The Joy of Being Salty

 “You are the salt of the earth.” (Matthew 5:13) 

Jesus said to a group of ex-fishermen on a hillside in a remote corner of the world … and to you, “YOU are the salt of the Earth…”  There is dignity in that declaration. Salt was valuable. A bag of salt was worth more than a man. The Greeks called it theion,” that is. Divine. With that statement Jesus gave life purpose. These words are either comic or cosmic. 

Consider these qualities of salt as they relate to your Christian life.

Salt is pure. This speaks of: honesty, diligence in work, and morality.

It is a summary for purity in speech and conduct. “Let your speech be seasoned with salt.”

Salt is a preservative. Inherent in this teaching is the principle that the world is in a state of continual spiritual decay.  This is apparent in our society. Christians are to help prevent the corruption of literature, public amusement, political life, and commercial life.

There are certain people whose presence inspires goodness.  Every day we are each corrupting or conserving.  We are a wing or a weight.

Meat without life decays. So the world without salt is morally decaying.

Old Proverb: “Salt is a second soul for meat.”  So the Christian is intended to be such an influence in a world tending to moral decay.  By virtue of our nature and role, we find ourselves opposed to moral and spiritual decay.

“The Roman world was laughing when it died,”  wrote one historian.  It was that hoarse and dreadful laughter of having found itself to be a fraud.

Christianity was born smiling and is intended to smile on the world today.  The Greeks used the word for salt as the word for wit and wisdom.  Our faith should enhance our personality.

Joy should result from sins being forgiven.  He has not only promised to “cast all our sins into the deepest sea,” He has even posted a “No Fishing” sign.

Salt makes food palatable. The type Christian faith Christ calls for is a strong, workable, personal faith. Manifest your saltiness or lose it.  Salt stored on moist soil will lose it’s salty effect. Salt from the area of the Dead Sea often acquires a stale or alkaline taste, because of its mixture with Gypsum.  It was used to make roads. It was of no value. Worst than no salt is salt that has lost its savor. It is “cast out.”  Such is “good for nothing.” Consider your Christian life in regard to this. Is it pure, a preservative of Christian values, does it make life palatable? There is dignity in that declaration.  Salt was valuable.  A bag of salt was worth more than a man.  The Greeks called salt “theion,” that is, divine. With that statement Jesus gave life purpose. These words are either comic or cosmic.

We have got to get the salt out of the shaker.  Christianity doesn’t fully function in isolation. We must not only do church work, we must do the work of the church which is to penetrate, saturate, and infiltrate all of society.  If the church does not, it becomes a salty island in an ocean of need.