their place in the mission. The closing chapter is a reminder that the apostolic gospel was not delivered by a solitary apostle but by a fellowship of believers working together across distances and difficulties. The reading rewards careful attention.

Closing Prayer

Father in heaven, You have invited us to come to You in prayer; make us devoted to it, keeping alert in it with thanksgiving. Open doors for the message of Your gospel in our generation. Give clear speech to those who proclaim Christ in chains and in freedom. Make us wise in our dealings with those outside the faith. Buy up our time for Your purposes, that no day be lost. Let our speech be gracious, seasoned with salt, attentive to each person You place before us, that we may know how we should answer everyone. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with You and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and forever. Amen.