Salt and Light

One of the most basic and challenging problems of being faced with biblical truth, is the problem of the conventional voices we hear all around us: voices that present themselves as “common sense” while, biblically, they are known as “worldly wisdom.”

Horrific episodes such as world wars, mass murders, despotic regimes, sex trafficking, crime waves and the like, leave no doubt that our world is a broken, hurting, often desperate place. Yet, contrary to what the Scriptures teach, a myth continues to prevail in the thinking of average people that unaided human effort will be able, given enough time, money, education, unification, government programs and legislation, to cure this sick world we live in.

At the beginning of Jesus Christ’s most famous sermon--the Sermon on the Mount, after listing the virtues that encapsulate the character of His followers (the Beatitudes), the Lord launches into His stirring interpretation of the law of God. Throughout His message to His disciples, Jesus continues to emphasize the inner spirit of the law, making the point that even the most pious outward behavior of the most devoted law-keeper (such as your average Pharisee) is not enough to earn entrance into God’s eternal presence and blessing.

One can readily see that this is why Christ’s sermon started with a Beatitude countdown, designed to include both outward actions such as mourning and peacemaking, and inner attitudes like poorness of spirit and purity of heart. His listeners there in the First Century, every bit as much as readers here in the Twenty-first, tend to limit their attention and energies to the urgent business of “doing the right thing,” while neglecting the inner spirit of the law. Not only is it crucial to give attention to both inner and outward aspects of God’s requirements in order to please our Maker...it is also crucial in the practical battle of curing the world’s ills!

Even the most heroic human efforts to quash the forces that cause moral darkness and decay, end up leaving the root cause of the disease unaddressed. This root cause is what theologians have called “original sin,” and the only divinely prescribed remedy is what Jesus Himself described as a new birth--a birth from above (see John chapter 3).

In Matthew 5, immediately after the Beatitudes section, we read Jesus’ famous words to His disciples: “You are the salt of the earth...You are the light of the world.” Was He simply engaging His followers with a rah-rah-style pep talk meant to energize them before He sent them out to change the world with their unaided manpower? No. He had already listed character traits that set the standard far higher than a merely human cross-bar. These qualities were clearly ones that necessitate a profound, supernatural, spiritual heart transplant!

Let’s paraphrase this for a moment: Jesus told them, “You followers of mine, you who are poor in spirit, weep over your sins, are known for your meekness, yearn to be right with God, are quick to forgive and sacrifice for others, major on keeping a clear conscience, do all you can to heal all grievances, follow after godliness even when it costs you everything...you are salt and light for the rottenness and darkness of this sin-sick world!”

Can we agree that these traits are pretty far off the radar screen for your average heroic type-A human problem-solver? What government initiative or non-profit bureaucracy even pretends to see these as job qualifications for its agents of progress? Only one organization on earth can lay claim to such a roll-call of spiritual prerequisites--the one Jesus claimed He would build on the foundation of the prophets and apostles...the one He would empower to overrun the very gates of Hell.

The shocking, earth-shaking point the Savior is making in this pronouncement is that His church, made up of born-again believers who receive and obey His truth with childlike faith, they are the ones He is counting on to reverse the tide of global corruption and bring the floodlights of divine truth to the darkened corners of Satan’s dominion.

Christian leader, worker, teacher, businessman, official, dad, mom, teenager, writer, blogger, athlete, couch potato, whatever...

Christian: You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.

Christian: Go and spread your saltiness on others. Go and shine the light of God’s Good News.

Christian: Do it now. Do it today. Do it everywhere and anyway you can.

God has no other plan.