Salt of the Earth

SCRIPTURE

Matthew 5:13-14
"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."

LANGUAGE

taste = lose taste, lose savor, make foolish

COMMENTS

For all of the different characteristics or uses for salt, Jesus points to one: Taste. Taste = savor, flavor. Perhaps a better translation of this is, "If salt is not providing taste, is it really salt? No, it is just dirt to be thrown on the ground and walked on."

Jesus has just finished speaking about what should make us happy. Happiness comes from our understanding of God, and not our circumstance. Happiness comes in ways that the world views as weaknesses: humility, poverty, mourning, the pursuit of righteousness, mercy, purity, being persecuted. Because our circumstance should not dictate our joy.

If you take a mouthful of salt and try to eat it, it is not very tasty. But add some salt to plain potatoes or meat, and it awakens a flavor that is much more desirable. God has placed us to be salt to the earth. Not big clumps to be eaten on its own, but small pockets of flavor scattered throughout the world. Yet if we do not have or add flavor, if instead we are big clumps of material that do nothing for the world, are we really salt? Or are we just an equivalent to dirt?

I find it interesting that the word "taste" in verse 13, can also be translated "make foolish." But if the salt is made to be foolish, is it really salt? How can salt be foolish? It can't, but we can. We are foolish when we follow the principles of the world rather than the teachings of Christ. We are foolish when we buy into things like the prosperity gospel instead of the Beatitudes. Much of what Christians today follow is the line that God wants you to prosper, be healthy, have a great marriage, etc. So we pursue stuff rather than God Himself. Sometimes following God gets you crucified, beheaded, sick, imprisoned, snake-bitten, shipwrecked, stoned (the kind where people actually throw stones at you), or dead. But if our joy is in the Lord Himself, we don't lose our joy.