- A section of scripture - Questions about the scripture. - Various mainstream views about the scripture (which may not be correct, or I may disagree with). - Sometimes my opinion is added. It starts with "My 2 Cents" - The blog authors will add information, opinions and responses (which will be clear by their name. For all the previous things they will usually be under the name, "Bruce").
Sunday, March 27, 2022
Luke 14:34 - 35
Luke 14:34 - 35
34 “Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?35 It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
1. What is salt in this parable? 2. How does salt lose its taste? 3. How shall it's saltiness be restored? Is there a way? 4. What's the soil and the manure pile? 5. What does it mean that it's thrown away?
As a moral antiseptic, Christians keep the corruption of society at bay by opposing moral decay by their lives and their words. . . research shows that, “… the average Christian in the average church is almost indistinguishable from the rest of society.
Jesus said two things would happen when you shine your light: 1. Men will see your good deeds. . . A watching culture sinking into the hopeless, despairing abyss of its own unchecked desires could not help but notice these Christians had something they needed. . . 2. They give God the credit. . . .That’s how much influence we have. We can point men to God. We can lead them out of darkness into the light.
-------------
This is a really good exercise. My paradigm, even up to this last week, was that the reason we are here on earth is to prepare ourselves and others for eternity (by showing others the way to Christ and encouraging those in Christ). This is certainly upheld by "we are the light of the world".
But the other part of the passage, "we are the salt of the earth", presents difficulties for that paradigm. I believe that this is commanding us to be a force of good in the world - paying attention to social justice issues and, dare I say it, raising our voices to make a difference in governmental issues.
I think that "you are the salt of the earth" shoots down my previous idea that the only thing that matters on earth is the next life - our lives with God. Apparently, God cares about what happens on this earth and doesn't want us to abandon being a positive force in it.
On the surface, this sounds like no change. Whereas before I wanted to do good to glorify God by what I did, now I need to add to that being salt on this earth (which also brings God's glory). However, the difference in my mind is that I have to add a temporal view to my eternal view - and that will make a difference in the way I act.
There's quite a few things that this will effect (although at the moment, I'm not thinking clearly enough to list them all). One main thing is that now I need to care about decisions non-Christians make, and influence them to not make bad decisions. Before, I didn't care at all, because it didn't make an eternal difference in their lives. I also need to care about the direction of government, whereas before I didn't really care about anything that didn't make an eternal difference.
Von brought up a good parallel. If we compare staying on Earth to staying in a hotel that is going to be destroyed within the week (and afterwards, spending eternity in our rescuers mansion), what is our duty to the people in the hotel and the hotel itself.
Obviously, we want to show them the way to avoid the disaster of the hotel being destroyed (being the light of the world). But what else is there (being the salt of the world)? Well, obviously, we don't want to be bad citizens in the hotel. We don't want to throw trash on the floor, go to the bathroom in the swimming pool, etc. We wouldn't want to do those things, for one, because we want people to trust us enough to listen to us when we show the way out of the disaster. Furthermore, our rescuer built the hotel and even though He's going to destroy it soon, we need to have respect for His hotel. Even beyond that, we need to esteem the people He created, for the reason that He made them special.
So, we are the salt of the earth to:
1. Take care of and respect His creation because He made it, even though He's going to destroy it soon. 2. Respect the people He created to earn an audience so that we can be light. 3. Respect the people He created just because He created them.
Personal application: I need to not be cynical about people. I can be realistic, but I need to let the Holy Spirit move my actions so that I can be salt - even when I think there is no hope. I need to care about justice, and not give up on justice in this world. I need to care about how the choices that non-believers make effect them, and not just say the equivalent of, "yup, you go to your doom - have fun with that."
-----
This is my suggestion: to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world means that at root Christians are so profoundly satisfied by Christ as our eternal reward, we are freed from fear and greed for the sacrifices of love, and are able to rejoice at persecution. When the world sees this, they see the glory of Christ and taste the satisfying pleasure of who he is.
In my opinion, Jesus was using salt as a metaphor for purity, with reference to the way in which actual salt was used to season meat and preserve its freshness. Jesus was saying that the internal absorption and incorporation of His teaching, and of His example of humility and selfless service, by the apostles would make them suitable for the evangelizing work to which they (and, in a larger sense, all Christians) had/have been called.
If the apostles were to lose that orientation through such elements as the love of the world, the fear of man, or their own selfish ambition (such as the apostles had displayed in their argument), it would not be possible to once again restore them to being effective conveyors of the spiritual message of the gospel.
