Salt

 

Matthew 5:13

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.

 

Mark 9:50

Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourself, and be at peace with one another.

 

Salt has three main purposes.

 

Salt flavors. It mixes with the other ingredients and enhances the flavors. It makes things taste better.

 

We as salt are to flavor others.

 

Colossians 4:6

Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

 

Our lives and speech are to be flavored with Jesus. We are to show people though our words and actions Jesus.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is being a Jesus flavor to the world.

 

Salt purifies and heals.

 

Salt helps to remove impurities from a wound and speeds up healing.

 

In 2 Kings 2 the men of Jericho come to Elisha and tell him that the water in the town is bad. Elisha has them bring him a bowl of salt and he puts in the spring that is the city’s water supply.

 

In verse 21 Elisha says, “Thus says the Lord, I have healed the water; from now on neither death or miscarriage shall come from it.”

 

We as followers of Jesus are to be healing agents in people’s lives. The church is to bring healing into people’s lives through Jesus. We are told in Isaiah 53:5 that by Jesus’ wounds we are healed. Jesus brings physical, emotional, and spiritual healing. We are to be available to Jesus so He can use us to bring healing to people.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is about experiencing healing from Jesus and helping others to heal.

 

Salt makes things grow.

 

Salt is used as fertilizer. Fertilizer is made up of salts which contain ions of ammonium, nitrate, phosphate, magnesium, and sulfate. These are all nutrients that plants need. When they are added to soil in reasonable amounts, they provide food that plants need.

 

We are to be people that help other people to grow in their relationship and service to Jesus.  

 

Raise the Roof an Remove the Walls is helping others to grow.

 

Salt cannot lose its saltness, but the purity of salt varies. Salt harvested from the Dead Sea, in particular, grows increasingly stale because of impurities. If the salt is mixed with too many other minerals, the taste will become so diluted it will be useless. The follower of Jesus risks this pollution when we allow the values of the world, like love of authority and power and position to influence us. Those values suppress the purity of who we are to be as followers of Jesus.

 

Another way to interpret this remark about losing its saltness is to look at the purposes of salt, the defining characteristic of salt. If something so crucial to its identity can be lost, how can it ever be restored? This suggests a need for followers of Jesus to treat our role in the kingdom of God as essential and not optional.

 

In the Mark 9:50 passage Jesus indicates that us being salt results in peace. When we are the hands and feet of Jesus that bring healing, not more woundedness, into people’s lives, we help people to grow in experiencing the reality of Jesus. We will be agents of peace by helping people experience the peace of Jesus.

 

1 Peter 1:22-23

Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable through the living and abiding word of God.

 

We are to be pure salt, purified by our obedience to God’s word. We will flavor others, help others to heal, and help others grow.

 

Being Salt and Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

                                        Joe