“Salt is good for seasoning. But if it loses its flavour, how do you make it salty again? Flavourless salt is good neither for the soil nor for the manure pile. It is thrown away. Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand!”
Luke 14:34-35
So what is the property of salt that is in focus here? The statement made in verse 34, said it is the seasoning. But the question is: how do we apply the idea of seasoning or flavouring to our role as disciples? I think it is a combination of most of the properties I mentioned yesterday. When you put them all together, it is clear what we are supposed to do as disciples.
- We are to “season” the society in which we live, such that we permeate everything and bring a “leavening to the whole lump”.
- We are to act as a limiting agent against the corruption that is all around us.
- We are to combat corruption and the processes which leads to the deterioration of standards and values of society.
- We are to act as purifying agents against the moral decay that is throughout society.
- We are to lower the acidity factor of society around us.
Given the theme of discipleship that Jesus has been outlining over the last chapters, what ought our role in society be? We ought to consider our discipleship and count the cost of being salt to the world in which we live. We ought to be willing to take up our cross, face persecution, and be salt to those around us. This last statement indicates that we ought to season those around us with our saltiness. What we ought to do is permeate the society around us with our influence. We ought to limit the corruption and moral decay around us. We ought to uphold biblical standards ourselves and not bring disrepute to the name of Christ or Christianity. But more than that, we ought to be limiting the influence of evil around us. We are to exemplify the biblical standards and values for the world around us to see. We ought to stand for purity in the midst of a corrupt and evil world. If we become salt that has lost its saltiness, then we are of no use to Christ and certainly will have no influence on the world around us.
We don’t have to be told that we live in an evil and perverse world. We see it all around us. I follow the news most days from New Zealand and I am struck by how seemingly lawless “God’s own” or “Godzone” is becoming. [That is what many New Zealanders call the country – God’s own.] What a misnomer that is! There is no way that New Zealand or any other nation on the face of this planet can be considered to be God’s own. To be “God’s own” we must submit to His reign and His instructions for how life should be lived, in order for His Kingdom to be established. But Romans 1:28 ff makes it clear where things are at.
Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, He abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done. Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarrelling, deception, malicious behaviour, and gossip . . . They invent new ways of sinning . . . They know God’s justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them anyway. Worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too.(Rom 1:28-32)
The Lord has left His Holy Spirit in the world to convict the world of sin, righteousness and judgement (John 16:8). He has left his people in the world to witness to the truth and uphold His standards as well. We are to be a beacon of His standards to those around us. Each human being has a God-given conscience, but many choose to sear their conscience to the point where it is no longer a guide to them. But still, deep down inside, the truth remains. Allow me to quote again the story I told in Gems 142.
Back in the 1960s, Hugh Heffner was being interviewed about his Playboy empire. During the interview as Heffner was explaining his philosophy, the interviewer adopted a new angle based on what Heffner had been saying. The interviewer, a woman, asked the question, “When is your daughter going to become a bunny, Hugh?” Heffner had been talking about the freedom of the sexual revolution. Hugh Heffner went through a number of adjustments and didn’t answer for a long time. Finally, he confessed, “That is the one area of my philosophy I haven’t been able to work out. I don’t want my daughter to be a bunny.” Written on the tablet of Hugh Heffner’s heart is the law of God. He is without excuse, just like everyone else on earth.He has a God-given conscience operating within, convicting him of sin even though he attempted to ignore it.
As salt, we are to hold to and exemplify God’s standards of behaviour, and mirror them before a world that seems desperate to self-destruct in its desire to abandon God’s ways. There is a manifestly evident process at work in society, which seeks for greater and greater freedom and all the while leads to its own destruction. We seem to have an aversion to laws and seek to challenge them at every turn, in our quest for freedom. Pause to consider for a moment the following examples. In NZ we have traffic laws which determine the speed we should travel in built-up areas or on the open road. In an area delineated as 50 kph most travel 55. In a 100 kph zone most travel 110. “The law” does nothing about it in the interest of allowing some leeway. The police allow motorists to speed up to a limit of + 10% . It’s called freedom. The standard practice becomes the norm – therefore, the acceptable practice. But there are those who seek to change the law in the name of freedom. If they can get the new “norm” to be accepted, then eventually they know it will become acceptable law and then norms or acceptable practice will operate on the new law. There is an every increasing tendency DOWNWARDS.
The same is true of the lowering of the drinking age. It is apparent to every thinking person that drinking and driving don’t mix. Statistics tell us that young people and speed don’t go together well. But add to that the component of alcohol and it constitutes a volatile mix. Yet still, people insist on their freedom to drink and drive and do it all at a younger age. Looking at the results of spoiled children who are then given excessive freedom is a scary prospect, but society still wants its freedom to do as it pleases. Like I said above, it appears to be a compulsive urge to self-destruct. The Bible (the God-given manual for life) tells us that sin will lead to increasing levels of sin. Freedom in one area will lead to excess in other areas or a compulsive desire to find new ways to sin or new ways to add to the sense of excitement.
In New Zealand now, like elsewhere in the world, the definition of marriage is under hot debate. Those who desire to hold to biblical principles are being shouted down as prudish for daring to suggest marriage should be between a man and a woman, rather than same-gender marriage (a man and a man or a woman and a woman). Sinful men and women want to redefine what marriage is, because in doing so, norms and later on laws, can be abandoned in the name of freedom. You see, as long as marriage is defined as being between a man and woman, then anything other than that cannot be considered normal. But if you can change what is considered normal (the norms) then within a generation you will be able to change what is acceptable. All in the interest of freedom, of course.
But God’s manual for life says:
“For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.”
Rom 1:25-27
It is very clear what is wrong and what is right. To change that, the lobby groups aim to get the “new idea” accepted as normal. Later on, it can become law and legislated for everyone to be forced to follow. Later you can prosecute people who insist that marriage must be between a man and a woman, then you have succeeded in changing the norm. You change the norm by saying it often enough to the point where it becomes acceptable. Sadly, for many who hold to God’s standards of what is sin, what is righteousness and what should be judged, we fail to be salt at the right time. Later on when the corruption has set in, it is too hard for salt to reverse the rot. We allow the world to conform us to its standard, to the point where we lose our saltiness. When that happens we have lost our opportunity to influence the world around us. Or conversely, when we take on board the impurity of the world around us by our own compromise, then our salt becomes damp or so impure, to the point where we have lost our distinctive difference with the world around us.
At that point we are thrown out; if we ourselves are not bodily thrown out, certainly our ideas will be. We need to wake up and become more perceptive as to what is happening in society, so that we can stand up and be counted when we need to. Are you ready to count the cost? More importantly, are you ready to pay the price of commitment to Christ? If you don’t pay the price when you ought, you may well find it will cost your life when it is too late to influence the world around you. Get your head out of the sand and wake up to the realities of social change around you. Don’t wait until it is too late for you to change the immediate world around you, because you didn’t speak up or be salt when you should have.
The greatest threat to our freedom is freedom itself. We desperately need boundaries and limitations to save us from our own slide toward increasing wickedness.
A R Bernard
People fight for the right to be wrong but no one consults with God about what the norms should be.
A R Bernard
You can’t change the world if you are afraid of it.
Anon
Christian, you are not a citizen of this world trying to get to heaven; you are a citizen of heaven making your way through this world.
Vince Havner
Your life may be the only Bible some people see in their lifetime.
Anon
If you want to be a bridge, expect to get walked on.
Max Lucado
The world is a dangerous place not because of people who do evil, but because of good people who look on and do nothing about it.
Albert Einstein