----
I think having salt among ourselves is referring to being peace-makers. Peace-makers are forces of good in the world countering evil. Peace-makers build up others around them, encouraging them to follow in their footsteps of peace-making. Of course, peace-making is sourced in the Holy Spirit. We can't do it on our own.
The common element in all three instances is that salt represents the purifying element in life, the principle of unselfish devotion. Here, the special aspect of that element is self-renunciation. In proportion as that is incomplete, the salt loses its savour. The question, Wherewith shall it be salted? is asked as in the accents of almost hopeless sadness. What other purifying influences can be brought to bear on us when the love of Christ has failed?
Since most of us think of refined table salt (which is 97% sodium chloride) when we read Jesus' words, we cannot fathom how the salt could possibly become tasteless. In Jesus' day most of the salt came from marshes southwest of the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea's mineral composition differs from that of ocean water, which is approximately 85% sodium chloride (NaCl) whereas Dead Sea salt is only 12-18% sodium chloride. The point is that the impure salt derived from the Dead Sea was susceptible to deterioration and could lose its flavor, leaving useless crystals fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile. Useless salt was simply thrown away.
The necessity of “counting the cost” is enforced by a picture of the consequences of neglecting to do so. The man who has once made a profession of religion, but has afterwards gone back from it, is like salt which has “lost its savor.” Such salt is comparatively useless.
The truth which our Lord brings out in this place is very painful, but very useful and needful to be known. No man, be it remembered, is in so dangerous a state as he who has once known the truth and professed to love it, and has afterwards fallen away from his profession, and gone back to the world. You can tell such a man nothing that he does not know. You can show him no doctrine that he has not heard. He has not sinned in ignorance like many. He has gone away from Christ with his eyes open. He has sinned against a known, and not an unknown God. His case is well nigh desperate. All things are possible with God.
This is the picture of a man or woman who seeks to be a follower of Jesus, but who won't pay the price of following. It's a picture of people who call themselves Jesus' 'disciples'; but who still loves other people more than they love Him, and who still exalt their own concerns over His, and who still cling to the things of this world more than they cling to Him. As far as He is concerned, such would-be followers are as useless to the cause of discipleship as salt is that has lost its saltiness. They are good for nothing. They cannot - according to Jesus' own words - be His disciples.
The man who wants only a bit of God always finds God to be only a brake, an impediment, a pain. But he who wants God wholly learns that he is the source of power, that he gives a man freedom and verve, that following him is the most joyful thing in the world because he frees a man from all the things that tempt and torment the halfhearted.
Christians make plenty of negative comments and vent tons of frustration over the putrefaction of our society. But our culture is simply doing what comes natural, rotting because it has no preservative. As hard as it is to admit, we should quit leveling the blame of decadence on pagans and start asking why the Church is not more effectively preventing decay (especially of our ethical and moral values) from accelerating and exerting an ever increasing negative influence in our society.
As John Stott points out, “And when society does go bad, we Christians tend to throw up our hands in pious horror and reproach the non-Christian world; but should we not rather reproach ourselves? One can hardly blame unsalted meat for going bad. It cannot do anything else. The real question to ask is: where is the salt?”
discussing the text, "Ye are the salt of the earth." One suggestion after another was made as to the meaning of salt in this verse. "Salt imparts a desirable flavor," said one. "Salt preserves from decay," another suggested. She said, "Salt creates thirst."
Eph 4:29 - Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear.
Even after Constantine had made Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire, there came to the throne another Emperor called Julian, who wished to put the clock back and to bring back the old gods. His complaint, as Ibsen puts it, was:
"Have you looked at these Christians closely? Hollow-eyed, pale-cheeked, flat-breasted all; they brood their lives away, unspurred by ambition: the sun shines for them, but they do not see it: the earth offers them its fulness, but they desire it not; all their desire is to renounce and to suffer that they may come to die."
As Julian saw it, Christianity took the vividness out of life.
Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, "I might have entered the ministry if certain clergymen I knew had not looked and acted so much like undertakers." Robert Louis Stevenson once entered in his diary, as if he was recording an extraordinary phenomenon, "I have been to Church to-day, and am not depressed."
Men need to discover the lost radiance of the Christian faith. In a worried world, the Christian should be the only man who remains serene. In a depressed world, the Christian should be the only man who remains full of the joy of life. There should be a sheer sparkle about the Christian but too often he dresses like a mourner at a funeral, and talks like a specter at a feast. Wherever he is, if he is to be the salt of the earth, the Christian must be the diffuser of joy.
