salt

Flavor

“Everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again? Have salt among yourselves, and be at peace with each other.” – Mark 9:49,50 For the past few days, we’ve talked about salt being both a force of preservation and purity in the world. Today, I want to discuss the third (and most important) property of this potent mineral, and that is flavor. Let’s face it — salt is delicious! Whether on chips, meat, or french fries, it enhances taste. In fact, it’s hard to imagine life without this powerful mineral because in its absence, food would be plain bland. Since eating is a major source of enjoyment and the primary manner in which we sustain life, flavor is really important. Of course, if this is true physically, it’s even more true spiritually. As Christians, we are the

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Purification

“While we wait for the blessed hope — the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.” – Titus 2:13,14 Yesterday, we began a discussion about three properties of salt that made it especially valuable in the ancient world and what they teach us about being the salt of the earth today. While we learned that the first function of this important mineral was preservation, the second was purification. Have you ever gone swimming in the ocean with a cut or an open sore on your skin? If so, I can almost guarantee that you remember the sting of the salt water on your wound. However, you may also recall that when you looked at it a

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Preservation

“He has preserved our lives and kept our feet from slipping.” – Psalm 66:9 Yesterday, we talked about the presence of salt in the ancient world, and we learned that it was valuable enough back then to play a role in the founding of the Roman Empire, was the basis for the name given to soldiers, and was sometimes even used to pay wages. Knowing this, we’re logically inclined to wonder why. What was it about salt that made it so vital to life in that time? Since answering this question gives us insight into our role in the Kingdom of God, I want to spend the next few days unpacking three important properties of salt. First of all, it was critical because it preserves. If you were a family of five in the Middle East 2,000 years ago and you needed to store enough meat and provisions to feed

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The Salt of the Earth

“You are the salt of the earth. But if 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.” – Matthew 5:13 What does it mean to be the salt of the earth? As we consider our response to this question, we can easily lose the significance of the analogy because we don’t understand the historical context. Unlike today, when salt is cheap and common, there was a time when it was considered precious and valuable. In fact, 800 years before Jesus, there was a town in Italy that had its own salt mine. Because that mine was so important, they built a road to it called the Via Salaria (which means view of salt), and it became the first in a network of roads that would ultimately comprise the Roman Empire, one

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