WEDNESDAY May 17th
Matthew 5:13
‘You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.’
We continue in our devotion today from where we left off yesterday. And I want us to understand (myself included) the seriousness of what it is that Jesus is saying to us. ‘BE the salt you must be, for if you lose your saltiness you are no longer good for anything!’
Wow, this is serious! If we fail to be what God expects us to be, we will be ineffective, our witness will be blighted, our testimony will be marred. We will not be able to be the salt we should be in the world around us that desperately needs to be savoured by our lives and by our testimony and by the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Remember my paint illustration yesterday I will put it this way, in Christ we have been made clean, pure, we have been washed in his precious blood, we have been made whiter than the snow and in the context of these verses – we have become SALT, but, if we choose at the same time to continue in the ways of the old nature, which is represented by the blackness of sin, we are tainting what Christ has made us. We are allowing our lives to lose their SALTINESS! It is like us taking a pot of brilliant white paint and the moment we allow a drop of black paint into the pot it is no longer a brilliant white. Now I’m not seeking to say that we live in sinless perfection, that is just not possible, I know that too well in my own life, but what we should be seeking to do is to ensure that we keep ourselves as unspotted from the things and the ways of the world as we possibly can, we seek to live in every way, lives that are pleasing to God and lives that are able to be salt in this world around us.