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YOU ARE THE SALT OF THE EARTH

Christian Life, ,

YOU ARE THE SALT OF THE EARTH

Jesus put His disciples in a privileged and responsible position – He called them “salt” and “light”.

“You are the salt of the earth…” Matthew 5:13

“You are the light of the world.,,” Matthew 5:14

Not, ”You will be…” but “You are…” That means that although you are a disciple-in-training, you are, right now, salt and light to the world.

We need to examine what the Bible means by salt and light.

Salt is necessary for life. It is a mineral that has been used since ancient times for different purposes: for seasoning, as a disinfectant and preservative, as part of ceremonial offerings and as a unit of exchange. Symbolically it was used in various covenants to signify permanence, loyalty, durability, usefulness, value, and faithfulness.

Salt was added to both grain and animal sacrifices to make them acceptable to God.

“Season all your grain offerings with salt. Do not leave the salt of the covenant of your God out of your grain offerings; add salt to all your offerings.” Leviticus 2:13.

“When you have finished purifying it, you are to off a young bull and a ram from the flock both without defect. You are to offer them before the Lord, and the priests are to sprinkle salt on them and sacrifice them as a burnt offering to the Lord.” Ezekiel 43:23, 24.

Salt was also to be an ingredient in the sacred incense.

“Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Take fragrant spices – gum, resin, onycha and galbanum – and pure frankincense, all in equal amounts, and make a fragrant blend of incense, the work of a perfumer. It is to be salted and pure and fragrant.” Exodus 30:24, 25.

Salt was used widely as a symbol and sacred sign in ancient Palestine. Portions of the sacrifices were given to the priests and Levites as part of God’s provision for them. In this “covenant of salt”, God promised that He would always provide for them.

“Whatever is set aside from the holy offerings the Israelites present to the Lord I give to you and to your sons and daughters as your regular share. It is an everlasting covenant of salt before the Lord for both you and your offspring.” Numbers 18:19.

By a “covenant of salt” God assured the breakaway king of Israel, Jeroboam, that He had pledged, by a covenant of salt, that the dynasty of David would be permanent.

“Don’t you know that the Lord, the God of Israel, has given the kingship of Israel to David and to his descendants forever by a covenant of salt?” 2 Chronicles 13:5.

Salt that had been contaminated with other substances e.g., soil or other minerals, was of no value. Its only use was to be thrown onto the dusty roads to bind the soil. Salt thrown onto soil that was cultivated made it sterile and useless for agriculture.

Why did Jesus call His disciples “salt”? They would have a positive influence on society by adding flavour and preserving it from contamination. They would also be examples of those who lived under God’s rule, people of integrity, loyalty, and faithfulness.

They would serve to warn people who live without God that they will become like salted land, barren, sterile and useless.

“This is what the Lord says: ‘Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the Lord. He will be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes. He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives.’” Jeremiah 17:5, 6.

It was also a warning to the disciples not to be contaminated or mixed with anything that will make it worthless. A disciple can become useless by his mind and his faith in Jesus alone being mixed with false teachings or his life being mixed with sin.

To be salt, therefore is to be both privileged and responsible. Disciples of Jesus are privileged to make a difference in the sinful world by living pure lives, unmixed with false teaching or sin, so that they show the world what God is really like. The “covenant of salt” symbolises lives that are upright, faithful, and loyal to God and to one another in a world which is rotten with selfishness and greed.

They are also responsible to remain “salty”, otherwise they too will become sterile and useless like salted soil.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_in_the_Bible

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Salty Or Salt less Salt

Christian Life, , , ,

SALTY OR SALT LESS SALT

You are the salt of the earth. But it 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 (Matt. 5:13)

This may not be a very powerful or meaningful comparison for us today because salt is plentiful and cheap, but to Jesus’ disciples, His words must have sent a jolt through them like a jolt of lightning. What, us? Salt? What on earth did He mean?

In Jesus’ day, salt was so valuable that Roman soldiers sometimes received their wages in salt. The English word salary is derived from the word, salt.

Salt had many uses, hence the many different interpretations of this Scripture. In what sense did Jesus mean that His followers were the salt of the earth?

Among other uses in the Old Testament context, salt had two major purposes.

Season all your grain offerings with salt. Do not leave the salt of the covenant of your God out of your grain offerings; add salt to all your offerings (Lev. 2:13).

Pure salt was symbolic of the sanctity and permanence of the covenant God established with His people. God instructed His people to add salt to their sacrifices as a confirmation that His covenant with them was holy and forever.

The second use of salt was to preserve, especially meat which spoiled quickly in a hot climate if it was not rubbed with salt. Salt has antiseptic properties. Even new-born babies were rubbed with salt. God, speaking through the prophet Ezekiel, explained how He “found” His people abandoned after their “birth”, how He took them as His own, washed them with water and rubbed them with salt, wrapped them up and raised them as His own children (Ez. 16).

Pure salt is potent but when it is mixed with other chemicals it loses its preserving properties and becomes bland and useless. If this salt less salt is thrown on a field, the ground becomes sterile and will never produce again. The only use for salt less salt was to be thrown on the path where it would be trodden into ground used for nothing else.

Among Jesus’ disciples were fishermen who knew the value of salt. Without salt, they could not preserve their fish, their livelihood for days at a time. They would have understood Jesus’ use of the imagery of salt in their society which was polluted by sin. Jesus needed them to be the preservative in the corruption to prevent the disintegration of their communities under the burden of sin.

“In the Hebrew Bible, salt is both a disinfectant and preservative, but if the salt loses its integrity (or its “flavour” to preserve) the result is disintegration. When Jesus talked about salt “trampled under feet,” he was referring to this latter connotation of disintegration found in the Hebrew Bible. So when salt maintains its integrity (or its “flavour” to preserve), the effects are long-lasting (permanent), but when salt loses its integrity, the result is disintegration…”

“When we come to the New Testament, we see Jesus using salt within the context of its use in the Hebrew Bible. That is, disciples are “salt,” and so they are sanctified and, therefore, function as preserving agents. For example, we read the following in the Christian New Testament…”

“So when Jesus is talking about salt losing its flavour and then is “trampled underfoot,” he is alluding to the secondary meaning of the verb מָלַח, where integrity of the disciple of Jesus is lost and the result is disintegration (or moral decay), which is “not even fit for the manure pile” (Luke 14:34-35).”

http://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/4738/what-does-salt-of-the-earth-mean – retrieved February 2016.

Unfortunately, the symbolism of salt under the weight of preaching that does not take its official use in the Old Testament into account. How important it is to understand the Bible as God meant it and to interpret Jesus’ teachings as He meant them.

As a rabbi, Paul got the point when he wrote to the Ephesian church:

Have nothing to do with the fruitless works of darkness, but rather expose them (Eph. 5: 11)

Scripture is taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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