The Salt of the Earth (Mark 9:49-50)

Don't let go of what gives you value.   


Matthew 5:13   13 "You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot. 


Mark 9:50   50 Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another." 


Luke 14:34-35   34 "Salt is good; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?  It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; they throw it away. Let anyone with ears to hear listen!" 


Salt, in the first century, was often made up of what we call salt and impurities.  It was possible for the actual salt to leach out of the impurities and leave nothing but the impurities behind.  What you would have left looked like salt, but wasn't.  And it didn't have any of the properties of salt.

We can spend all our lives figuring out the right rules to keep and keeping them.  We can spend all our lives figuring out the correct theology to believe and believing it.  We can spend all our lives making a list of the right good works to do and doing them.  We can look like salt and not be salt.

Salt represents what is at our core.  Not what we do or don't do.  Not what we believe or don't believe.  But what goes on in our hearts - our relationship with God.

Be salty.