Categories: Bible Lessons 1 Comment

#DailyDevotion Pass The Salt Please.

#DailyDevotion Pass The Salt Please.

Luke 14: 33Just so, anyone of you who doesn’t give up everything he has can’t be My disciple. 34“Now, salt is good. But if the salt loses its taste, how will it be made salty again? 35It is no good for the ground or for the manure pile. People throw it away. “If you have ears to hear, listen!”

Now verse thirty-three goes much with what proceeded it yet the comparison has changed. Jesus had just attacked two of our gods we hold dear, our family and our own lives. Now he directs his aim towards our possessions. For indeed wealth or mammon is the chief god of this world. We trust in it more than anything else. If we have it we cannot but want more and if we don’t have much we’ll do anything to get it. But as with hating our family and our lives is to rank them below our faith and trust in Jesus, so too our wealth is be hating even the more so. If we have a choice between Jesus or wealth, of trusting Jesus or losing our wealth, our obeying Jesus or losing our wealth, Jesus is to be our choice.

Now Jesus finishes his discourse with salt. “Salt is good,” Jesus says, “But if the salt loses its taste, how will it be made salty again? 35It is no good for the ground or for the manure pile. People throw it away.” What is Jesus talking about? Well in the other two synoptic gospels Jesus also mentions salt: Mar 9:49-50  For everyone will be salted with fire.  (50)  Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”  Mat 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.

So we have in Matthew that we, Christians, are the salt of the earth. In Mark we find everything will be salted and we are to have salt in ourselves. We are to have salt in ourselves and be at peace with one another. What does this mean?

Perhaps a couple of passage from the Torah will help us. It is written, Lev 2:13 “You shall season all your grain offerings with salt. You shall not let the salt of the covenant with your God be missing from your grain offering; with all your offerings you shall offer salt.” Num 18:19  “All the holy contributions that the people of Israel present to the LORD I give to you, and to your sons and daughters with you, as a perpetual due. It is a covenant of salt forever before the LORD for you and for your offspring with you.” We see in these passages that the offerings made to God were to be salted. Every offering was to be salted. It was even called a “covenant of salt.” Paul reminds us, Eph 5:2 “And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” Jesus offered up himself to God as an offering. You have been joined to Christ through holy baptism. So then Paul makes this connection, 2Co 2:14-16 “through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.  (15)  For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing,  (16)  to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?” You see we too, in Christ, are an offering to God. We have been salted by Christ Jesus and are also the salt of his offering. The word of Christ we live and talk about is the fragrance of this offering of Jesus. Jesus also then offers us up to the Father. In the gospel passages, having salt and being salt involves us trusting in Christ, believing what he says and living our life according to it. Ultimately, we are the salt to which Christ has added to the world in offering up the world to the Father above. We in faith have become the salt of the covenant Jesus that Jesus offers to the Father.

Heavenly Father, grant that we may trust in Jesus Christ, your son, above all things and all people, that we may have salt in ourselves and be the salt of the world which is offered up to you in Christ Jesus. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

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Rev. Guillaume J. S. Williams, Sr.

The Reverend Guillaume Williams is the Pastor of Hope Lutheran Chapel of Osage Beach, Missouri. His pastoral ministry with Hope began in 2005 where he preaches the Christ crucified.

One Comment

  1. I like that passage. We studied it in Thirsday night men’s Bible Study at Immanuel Lutheran Church

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