Salt

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE

SALT

Luke 14:34-35

34 "Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? 35 It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out. "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." 

NIV

Jesus has been teaching about counting the cost of being his disciple and about finishing what we have started as far as following him. He has been telling us we need to love him more than anybody else in our lives. He concludes all this teaching now with the analogy of salt and if it loses its saltiness it cannot be made salty again. We have to see this in the context of being his disciple. We also need to see this in the context of why Jesus was using salt as the comparison to a disciple. We all know during his time as well as today salt is used as a preservative, yet today we also use it to help make our food taste better.  We could make the case that we are the salt of the earth, we believers make the earth taste better to God. Sure that sounds a little corny but it could be as well as we preserve the earth, or preserve the gospel message for the earth. But it is more likely within the context Jesus was telling us that once we become his disciple we need to stay his disciple, we need to have counted the cost, forsaking even our own lives, for him. If we, after we take up our cross and follow him we put it down and start to follow our own desires instead, we have lost that saltiness and we will be unable to get it back. How could we turn back? How could we lose that love for Jesus? How could we put our cross down and chase after the things of the world? Maybe it is even possible we lose our saltiness by becoming religious. Whatever we chase after if it isn’t Jesus then we might be in danger of losing that saltiness. We need to be his disciple. That word be is the key here. We cannot say we were his disciple, or that we are going to become his disciple, or that we are working on being his disciple. We have to be his disciple. That is an ever present tense. It should of course incorporate that past and the future but it is the present in which we live. We cannot change the past, nor can we charge forward into the future, we have only the present and that is in which we must live as his disciple. If we start to get distracted by the world, or for that matter self, we need to see that immediately and put it down so we can remain salty. It is all about loving him more than anything or anybody. It is indeed troubling that Jesus says that if we lose that love for him, being is disciple, that saltiness we are fit for nothing less that the manure pile. Our staying power is in Jesus himself, in the power of the Spirit. If we start thinking we can stay salty in our own power, in our religion, in our following all the rules and regulations of denominationalism we have lost our saltiness. We can do nothing to remain salty on our own, we need Jesus living in us. He is truly the salt. If Jesus is living in us then we are the salt and we will be the salt, each and every day. We need to let Jesus take more control every day, being his disciple.