Over a span of several Sundays, I preached a series of sermons from the first twelve verses of Matthew 5, the beginning verses of what we typically refer to as the Sermon on the Mount, including the portion we know as the Beatitudes.
One of the lessons those sermons were intended to teach was that the Beatitudes are not behaviors required for those who would be blessed but rather represent the characteristics of those who are blessed.
Here is what blessed people look like.
The Beatitudes are not intended to serve as a prescription for how to become blessed or how one becomes a better Christian. Instead, they are a description of what a person looks like who comes to Christ for salvation (the act of justification) and then continues to develop into the image of Christ (the process of sanctification).
A scan of those first 12 verses will reveal pronouns in the impersonal third person – they and theirs. Then, in verse 11, Jesus changed His pronoun of address from the general “they” to the specific and more personal “you.”
Many believe the pronoun change indicates that, while Jesus addressed the crowd before him in the introduction to the Sermon on the Mount, in the next few verses, Jesus directly addressed those who were already His followers – that is, the disciples – twelve of whom would later be designated by Christ to be Apostles.
In verses 3-12, the Beatitudes, Christ defined the character of those who are made citizens of the kingdom of heaven.
In verses 13-16, what someone has referred to as the Similitudes, Christ defined the calling of the citizens of His kingdom, explaining how the calling of the Christian makes them similar in effect to salt and to light.
Becoming a Christian (detailed in the Beatitudes) naturally precedes fulfilling the mission of a Christian (assigned in the Similitudes).
In the last Beatitude (verses 10-12) Jesus describes how the world typically responds to Christians – that is, with rejection and persecution. Then in verses 13-16, He describes how Christians are intended to respond to the world.
The world will not readily accept the teachings of the Apostles or those of the church and will, more times than not, seek to destroy them through persecution and death. Nevertheless, in spite of these expectations, the Christian is designed to fulfill God’s calling of being salt (influencing the world for good) and light (revealing the truth of Christ and the glory of God) to that same world.
Notice in these verses that, just as the Beatitudes do not explain what one has to do to become blessed, these verses do not tell the Christian how to become salt and light but explains that, by the nature gifted to them through the grace of God, Christians are salt and light.
Matthew 5
13 You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.
14 You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.
15 Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.
16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. (ESV)
In the first couple of articles, we will concentrate on verse 13 and what Jesus meant by Christians being…
The Salt of the Earth
The first mention of salt in the Bible is found in Genesis 14:3 where we find a reference to the salt sea or the Dead Sea.
The second mention of salt is in Genesis 19:26, the familiar and mysterious story where Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt as the family sought to escape God’s judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah, towns located in the same region as the Dead Sea.
The third mention of salt is found in the writings of the Law in Leviticus dealing with sacrifices.
Leviticus 2:13 You shall season all your grain offerings with salt. You shall not let the salt of the covenant with your God be missing from your grain offering; with all your offerings you shall offer salt. (ESV)
Three times in this one verse God insists that salt be added to all sacrifices. Why would God insist that the Israelites do this?
Maybe it was to emphasize the elemental nature of salt – sodium chloride – that it is…
- Unchangeable
- Incorruptible
- Enduring
Salt never ceases to be salt, no matter its form, whether as a dry crystal or in solution.
David Guzik believes that this points to the idea of PURITY – that adding salt to the sacrifice was to remind Israel that the primary purpose of sacrifice is worship and gratitude toward God, who is himself unchanging, incorruptible, and eternal.
Salt is also one of the most widely used forms of food preservation in the ancient world.
The meats and grains used in sacrifices served as a source of food for the priests, so, the addition of salt before the sacrifice was placed on the altar may have been for PRESERVATION, to make sure the meat and grain were safe to eat.
In the world of the Bible, salt was a precious commodity. It may have been readily available around the Dead Sea area, but that was not true throughout the region.
Because it was a precious commodity, salt was often used as money – as a means of exchange. Roman soldiers often received as compensation a measure of salt, referred to a salarium, from which was derived our English word “salary.” Our contemporary expression, “That man is not worth his salt” serves as a reminder of the high value that salt had in ancient times.
Therefore, salt represented not only PURITY, and PRESERVATION, but also PRICE, adding value to the sacrifice being offered.