It is "God's flavor" within us that brings positive change in the world around us. It's both verbal and non-verbal. It both brings out the flavor of Jesus' true life with the side-effect that it preserves the physical world around us.
A note on preservation: We may be tempted to think of preservation as forcing our cultural ideas onto others. This is not preservation. Preservation is a result of what happens when God's flavor make itself known and is received. Christ received will result in preserving our physical world (because people will act in ways that are more positive).
2. How does salt lose its taste?
Two ways: a. By allowing it to be corrupted by other things. b. By allowing it to be used up without refreshment from the salt source.
3. How shall it's saltiness be restored? Is there a way?
Jesus question is rhetorical and was designed to make us think. Is there no way to restore saltiness then? I think Jesus wants us to realize that we can't do it on our own and become hungry for external help (which only He can uniquely give). Jesus is the source of light, salt, and life itself. He is the Source and we are welcome to come to Him and fill up full.
4. What's the soil and the manure pile?
Apparently, people used salt (at least the impure stuff they had back then) as a fertilizer. I think in this instance the soil and manure pile is the world (manure in this case is a positive thing).
5. What does it mean that it's thrown away?
One way to look at this is that all of our unsalted efforts are worthless. They will be thrown away. I think this is a more global statement not specifically referring to salvation.
Just heard a sermon on this section that brought out two other interesting ideas: salt brings out the best/enhances the taste in foods it encounters. So, we too should be bringing out the best in others, causing them to be most fully who God made them to be. Secondly, in reference to the manure pile, some anthropologists speculate that salt was used in the latrine or the back yard pile of waste to keep the contagions down. I'm not sure how much evidence there is for that, but ancients did know that salt kept away disease (used it to clean things, etc.).
Interesting that today I am praising God for his "S" attributes (I go through the alphabet as a tool). I can add "Source of saltiness" to the list. :-)
Questions:
ReplyDelete1. What is salt in this parable?
2. How does salt lose its taste?
3. How shall it's saltiness be restored? Is there a way?
4. What's the soil and the manure pile?
5. What does it mean that it's thrown away?
https://hartmangroupdevotionsmark.blogspot.com/2018/08/mark-942-50-42-if-anyone-causes-one-of.html says:
ReplyDeleteAs a moral antiseptic, Christians keep the corruption of society at bay by opposing moral decay by their lives and their words. . . research shows that, “… the average Christian in the average church is almost indistinguishable from the rest of society.
Jesus said two things would happen when you shine your light: 1. Men will see your good deeds. . . A watching culture sinking into the hopeless, despairing abyss of its own unchecked desires could not help but notice these Christians had something they needed. . . 2. They give God the credit. . . .That’s how much influence we have. We can point men to God. We can lead them out of darkness into the light.
-------------
This is a really good exercise. My paradigm, even up to this last week, was that the reason we are here on earth is to prepare ourselves and others for eternity (by showing others the way to Christ and encouraging those in Christ). This is certainly upheld by "we are the light of the world".
But the other part of the passage, "we are the salt of the earth", presents difficulties for that paradigm. I believe that this is commanding us to be a force of good in the world - paying attention to social justice issues and, dare I say it, raising our voices to make a difference in governmental issues.
I think that "you are the salt of the earth" shoots down my previous idea that the only thing that matters on earth is the next life - our lives with God. Apparently, God cares about what happens on this earth and doesn't want us to abandon being a positive force in it.
On the surface, this sounds like no change. Whereas before I wanted to do good to glorify God by what I did, now I need to add to that being salt on this earth (which also brings God's glory). However, the difference in my mind is that I have to add a temporal view to my eternal view - and that will make a difference in the way I act.
There's quite a few things that this will effect (although at the moment, I'm not thinking clearly enough to list them all). One main thing is that now I need to care about decisions non-Christians make, and influence them to not make bad decisions. Before, I didn't care at all, because it didn't make an eternal difference in their lives. I also need to care about the direction of government, whereas before I didn't really care about anything that didn't make an eternal difference.
https://hartmangroupdevotionsmark.blogspot.com/2018/08/mark-942-50-42-if-anyone-causes-one-of.html continued:
ReplyDeleteVon brought up a good parallel. If we compare staying on Earth to staying in a hotel that is going to be destroyed within the week (and afterwards, spending eternity in our rescuers mansion), what is our duty to the people in the hotel and the hotel itself.
