Salt of the Earth

Matthew 5:13 “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.”

One of the parts of Jesus’ sermon that has lost some of its original meaning with the passing of many years and many miles between where we now live and Jesus’ Middle East is this phrase “the salt of the earth”.  www.phrases.org.uk tells us it “refers to people of great worth and reliability”.  It describes someone humble, strong and decent, with an “old soul” feel to them.

And while those are good interpretations, there is more context that Jesus’ listeners would have grasped instantly.  Without salt, we die.  Nations fought wars over salt.  www.history collection.com indicates that “British, French, Portuguese, and Dutch fleets and armies fought each other” over salt and wars go back to at least 6000 BC.  Salt is essential to life.  

In the Middle East, salt was used to seal covenants, treaties and solemn pacts.  2 Chronicles‬ ‭13‬:‭5‬ “Don’t you know that the Lord, the God of Israel, has given the kingship of Israel to David and his descendants forever by a covenant of salt?”

The Lexham Bible Dictionary tells us that salt was a symbol of both life and death. Salt was used by conquering armies to ensure an enemy city would be uninhabitable (as in Judges 9:45 and Zephaniah 2:9) and Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt when Sodom was destroyed.  Is it possible that Jesus was referring to both symbols?  If so, perhaps Jesus was reminding us that we are mortal, that judgment is coming.

Therefore, being the “salt of the earth” means more than being a preservative or even being saved into eternal life.  Having Christ in our hearts is essential to life and must be a visible demonstration of his Covenant with us.  If it is not, Jesus is saying that we can lose our saltiness, meaning we can also lose our salvation.  If Predestination is correct and God knows from before time who is saved and who is not, that would mean that we only “lose” our salvation from our point of view, and as such those who lose it, never really were saved.  In other words, while we may in fact be predestined from before time to be saved, we should live as though it is not assured.  As he says toward the end of the Sermon, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven (Matt 7:21).”