Luke 14:34-35 (ESV)
[34] “Salt is good, but if salt
has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? [35] It is of no use
either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears
to hear, let him hear.”
We tend to use salt in two ways.
We use it as a preservative and as a flavoring. But salt, particularly the impure
salt harvested from the Dead Sea or similar sources, had other uses. When over
applied to soil it tends to kill plants, but when applied in the right amount
it becomes a fertilizer. It is still used in parts of the world in this way. When
applied to a manure pile it enhances the fertilizing properties of the manure.
So salt not only flavors and preserves, it promotes growth.
Pure salt, sodium chloride, doesn’t
lose its saltiness, but the impure salt harvested through drying can lose its
saltiness if the sodium chloride dissolves. For Jesus’ purposes the idea of
impure salt versus pure salt is not particularly helpful. That suggests to our
minds ideas of moral purity and impurity, but that’s not the point. When Jesus
says “salt,” he is referring to this salt from the Dead Sea that is good for
making things grow unless it loses its saltiness. Then it’s useless
In the previous verse Jesus said,
“any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.” Then
he goes on to talk about losing one’s saltiness. It makes me wonder how much
lack of spiritual growth, how much lack of spiritual influence, is the result
of Christians who have lost their saltiness due to what James called doublemindedness
(Jas 1:8). Salt that has lost its saltiness is good only to be thrown away. The
good news is that it’s not true of people. Confession and repentance can restore
saltiness. May we be salt that produces growth.
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