The Sermon on the Mount, Section 42 C, Salt

Section 42 
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT
 (A Mountain Plateau not far from Capernaum) 

Subdivision C 
INFLUENCE AND DUTIES OF MESSIAH'S SUBJECTS

MATT. 5:13, Salt

The great calling of the disciples of Christ
1. Salt is intended to nourish: it is an article of food. The godly must nourish the earth spiritually.
2. Salt is intended to preserve.
3. Salt has also a consuming power. There is something sharp, biting, and aggressive in it. Laid on a wound it is painful. The Christian often pains men to heal them. (T. Christlieb, D. D.)

Have lost his savour (μωρανθῇ)
"The kindred noun (μωρός) means dull, sluggish; applied to the mind, stupid or silly; applied to the taste, insipid, flat. The verb here used of salt, to become insipid, also means to play the fool. Our Lord refers here to the familiar fact of salt losing its pungency and becoming useless."-Vincent's Word Studies

"It is their calling to counterwork the corruption that is in the world. All those things that tend to the lowering of spiritual life are the objects on which they are to act, and if instead of this they yield to them, it is because the salt has lost its savour. If the very persons who are appointed and equipped to carry with them a health-giving influence are themselves prostrated by the evil infection, if disinfectants carry disease-germs, what shall avail us?" -Pulpit Commentary

Sea Salt

The following excerpt is worth considering:

I. Here is Christ’s sublime definition of the Christian life, and of those who compose His Church. The Church exists for the world’s sake more than for its own. Christ’s disciples are to be saviors of others.
II. Is not this the doctrine of election as our Savior understood it? God’s people are chosen, not for their own comfort, but to show men the beauty of the Divine life, and to raise them to the same level.

III. It is quality more than quantity that does God’s work in the world. All history and progress are at bottom the life-story of the chosen few.
IV. It should be one great object of our prayer and effort to keep up the moral and spiritual standard of the elect few. -J. G. Greenhough, M. A., Biblical Illustrator

This is a broad yet narrow goal---to serve those outside the Church and bring them into relationship with Christ.  I find his statement about quantity over quantity narrow too.  Is God really about "the chosen few"?  In some ways, yes---Jesus speaks of the broad and narrow gates (Matthew 7:13-14), yet he is also the one who chases down the lost sheep.   It's not that he was "missing one" in terms of numbers in my mind, as much as his heart for that lost one.  God chases the lost.  We should too.

Admittedly, the term "the elect few" makes me wince.   Why the "elect few" as if they were special and not the others?  Does God not care for all of us?  This is the complaint of many outside of our faith---how could a loving God be so narrow in his salvation?

I think of the "self-focus" or "self-care" of many of the eastern faiths.  Despite their concern with the environment and others, I find their focus rings of self-absorption at the core.  Their world is broad but very narrow too.  They have a heart to help others as long as their own lifeboat is secure.  They are hard to fathom fully; their "self-care" becoming their God.  Is this too harsh?  I'm not sure....can't get to the bottom of myself never mind others.

Christianity can be reduced to a lifeboat too.  Outsiders accuse Christians of being concerned about them only as an obligation or duty, a "notch in their belt," justifying their own worth and faith.  

To be fair, I think it's easy to pigeonhole both worlds.  We do need to care for ourselves to care for others.  We do need to love people without forcing our thoughts and beliefs. But, caring for ourselves is a step-one process, not an end.  And loving someone authentically requires some friction--we must woo others for their better and for our own as well.  Community is a requirement for faith....all faith.

Salt Marshes

There are dozens of questions as such in Christianity, and to be fair, in ANY faith whatsoever.  Part of choosing to step in faith requires a willingness to step into and operate within some mystery.  No one is given all of the answers.  If God could be compartmentalized so cleanly, faith would require no faith.  He would become our minion, a puppet God, who dances to our understanding.

"The great calling of the disciples of Christ

1. Salt is intended to nourish: it is an article of food. The godly must nourish the earth spiritually.

2. Salt is intended to preserve.

3. Salt has also a consuming power. There is something sharp, biting, and aggressive in it. Laid on a wound it is painful. The Christian often pains men to heal them." -T. Christlieb, D. D.

I like this comment because I often think of salt as an accessory--yes, a something else, a seasoning.  But we do also need salt elementally, nutritionally.  Christianity does not just "bring out the best" in others, it preserves, sustains, and heals souls.

"Salt does its work by being brought into close contact with the thing which it is to work upon. It does its work silently, inconspicuously, gradually."  -A. Maclaren, D. D.

"The Latin Church, in its materialistic fashion, employs actual salt in the baptismal service. The priest puts it into the mouth of the person, adult or infant, who is baptized. It is an unauthorized ceremony; but it is a sort of traditional witness to the obligation lying on all Christians to have in themselves that which salt might symbolize." Dr. D. Fraser

"A Roman proverb couples sunlight and salt together as the two things which keep the world alive and sweet. Homer calls it Divine; Plato the substance clear to the gods; Pythagoras spoke of it as the emblem of righteousness, and our common phraseology, following the Greek and Latin writers, has chosen it as the symbol of wit and wisdom, of all that gives grace to speech, refinement to thought, pungency to writing, and individuality to character. The idea, then, which the metaphor on the Saviour’s lips suggests is that His disciples are the noble and indispensable element in the world; they sweeten, purify, and enrich its work, its thoughts, its social intercourse, its joys, its laws and literature. They save it from corruption, decomposition, and moral death. The great sea of life, like the sea which washes our shores, would become putrid without it." J. G. Greenhough, M. A.

"Whichever view one takes, the important quality to note is that salt ought to maintain its basic character. If it fails to be salty, it has lost its purpose for existence and should be discarded." -BKC