“Ye are the salt of the earth…Ye are the light of the world.”
“That’s the job description of a Christian,” said my Sunday school teacher many years ago. By this, he meant that Christians are called to be salt and light in a lost and dying world.
Salt in the sense Jesus spoke of here meant “savory” or “flavorful.” As John Gill put it,
This is to be understood of the disciples and apostles of Christ; who might be compared to “salt”, because of the savoury doctrines they preached; as all such are, which are agreeable to the Scriptures, and are of the evangelistic kind, which are full of Christ, serve to exalt him, and to magnify the grace of God; and are suitable to the experiences of the saints, and are according to godliness, and tend to promote it: also because of their savoury lives and conversations; whereby they recommended, and gave sanction to the doctrines they preached, were examples to the saints, and checks upon wicked men.
In the Scriptures, “light” is often a reference to knowledge of the truth. And that is the sense in which Jesus used it here. Again, John Gill,
What the luminaries, the sun and moon, are in the heavens, with respect to corporal light, that the apostles were in the world with regard to spiritual light; carrying and spreading the light of the Gospel not only in Judea, but all over the world, which was in great darkness of ignorance and error; and through a divine blessing attending their ministry, many were turned from the darkness of Judaism and Gentilism, of sin and infidelity, to the marvellous light of divine grace.
As Christians, are words out actions, even our thoughts, are to show Christ to our neighbor in a lost, dying and hopeless world.
Doubtless, most Christians would agree with this assessment. But how hard it can be to put into practice!
If I’m honest with myself and with you, I have to say that I don’t always do a very good job at this. Perhaps you’re a bit like me, and look around you at the mess, the perfect babel of confusion our civilization has become and despair. The forces of evil are overwhelming, and I cannot overcome them. They have power, money, influence, and prestige in abundance. What are my puny efforts in comparison to that? And you can probably guess at some of the great discouragers I’m talking about.
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