You Are The Salt Of The Earth

Matthew 5:13  "You are the salt of the earth; 

but if the salt loses its flavor,

 how shall it be seasoned? 

It is then good for nothing 

but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.

Jesus moved from the beatitudes to the similitudes – comparing one thing with another.  Jesus used two similitudes in comparing the believer to two things that we are all very familiar with – salt and light.  So, we have seen how we are to think, we have seen the result of that kind of thinking and now Jesus is going to tell us who we are – as believers – each and every one of us who name the name of Jesus as our Savior.

Something happened to you when you decided to become a follower of Christ.  We know we became new creatures. Here we have two aspects of that.  We have become salt and we have become lights.  And notice – the structure of each sentence that begins you are the salt and you are the light has the sense of you and you only, or you and you alone.  A person that is not a believer is not and can not be either salt or light in this world.  Here’s an assumption I think we can safely make.  Since we and we alone are the salt of the earth – then the earth is saltless, flavorless without the influence of believers.  It does not satisfy, it’s like flavorless egg whites.

Someone did a whole lot of research and claims that there are over 14,000 uses of salt.   We could get real intense over that and want to find that list, thinking if we are salt, that God wants us to function in all of those 14,000 ways – but, that is not His intent. 

Rather than review all or many of the uses of salt that parallel how a believer should behave, let’s concentrate on what Matthew 5:13 seems to be pointing to – salt’s ability to season food.  Man has understood that purpose for thousands of years.   Job 6:6 Can flavorless food be eaten without salt? Or is there any taste in the white of an egg?

Paul confirmed this in Col. 4:6 Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one.

Look at the next part of verse 13 in Matthew 5 – it begins with a term of contrast.  We are salt.  But, if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned.  So, only believers are salt – But, we can be flavorless salt.  Our effect, if we lose our flavor? We are good for nothing, spiritually, but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men

It’s pretty hard for salt to lose its flavor.  You can leave it out all day and it’s still the same.  But, if you lay salt on dirt (or for our lesson today, on the earth), it loses its flavor.  There’s a story of someone buying a huge quantity of salt.  It was piled in a warehouse on a dirt floor.  When they went in to scoop it up to send it out, it had lost its flavor – so, what did they do?  Exactly what this verse says – they scooped it all up and threw it outside and it was trampled underfoot by men.  Now, Jesus is talking about effective kingdom living here – not salvation.   Ephesians 2:8,9 very clearly remind us that we have been saved by faith not of works.  But, Paul didn’t stop there, lest we get lazy.  Ephesians 2:10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

We are His workmanship.  Creators, builders – create and build things for a purpose.  Our purpose on this earth while we are waiting for heaven is to do good works – not just any good works, but the good works He has individually chosen for each one of us.

When, we as salt, aren’t salty – we are of no use in this life.  Salt influences what it is put on, right?  But, rather than being put on people to flavor them, to influence and affect them, we are put under them and stepped on by them and treated as nothing – of no value or worth to them. Rather than being an influencer of the things it touches, salt, when it loses its flavor, becomes influenced by the things that touch it.

How do we flavor? Just like salt does.  All lives outside of Jesus, are bland – blah – without purpose, without meaning, without fulfillment.  Salty believers can offer them what or really who, alone, can give them those things. We show them what a salted life is like.  The message of the salty believer is this: Psalm 34:8 Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; Blessed is the man who trusts in Him! And his actions prove that he believes it.