A Recipe for Salt

A Recipe for Salt

“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.”
Matthew 5:13-14 (ESV)

My French fries wouldn’t be the same without it, especially the ones that come from McDonalds. I’m talking about that transparent cubic crystal known as “Salt”. Sodium Chloride or NaCI is kind of important to us not only as a seasoning but also as a preservative. Put a little iodide in it and it becomes a main staple of the family dinner table. And since we can find salt on the family table, I believe it a fine example for Jesus to use in the Sermon on the Mount.

Now there is the NaCI recipe for the salt I like on my McDonalds fries but the recipe for the kind of salt that Jesus describes has the following “Blessed” ingredients;
1. The poor in spirit
2. Those who mourn
3. The meek
4. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness
5. The merciful
6. The pure in heart
7. The peacemakers
8. Those who are persecuted for righteousness sake
And if you mix in the part when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on His account, you have the makings of someone who will have a seat at the banquet table of the Lamb.

Sometime ago I wrote a Freedom Fighter concerning salt when I spoke to my daughter. And to quote myself, “I can be a big dummy at times and forget the salt shaker.” I was having what I called a “red pepper moment” and thought I might have been out of line. But I think I’ll take a different view at this moment. You see there are times when we (Christian men and ladies) are called to rub salt into the wound of the world. My daughter didn’t need to hear a “color” commentary and it was my duty to rebuke. I just might have left out a few of the ingredients in the recipe above. I’ll get better at it if I just remember to keep my strength under control.

I like the parts where we are called to be peacemakers, to be persecuted and to hunger for righteousness. Those are battle worthy elements to me. I know I am poor in spirit at times and mourn when I hear what this world is coming to. It’s those other things like being meek, merciful and pure in heart that I stand convicted of struggling with. What a wretched man I can be in the long view but I know that with the strength of what was done on the Cross on my behalf I can be the salt.

Jesus was really laying the “Smackdown” on all of us with The Beatitudes. These are Kingdom keys that we need for our everyday walk with Him. These are also everyday ways of being so the world around us can get a taste of our saltiness. If we are not rubbing salt into world, we will lose our saltiness and we will need to earn the salt in order to be the light of the world (thanks to Pastor John Strain for that statement). Can’t get that at McDonalds can you? But the fries are good aren’t they? -- Chris Hughes is a graduate of the Colony of Mercy and a frequent contributor to Freedom Fighter

God's WORD for YOU: Proverbs 2; Jeremiah 30-31; Philemon

Great Quote: “Christian salt has no business to remain snugly in elegant little ecclesiastical salt cellars; our place is to be rubbed into the secular community, as salt is rubbed into meat, to stop it going bad. And when society does go bad, we Christians tend to throw up our hands in pious horror and reproach the non-Christian world; but should we not rather reproach ourselves? One can hardly blame unsalted meat for going bad. It cannot do anything else. The real question to ask is: where is the salt?” -- John R. Stott