I ask myself this question every time I come across these words of Jesus –
“You are the salt of the earth.
But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?
It is no longer good for anything,
except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.”
Matthew 5:13
So, how does salt lose its saltiness?
What was Jesus telling us?
We mostly use salt now to make great burgers and to bring out all the good flavors in our food, but in Jesus’ day, salt was very important and used for many things. Besides being used to flavor food, it was also used to preserve food, to heal, and as currency, or trade. (The word salary comes from the Latin word salarium, the root word of which is sal.) And it’s essential to our health.
When Jesus sat on the mountainside teaching by the Sea of Galilee, not far from the salt-filled Dead Sea, the people who were listening had a much fuller, richer understanding of the metaphor “you are the salt of the earth.” And my guess is they would have also understood how salt could lose its saltiness and what a horrifying thought that was.
Salt is made up of a number of chemical compounds, but what it is mostly, what makes it salty, what makes it useful, is sodium chloride, which is very stable and will keep its usefulness for years.
But…
If salt is exposed to water, or diluted, the sodium chloride can be dissolved and removed, and the salt will lose its essence, or saltiness. It still looks like salt, but it’s no longer useful.
We, too, can look the same on the outside, but if we let our faith become weak, we’ll lose our usefulness in the kingdom of God.
So how can we, being the salt of the earth, lose our saltiness?
How can we lose our usefulness?
There are a million ways, but it all comes down to letting our faith become diluted.
Watered down. Weak. Tasteless. Flat.
“But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith
and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in God’s love
as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ
to bring you to eternal life.” Jude 1:20
Jude writes an impassioned letter to his fellow believers warning them that wolves have always, and will always slip in among the sheep, and will corrupt them and their faith if they’re not careful. The ungodly “pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.” (Jude 1:4)
In this age of television, computers, and smartphones, we no longer need to wait for the godlessness of the world to physically come in among us. The world comes at us constantly, and the more we allow it, the more we become steeped in it, the more we’ll begin to look like it, think like it, and believe like it.
Not only are there people who pervert the gospel itself, sometimes even calling themselves Christians, all around us there is a pervasive attitude of anger, hatred, judgment, unforgiveness, self-righteousness, salaciousness, among others. The apostle Paul warned about this explicitly in his second letter to Timothy.
God’s Word warns us over and over to be careful of allowing any false beliefs, no matter how subtle or how good or even inspirational they may sound, to water down the true gospel, and our faith.
Every day we have to be vigilant and spiritually discerning of what is true and what is not, and
“not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Rom. 12:2)
And by doing that we are able to build ourselves up as Jude exhorts us, and
“…make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins.” (2 Peter 1:5-9)
The same word Jude used for holy faith is used for the Holy Spirit, in whom we are to pray at all times. He enables us to worship God over the world and ourselves, to seek God’s will above our own, to repent of our sins and be cleansed and made holy, set apart for the work of God.
Unless we’re walking in Him we will revert right back to walking in our flesh, to living for the world and for ourselves, and in that state we cannot be useful in spiritual things.
“So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in Him, rooted and built up in Him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.” (Colossians 2:6-8)
If we ever wonder what God’s will for us is, it must include this: “…to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” James 1:27b
And whatever we do, we cannot allow anyone, especially those who have set themselves up as pastors or other type of spiritual leader, no matter how popular they are, to water down the truth in the Word of God and our faith.
“For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what they itching ears want to hear.” 2 Timothy 4:3-4
Sometimes popularity comes at the expense of the truth that most don’t want to hear. Watering down the truth, appealing to our flesh, is exactly what the enemy will use to weaken our faith and our witness.
So, let’s determine to look and be more like Christ and less like the world, to live our lives worthy of the calling we have in Christ who paid for us with a hefty price.
Let’s be worth our salt.