Obviously, we want to show them the way to avoid the disaster of the hotel being destroyed (being the light of the world). But what else is there (being the salt of the world)? Well, obviously, we don't want to be bad citizens in the hotel. We don't want to throw trash on the floor, go to the bathroom in the swimming pool, etc. We wouldn't want to do those things, for one, because we want people to trust us enough to listen to us when we show the way out of the disaster. Furthermore, our rescuer built the hotel and even though He's going to destroy it soon, we need to have respect for His hotel. Even beyond that, we need to esteem the people He created, for the reason that He made them special.
So, we are the salt of the earth to:
1. Take care of and respect His creation because He made it, even though He's going to destroy it soon.
2. Respect the people He created to earn an audience so that we can be light.
3. Respect the people He created just because He created them.
Personal application: I need to not be cynical about people. I can be realistic, but I need to let the Holy Spirit move my actions so that I can be salt - even when I think there is no hope. I need to care about justice, and not give up on justice in this world. I need to care about how the choices that non-believers make effect them, and not just say the equivalent of, "yup, you go to your doom - have fun with that."
-----
This is my suggestion: to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world means that at root Christians are so profoundly satisfied by Christ as our eternal reward, we are freed from fear and greed for the sacrifices of love, and are able to rejoice at persecution. When the world sees this, they see the glory of Christ and taste the satisfying pleasure of who he is.
https://hartmangroupdevotionsmark.blogspot.com/2018/08/mark-942-50-42-if-anyone-causes-one-of.html continued:
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, Jesus was using salt as a metaphor for purity, with reference to the way in which actual salt was used to season meat and preserve its freshness. Jesus was saying that the internal absorption and incorporation of His teaching, and of His example of humility and selfless service, by the apostles would make them suitable for the evangelizing work to which they (and, in a larger sense, all Christians) had/have been called.
If the apostles were to lose that orientation through such elements as the love of the world, the fear of man, or their own selfish ambition (such as the apostles had displayed in their argument), it would not be possible to once again restore them to being effective conveyors of the spiritual message of the gospel.
----
I think having salt among ourselves is referring to being peace-makers. Peace-makers are forces of good in the world countering evil. Peace-makers build up others around them, encouraging them to follow in their footsteps of peace-making. Of course, peace-making is sourced in the Holy Spirit. We can't do it on our own.
https://biblehub.com/commentaries/luke/14-34.htm says:
ReplyDeleteThe common element in all three instances is that salt represents the purifying element in life, the principle of unselfish devotion. Here, the special aspect of that element is self-renunciation. In proportion as that is incomplete, the salt loses its savour. The question, Wherewith shall it be salted? is asked as in the accents of almost hopeless sadness. What other purifying influences can be brought to bear on us when the love of Christ has failed?
https://www.preceptaustin.org/luke-14-commentary says:
ReplyDeleteSince most of us think of refined table salt (which is 97% sodium chloride) when we read Jesus' words, we cannot fathom how the salt could possibly become tasteless. In Jesus' day most of the salt came from marshes southwest of the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea's mineral composition differs from that of ocean water, which is approximately 85% sodium chloride (NaCl) whereas Dead Sea salt is only 12-18% sodium chloride. The point is that the impure salt derived from the Dead Sea was susceptible to deterioration and could lose its flavor, leaving useless crystals fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile. Useless salt was simply thrown away.
The necessity of “counting the cost” is enforced by a picture of the consequences of neglecting to do so. The man who has once made a profession of religion, but has afterwards gone back from it, is like salt which has “lost its savor.” Such salt is comparatively useless.
The truth which our Lord brings out in this place is very painful, but very useful and needful to be known. No man, be it remembered, is in so dangerous a state as he who has once known the truth and professed to love it, and has afterwards fallen away from his profession, and gone back to the world. You can tell such a man nothing that he does not know. You can show him no doctrine that he has not heard. He has not sinned in ignorance like many. He has gone away from Christ with his eyes open. He has sinned against a known, and not an unknown God. His case is well nigh desperate. All things are possible with God.
https://www.preceptaustin.org/luke-14-commentary continued:
ReplyDeleteThis is the picture of a man or woman who seeks to be a follower of Jesus, but who won't pay the price of following. It's a picture of people who call themselves Jesus' 'disciples'; but who still loves other people more than they love Him, and who still exalt their own concerns over His, and who still cling to the things of this world more than they cling to Him. As far as He is concerned, such would-be followers are as useless to the cause of discipleship as salt is that has lost its saltiness. They are good for nothing. They cannot - according to Jesus' own words - be His disciples.
