You are the salt of the earth.
As Christians we are meant to enhance the flavor of a world that can at other times be bland. We are meant to act as preservatives of the good and nutritive things in the culture, sustaining those things which have the most potential to give life in turn. But the world has been less and less palatable over the course of recent years, and it is not at all clear that it hasn't entirely spoiled. This speaks not in the first place to a problem with the world, but rather to us and our responsibility to be salt. The world definitely doesn't view Christians as flavor enhancing agents. We seem to be bitter herbs. Perhaps in the best case we might be viewed as a difficult medicine, but more often we are viewed as poison to be avoided. The question we should ask is whether the world is mischaracterizing us or whether we have truly lost our saltiness.
But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned?
It is no longer good for anything
but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.
If we aren't functioning properly as salt we have nothing to offer the world. What are we missing and how can we address this deficiency?
Everyone will be salted with fire (see Mark 9:49).
Marks presents us with the idea that it is by our response to the trials of life that we come to possess saltiness in sense meant by Jesus. By meeting suffering, challenge, and persecution the way the Beatitudes describe, and not by the way to which the world defaults, we realize more and more the essence of who we are meant to be. The salt is purified of other dirt and minerals with which it is initially mixed up.
Have salt among yourselves, and be at peace with each other (see Mark 9:50).
We can also see being salted with fire as the Holy Spirit making his fruits present within us. After all, he himself is the one who is present in our trials enabling us to respond as Jesus would respond. And this is what it means to bear fruit, and what it means to live the Beatitudes. The Holy Spirit is the one who begins this work within us, but it is a work with which we must cooperate, keeping peace with each, preserving the bond of peace by the unity of the Spirit himself (see Ephesians 4:3). The Spirit enables us to walk in the Beatitudes and to live in the fruits of love, joy, peace, and the rest. But we must be fully invested, willing to let him lead the way.
As God is faithful, our word to you is not “yes” and “no.”
Being double minded does not work in the Christian life. We can't be salt when it suits us flavorless and powerless as preservatives when it is too hard. Just as our prayers only work when we make up our minds to pray in faith (see James 1:6-8), so too will our actions only work effectively as salt if we decide in advance to agree completely with the word of God (including that idea that it is possible for us to act in that way because God will empower us to do so) and then act in response to that word.
A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden.
When we face trials by the power of the Holy Spirit and let him bear his fruit in us, we will be the salt and have the light that the world desires to taste and see. We will be surprised by just how compelling we become, no longer avoided by others as bitter and potentially poisonous. We will begin to make present Jesus himself, who was not double minded about his love and commitment for us.
For however many are the promises of God, their Yes is in him;
therefore, the Amen from us also goes through him to God for glory.
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