The image probably conjured up in our minds initially when we read this verse is that we are a tiny grain of modern iodized salt, carrying a subtle connotation of having a limited influence. But at the time when this verse was written, they did not have tubular packages of salt with iodine added to it. The people who lived then had big chunks of rock salt.¹

The image here that God meant to convey was what salt was to them back then - - a very potent, very valuable chunk of rock salt. Chunks of rock salt enabled people of that day to preserve their food in a cleaner way. The salt rubbed on the meat would stop the growth of bacteria

Salt had a recreational as well as utilitarian use – it was a flavoring and preservative. It tasted good, but it also kept things fresh longer and slowed the growth of bacteria. Rock salt is a concentrated source of flavor that affects the area directly around it. Remember, the Holy Spirit was referring to the huge chunks of rock salt, not the tiny grains we find in the modern containers. We are the salt of the earth.

If we have a relationship with Jesus Christ, we each carry Him in our hearts. We’re not just a tiny grain with little influence as our modern-day salt imagery would have us think.

No, we are like great big chunks of rock salt, each of us with large potential to concentrate the area around us with the “flavor” of Jesus Christ AND the ability to preserve the people in our sphere by sharing the knowledge of JESUS – the Savior!! We can literally change the atmosphere around us just by walking into a room. The Spirit of God who saturates us charges the room with a flavor, much like salt dissolves and spreads into the areas around it, causing a chemical change and charging the area with a certain flavor. This change in the atmosphere causes people to notice you, to evaluate you, to watch what you do when faced with a challenge. By Him, we can have boldness and not repay evil for evil. By Him, we can share who He is with someone we know is lost and in desperate need. By Him, we can feed the hungry and clothe the naked, foregoing small purchases that week. By Him, we can saturate the world around us and change it forever.

We talk about Him, we get busy in life, we praise and we raise our hands and sometimes in all that talk we can become disconnected with who He is to us. Who is Jesus?

He is despised and rejected by men,
A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
4 Surely He has borne our griefs
And carried our sorrows;
Yet we esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned, every one, to his own way;
And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

Isaiah 53:3-6

We are the salt of the earth, and we are flavored with Jesus. We must bring the essence of who He is to those in the world around us! Let’s go back to our verse from Matthew 5:13b:

If we [the salt] lose our saltiness [the essence and Spirit of JESUS we carry in us and who lives in us], we lose our flavor. If we lose our flavor by losing touch with the essence of who JESUS is, we lose our power, we lose our footing, and we lose our reason for existing. Then we lose our focus, we become overpowered by things in our environment, we get trampled underfoot and thrown out by men.

We have to keep ourselves in touch with who Jesus is, to keep our flavor. We have to keep our discovery of who He is fresh. When we see Him, we see ourselves and we can grow into the full stature God desires. When we have seen Him, we “give off” the fruits of His Spirit – love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. This is the secret to keeping the potency of our flavor and the ability to change the atmosphere of the world around us.

Jesus is our potency and power to change the world around us. “For whatsoever is born of God overcomes the world.” God made us to be creative beings. We each have many ways we can share Jesus into the environment around us. When we reach into the four walls of our environment by the Spirit of God, and allow our light to shine, we are changing the world around us. That is what the true people of God, followers of Christ, do.

[1] (source: http://www.blueletterbible.org/commentaries/comm_view.cfm?AuthorID=1&contentID=6048&commInfo=26&topic=Matthew&ar=Mat_5_13 )

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