The man who wants only a bit of God always finds God to be only a brake, an impediment, a pain. But he who wants God wholly learns that he is the source of power, that he gives a man freedom and verve, that following him is the most joyful thing in the world because he frees a man from all the things that tempt and torment the halfhearted.
Christians make plenty of negative comments and vent tons of frustration over the putrefaction of our society. But our culture is simply doing what comes natural, rotting because it has no preservative. As hard as it is to admit, we should quit leveling the blame of decadence on pagans and start asking why the Church is not more effectively preventing decay (especially of our ethical and moral values) from accelerating and exerting an ever increasing negative influence in our society.
As John Stott points out, “And when society does go bad, we Christians tend to throw up our hands in pious horror and reproach the non-Christian world; but should we not rather reproach ourselves? One can hardly blame unsalted meat for going bad. It cannot do anything else. The real question to ask is: where is the salt?”
Touche.
Deletehttps://www.preceptaustin.org/luke-14-commentary continued:
ReplyDeletediscussing the text, "Ye are the salt of the earth." One suggestion after another was made as to the meaning of salt in this verse. "Salt imparts a desirable flavor," said one. "Salt preserves from decay," another suggested. She said, "Salt creates thirst."
Eph 4:29 - Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear.
Even after Constantine had made Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire, there came to the throne another Emperor called Julian, who wished to put the clock back and to bring back the old gods. His complaint, as Ibsen puts it, was:
"Have you looked at these Christians closely? Hollow-eyed, pale-cheeked, flat-breasted all; they brood their lives away, unspurred by ambition: the sun shines for them, but they do not see it: the earth offers them its fulness, but they desire it not; all their desire is to renounce and to suffer that they may come to die."
As Julian saw it, Christianity took the vividness out of life.
Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, "I might have entered the ministry if certain clergymen I knew had not looked and acted so much like undertakers." Robert Louis Stevenson once entered in his diary, as if he was recording an extraordinary phenomenon, "I have been to Church to-day, and am not depressed."
Men need to discover the lost radiance of the Christian faith. In a worried world, the Christian should be the only man who remains serene. In a depressed world, the Christian should be the only man who remains full of the joy of life. There should be a sheer sparkle about the Christian but too often he dresses like a mourner at a funeral, and talks like a specter at a feast. Wherever he is, if he is to be the salt of the earth, the Christian must be the diffuser of joy.
Complaining Christians are tasteless Christians.
Questions:
ReplyDelete1. What is salt in this parable?
It is "God's flavor" within us that brings positive change in the world around us. It's both verbal and non-verbal. It both brings out the flavor of Jesus' true life with the side-effect that it preserves the physical world around us.
A note on preservation: We may be tempted to think of preservation as forcing our cultural ideas onto others. This is not preservation. Preservation is a result of what happens when God's flavor make itself known and is received. Christ received will result in preserving our physical world (because people will act in ways that are more positive).
2. How does salt lose its taste?
Two ways: a. By allowing it to be corrupted by other things. b. By allowing it to be used up without refreshment from the salt source.
3. How shall it's saltiness be restored? Is there a way?
Jesus question is rhetorical and was designed to make us think. Is there no way to restore saltiness then? I think Jesus wants us to realize that we can't do it on our own and become hungry for external help (which only He can uniquely give). Jesus is the source of light, salt, and life itself. He is the Source and we are welcome to come to Him and fill up full.
4. What's the soil and the manure pile?
Apparently, people used salt (at least the impure stuff they had back then) as a fertilizer. I think in this instance the soil and manure pile is the world (manure in this case is a positive thing).
5. What does it mean that it's thrown away?
One way to look at this is that all of our unsalted efforts are worthless. They will be thrown away. I think this is a more global statement not specifically referring to salvation.
Just heard a sermon on this section that brought out two other interesting ideas: salt brings out the best/enhances the taste in foods it encounters. So, we too should be bringing out the best in others, causing them to be most fully who God made them to be. Secondly, in reference to the manure pile, some anthropologists speculate that salt was used in the latrine or the back yard pile of waste to keep the contagions down. I'm not sure how much evidence there is for that, but ancients did know that salt kept away disease (used it to clean things, etc.).
ReplyDeleteInteresting that today I am praising God for his "S" attributes (I go through the alphabet as a tool). I can add "Source of saltiness" to the list. :-)
ReplyDelete