Salt

“Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his saltness, wherewith will ye season it?

Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another.”

(Mark 9:50)

There is good salt and bad. Hand harvested sea salt contains all of the precious minerals the body needs for life and health. These minerals make this type of salt a vital necessity. However, a salt that has lost its savor is bad salt. How does it lose its saltness? Because it was not true salt to begin with and therefore was proven to be worthless with use.

The good salt of which the LORD Jesus speaks is that which is pure and found in God alone, without any mixture of human work or effort. What salt is to our food, the unadulterated grace of God in Christ is to the soul of God’s children.“Have salt in yourselves.” Just as salt is designed to flavor and preserve food that we eat, so we need the daily ministration of the Spirit of Grace in our souls to nurture, sustain and preserve us as God’s children in the salvation that Christ has worked out on our behalf.

1.) Like pure salt, the grace of God preserves the heart from the corruptions of this flesh and without it we would be completely spoiled and ruined. The Spirit of Grace in the child of God preserves not only from the outward poison of false doctrine and worldly influence but the inward corruptions of the flesh. Even as with the best of salt, it does not improve what is salted but preserves it from corrupting as much as it would without it. It is the ‘salt’ of the effectual grace of God working in us that preserves us from the corruptions of this sinful, wretched flesh. The reason we need this grace, like salt, is that we don’t stop being sinners just because Christ has redeemed us and the Father has justified us. Were it true that this flesh was improving as some falsely promote under the teaching of progressive sanctification, then the need for salt (grace) would lessen. No, this flesh will not improve and can only spoil and putrefy. Therefore, the need for growing in grace and the knowledge of the LORD, 2 Peter 3:18.

2.) Like good salt, the grace of God is necessary in our dealings with one another. Without this grace, we would most certainly bite and devour one another, as the disciples were doing in Mark 9:33. Without the grace of God, like salt, savoring our speech, we would use our tongues to destroy one another and blaspheme the unconditional love and grace of God toward us as sinners, “Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.” (Colossians 4:6)

3.) Like true salt, the grace of God has savored the sacrifice of Christ. “With all thine offerings, thou shalt offer salt.” (Lev. 2:13) May we never forget that God’s grace is only by the LORD Jesus Who laid down His life for His people. The eternal grace of God is that which savored Christ’s sacrifice whereby His people are made accepted in Him, Ephesians 1:6.