The late Pastor Ray Pritchard reminded us that salt is a seasoning. It adds character to food that would otherwise be bland and tasteless. He also reminded us that salt gives strength. You can’t live with sodium in your diet. Without it, your body quickly weakens.
People would add salt to their vegetables, not only for flavor, but because they knew that putting salt on their vegetables would give them needed strength. Thus, we find that our word “salad” is related to this idea of adding salt to green vegetables.
On the negative side of the equation, salt stings. Most of us have had the experience of discovering a cut on our hands when contacted by salt.
Salt creates thirst. That’s why manufacturers put it on potato chips and pretzels. It creates thirst and causes us to crave something to drink like a Coke or Pepsi – or, better yet, a root beer!
Salt also kills and destroys. Plants cannot grow in soil laced with salt and are destroyed when salt or salty water is poured around them.
Christ taught in this verse that the disciples – those who know him as Savior and who are precious in His sight – are expected to circulate among and purify and preserve the corrupted mass of mankind by teaching and living out the heavenly doctrines of God – even if it stings.
Our lives should be as seasoning. The joy that we experience from knowing Christ – the way we face the trials and challenges of life before our neighbors and co-workers – should create in them a thirst for an explanation of why we have such peace.
Dry salt is not a conductor of electricity. However, if we add salt to water, which is a conductor, the salt dissolves, permeating the solution, and electricity is then conducted through the solution with much more efficiency than before, because, in solution, salt becomes an electrolyte – that is, salt in solution is capable of conducting electric current.
The key here is “in solution.”
The culture in which we live, in which our kids are immersed on a daily basis, is a wicked and corrupt culture.
There is nothing that man can do in his own power that will bring permanent and lasting change to an immoral world – not legislation, not court systems, not great schools, not even good people, because the problem is not a legal problem, or an educational problem, or even a moral problem – it is a spiritual problem.
Christians are called on to be “in solution” – actively involved with the world in such a way that we influence the world by the power of God dwelling in us and passing through us.
The Bible says in Colossians 1:27 that our only hope of glory is Christ living in us.
That which is infinite (Christ in the person of the Holy Spirit) enters into that which is finite (unregenerate humans) and permeates and modifies their very existence, just as salt does to water and food.
Salt Covenant
Earlier we read from the Law of Moses in…
Leviticus 2:13 You shall season all your grain offerings with salt. You shall not let the salt of the covenant with your God be missing from your grain offering; with all your offerings you shall offer salt. (ESV)
Notice that God refers to the salt used in the sacrifice as “the salt of the covenant.”
What did He mean by that?
According to the traditions of the day, when two or more parties reached the end of negotiations and entered into a contract or made a covenant with each other, they would seal their bargain by partaking of salt. Typically, that meant ending their negotiations with a banquet where they salted their food together.
The Israelites were to add salt to their sacrifices not only for the sake of PURITY and PRESERVATION and PRICE (or added value), but as a reminder of God’s PURPOSE in making the covenant with Abraham.
The purpose for God’s covenant with Abraham is defined in two phases in Genesis 12. In Phase 1, God called Abraham, promising to make him the father of a great nation.
Genesis 12:1 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.
Phase 2 of God’s covenant with Abraham was to make the nation of Israel the source of blessing to all other nations.
Genesis 12:3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
The purpose for God’s creation of the Jewish nation was not simply to create a unique nationality of people or to make them better than other people or nations. His purpose was to bless all of mankind through the agency of the nation of Israel.
This is also the reason Christ calls lost people into a salvation covenant and why, in his high priestly prayer to God the Father, Jesus prayed…
John 17:14 I have given them (a reference not only to the disciples with him, but all Christians through all of time) your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. (ESV)
From this prayer of Jesus comes the idea that Christians are to be in the world but not of the world, though Christ’s teaching never supports the idea that Christians have permission to isolate themselves from the world or to lord their calling over others.
Notice in verse 18 that Jesus declares that He is sending His disciples out into the world just as God the Father had sent Christ Jesus into the world – to bless the world in salvation.
All of this and more is what Jesus meant when He declared to His disciples, “You are the salt of the earth.”
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