While the most frequent use of salt you’re likely to see is sprinkling it on food to enhance the flavor, salt actually has quite a few uses outside of making food taste better. In addition to using it to preserve food, salt is also necessary for curing food – so if you appreciate bacon, salt deserves a huge shout-out! Salt is also what your body uses when muscles expand and contract. That’s why it’s wise to bring salty food on hikes so that when you lose salt through your sweat, you can replenish it with a salty snack that helps avoid muscle cramps. And, for those of us who have spent any time in the midwest, salt has another popular use during the cold months of winter: it is spread on sidewalks and roads to melt the snow.
So salt has a number of valuable uses. However, there is a time when salt isn’t very helpful. When it isn’t used! Have you ever experienced wrapping up a meal and then remembering a spice or seasoning afterward and thought to yourself, “I bet this would have tasted really good on that”? But by then it’s too late. By that time you’ve already finished your meal. You can’t go back and season what you’ve already eaten. So what good is salt that is unused? It isn’t! We could actually list a lot more ways that salt is helpful in our day-to-day lives, but if we wouldn’t actually use it, then it wouldn’t be very helpful.
As I age, I appreciate brightness for a number of reasons. It is easier to see a bright screen than squinting at a dark one. The right lighting around the exterior of a house or inside a room can also make all the difference between something that is dark and dreary or warm, cozy, and inviting. Lighting matters.
But what good is light that is hidden? Like walking into an unfamiliar room and not knowing where the switch is. It happens in hotel rooms. You walk in and see any number of lamps and spend more time than you care to admit trying to figure out if a wall switch turns this light or that light on, or if the lamp itself has its own switch. The lights are there in the room, but they’re only of use after you figure out how to turn them on. Once you do, the room brightens up.
What salt does for us in our daily lives and what the right lighting can do in a home, Jesus wants you to be in the world. He wants to use you to make the world better and brighter. Think of all the ways the Bible calls us to love and serve our neighbors – and even our enemies! Does it not stand to reason that if everyone in the world cared less about serving themselves and more about serving others, we’d all actually be better off?
But pay attention to the Savior’s sermon, for in it he has an end goal in mind for his salt and light as you make the world better and brighter: “let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven” (v.16). If you thought the end goal of making the world better and brighter was to draw attention to yourself, you should know that Jesus had something much more significant in mind. He wants your salt and light to win others over. No, they won’t come to faith in Jesus through your sacrificial service to them, but God has in mind that such service would attract them to its source: Jesus. After all, what is the greatest glory that can be given to the Father in heaven? It’s when the lost are found, when even one unbelieving sinner repents and is forgiven and restored. There is no greater glory that can be given to the Father than for a soul to be snatched from Satan. And you are the salt and the light that helps to make that happen.
And pay closer attention to the Savior’s sermon for a foundational understanding of how Jesus has chosen to partner with you in this important mission: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (v.17). See that – Jesus has already done all of the heavy lifting! When he calls us to be salt and light, he isn’t laying out a law-list of requirements that must be met in hopes of attaining saltiness and brightness. He fulfilled the law so that we might love living in it! Jesus was the epitome of salt and light. He seasoned everything perfectly. He lit everything up beautifully. What he has fulfilled, we are no longer enslaved by. He’s freed us to love making the world better and brighter!
But neither is Jesus’ fulfillment of the law an excuse to disregard his calling to be his salt and light. He warns against that, too! Note the point Jesus is making in verses 17 and following. He sets the tone by pointing out that he came to fulfill the law, not abolish it. So what does that say about our understanding of his fulfillment of the law if we carelessly cast it aside? If we disregard it or lead others to do the same? If we do that, what are we saying about Jesus’ fulfillment of the law – that it didn’t matter? That we didn’t need it? That God was not really being serious when he gave his law? Instead, his fulfillment of the law leads us all the more to practice it and teach others to do the same, because we’ve been freed from its burden and can now be blessed by its wisdom and love, and through it we see a means to make the world better & brighter – and we’re completely free to do so!
Don’t we see more than enough examples of how not to be in life? As parents, do you find yourselves pointing out all the positive examples and role models for your kids to imitate, or are your conversations more frequently centered around the behavior of a classmate of the headline of a celebrity, followed by, “If I ever catching you doing that…”? The world does not need more examples of what not to do. It doesn’t need more people to fit into its corrupt ways. It needs you to be different. It needs you to stand out.
Consider your viewing of a valuable piece of art. You would most likely view that piece of art in an art gallery, accompanied by many other works of art, all of which are beautiful in their own way. However, what if you viewed that same art piece shuffled in together with a pile of kindergarten coloring pages? We’re talking about the same piece of art, but if you were to view it in each of those two settings, the art gallery or the pile of kindergarten coloring pages, in which setting is that work of art more likely to stand out? Wouldn’t it make a much more memorable impact on each of us as it stood out brilliantly among the best efforts of a classroom of kindergarten colorings? Of course!
The world that God created was a beautiful art gallery. Sin, however, ruined it with its random scribbling and coloring outside the lines. Yet realize what that means! When you are the salt and light that Jesus made you to be, you stand out like a work of art in a bland and dark world. You make it better and brighter!
How do you do this? By being what Jesus has made you to be – salt and light that are his hands and feet to serve the world. Does that mean Jesus needs your service to your neighbor to rival Mother Theresa? No, for he has not made you Mother Theresa; he has made you you. Just be the you that he created you to be, with your unique gifts, abilities, interests, and circle of souls to serve.
So when you’re at your table at the restaurant, give thought to the ideal type of customer a server would be eager to wait on – then be that customer. At your child’s game, consider the kind of parent that coaches and refs and umps want to have in the stands cheering on their favorite kid players – then be those parents. When you’re at work, put yourself in your boss’s shoes and imagine what a blessing the ideal employee would be to him – then be that employee. Spouse, classmate, neighbor, airline passenger, customer waiting in the grocery checkout line – we could go on all day long! Think of the ideal in whatever situation you find yourself in throughout the day – then be that person. Do you know what that’s called when you do that? That’s called being salt and light. And it is the very stuff that makes the world better and brighter. Be that.
Then try to pretend your efforts would never yield any eternal fruit. You may pretend, but Jesus has already clearly stated your potential impact. When you stand out by making things better and brighter, you become very attractive to people. They want whatever you’re on. They want to spend time with people like you because, well, who doesn’t want better and brighter? Of course they do! And over time, the Lord will open up doors to a much greater purpose: an audience for the gospel; ears to hear Jesus.
Pause for a moment and put yourself in the shoes of an outsider. Someone who has perhaps heard the name Jesus, and maybe recognizes the Bible is a religious book, but is either indifferent or disinterested in Christianity. If a person like that is ever going to be open to hearing more about Jesus or learning anything about the Bible, where do you suppose they’ll turn? Will it be to the Karen she’s waiting on who hasn’t stopped complaining and doesn’t leave a tip? Will it be to the livid parent incessantly heckling the ump after each pitch? To the bitter employee who badmouths the company and gossips endlessly? Not likely – so don’t be them!
We convince ourselves that we’re so afraid of having to witness to other people that we forget to be the kind of people they’d want to learn from in the first place! We presume that not having the words to say when it comes to evangelism is our biggest problem when maybe the bigger problem is that no one else is interested in our words in the first place because we blend in too well in this bland and dark world. If more of our conversations are going to eventually lead to Jesus, then perhaps we should be more attractive and approachable in the first place so that people even want to converse with us!
That will happen more often when salt and light make the world better and brighter. So get after it. Be what Jesus has made you to be. Set the stage for God to use your good deeds as the onramp that eventually leads others to glorify our Father in heaven.