following question: “With the exception of those few high
school students who may be strong disciples of Christ, aren’t
you taking Matthew 5:13-14 out of context?” Again, this is a very difficult thing for a young, immature
Christian to try and do.
Can We Expect a Child To Do This? When I was growing up, my mother would make me gargle
salt water to heal sores that would sometimes form on my
lips or inside my mouth. I remember the awful taste and
how I wanted to spit it out, but she made me keep it in my
mouth for some time so the sores would heal. I cannot imag-
ine sending any of my children out into this world to try and
heal the wounds caused by sin.
I want to look at this passage from another perspective. To
do this, I will need to go back to the days when I taught high
school chemistry.
Salt is one of the most abundant compounds found in the
earth. Have you ever wondered what salt can do? This is a
very important question to ask and answer before we expect
a child to be salt. Salt is an amazing compound that can
perform several different functions. Consider the following:
SALT PRESERVES
This is the most common use of salt that is applied to Jesus’
admonition for His disciples to be the salt of the earth. When
I lived in Virginia, I visited a ham house at a local farm.
Inside, all the hams hung from the ceiling heavily caked in
salt to preserve them from spoiling. When a Christian tries
to be salt in this world, he/she must cake an anti-Christian,
postmodern culture with the distinctiveness of Christianity.
To do this, salt must keep its “saltiness” so it can preserve
the culture.
SALT FLAVORS
When one sprinkles salt on a grilled steak, he doesn’t do so
to preserve it but to flavor it. Christians are to flavor this
world with Christlike character. It takes time for a Christian
to develop the godly character needed to add this distinctive
flavor to a lost world.
SALT CREATES THIRST
The old adage that says you can lead a horse to water, but
you can’t make it drink, is true. However, if you put a salt
block there, the horse will become thirsty and drink the
water. Restaurants sometimes offer customers free popcorn
or other salty snacks. The motive is not just to be nice but to
cause the customer to be thirsty and run up a large beverage
bill. Christians who are equipped to be salt must have the
ability to cause lost people to thirst for God and His salva-
tion. Few children have this ability.
SALT CLEANSES
It may not be something anyone wants to experience, but
one can clean out a fresh cut by running some salt water
over the wound. I would rather use a soothing ointment, but
if it isn’t available, salt can provide protection from infection.
26
SALT HEALS
SALT MELTS COLDNESS
Growing up in the Buffalo, NY area, I endured many a
harsh winter. One thing we always kept in the house and
in the trunk of our cars was salt. When salt is spread on an
icy path or road, it lowers the freezing point of water and
ends up melting the coldness. To be salt, Christians must
have the maturity to go into a dark, lost world that is cold
to the gospel. We are to have the character and maturity to
melt the cold hardness of a lost person’s heart. This is hardly
something that most children are capable of doing.
SALT RAISES BOILING POINTS
We live in a violent world. The news is filled with tragic
accounts of people whose boiling point is reached, and they
go berserk. The results are disastrous. When one puts salt in
water, it actually raises the boiling point so the water will get
hotter without boiling. This allows potatoes or spaghetti to
cook at a quicker rate, and the result is tastier food. As salt,
Christians must raise the boiling point in society as we live
our lives as peacemakers. It takes a mature, godly Christian
to be able to do this.
As you can see, salt has a lot of very useful purposes.
Sometimes we get the idea that being the salt of the earth
means that we just need to be “in” the world. If we carry
our Bibles to work or school and pray before we eat our
meals, we are fulfilling God’s expectations for being the salt
of the world. When we consider what salt is expected to do,
we understand that just letting people know that we are a
Christian is not enough.
To do any of the functions listed above salt must, first
of all, make contact with whatever it is trying to influence.
When we send a young child or teen into this dark, sinful
world to be salt, we are expecting them to be able to make
contact with the world around them and be a powerful
force to restrain the effects of sin. This puts a child in a very