Salt and Light

This strange saying of Jesus is not referring to the table salt we use every day at mealtimes, but the chemical salts which are an integral part of fertilisers. If they’ve all been leached of their active ingredient, then they are useless – not even any good for putting on the manure heap!

The obvious parallel that Jesus is making is that believers, followers of Jesus, are sent out by the Lord of the harvest into a hurting unsaved world to be salt and light – to bring a message of hope, bringing light into the darkest of hearts and places and feeding the hearts of the hungry with good things. But, if we have nothing to offer them, then we are like ‘salt that has lost its saltiness’ – useless for the purpose. We would be like the foolish virgins in Jesus’s parable of the wise and foolish virgins, with no oil in our lamps. A lamp without oil can never be a spreader of light.

So, where can we ‘buy’ the sort of salt and oil that God can use to bring His life to those outside of Him, who desperately need to know that there is a Saviour who loves them and died for them. The only source is the Holy Spirit. When He indwells us, then the very life of God flows through us to others.

The early church was powerless without the Spirit, but with the Spirit a small bunch of previously frightened men and women turned the world upside down. When we are filled with God’s Spirit the Christian life takes on a different hue – God puts the colour back in and every day is an opportunity to walk in the plans and purposes of God. Life in the Spirit is never boring!