29 Aug 2014
Matthew 5:13
Matthew 5:13: “Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.”
Salt (among other things) is a preservative; it keeps meat from going bad and enables it to be preserved. The thing about salt, though, is its saltiness. It has a certain distinctiveness about it. There is nothing bland about salt; it really stands out – especially in concentrated amounts.
Like salt, Christians are supposed to be distinctive and different. It is their job to keep society from going bad. That involves preaching the Gospel, resisting evil, pursuing holiness, and fighting for what is right.
However, if Christians blend into the world and side with their culture, and if they abandon what makes them distinctive, then they have lost their saltiness. Instead of combating the cultural decay they become a part of it. And so, as Jesus said, they become “good for nothing”.
This is a critical issue in our day because so many Christians desperately want the world to like them. They want others to speak well of them and not see them as some strange lunatics that believe odd things and behave in puritanical ways. In order to make the world like them they abandon their distinctiveness and try to blend in. But that is precisely what we must not do. Friendship with the world is enmity with God; if we are on the world’s good side then we’ve lost our saltiness and have become useless.