Saltless Salt

Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. (Matthew 5:13)

There is a contextual element in revelation.

We will many times fail to understand scriptures because we seek to interpret in our context, leaving many gaps in our understanding.

The verse above has bothered me for as long as I have read or heard it taught.

How does salt lose its saltiness?

I have never even heard of a situation where salt can lose its savour.

You see, we are in the age of refined salt. Even for those who encounter unprocessed, it is from the sea and so is almost pure.

A pastor the other day in preaching gave me the context of the verse. And this solved my life long dilemma of sorts.

People far from the sea in the past had no easy way to get salt.

Let me get us closer home.

Heard of salt pans?

These are places where the soil is very salty. Animals wild and domestic will flock there to lick that saltiness.

But people do not lick salt. They prepare and preserve food with it.

What did they do to get salt from that salty ground?

They would take chunks of the same and soak it in water. Then they would strain it probably by some cloth and the water coming out would be salty for their use.

They would repeat the same whenever they needed salt.

But eventually the saltiness would disappear as the salt would be exhausted.

That is the context of our verse.

It thus means that salt does not lose its saltiness through a chemical reaction like exposure to the elements.

Salt loses its saltiness by being used.

In short salt loses its savour through overuse.

That is what Christ was talking about. And that is what I want us to look at.

We do not lose our saltiness by sinning since sinning simply indicates that we really were not salt in the first place. We do not have the right makeup to be salt.

And this because salt is not something we display but something whose sweetness or impact we experience.

We lose our saltiness by stretching our saltiness without replenishing the same.

You see, we are not naturally salt. God through Christ has given us that nature.

And since that is not a chemical change, we must continually be connected to our source to continue being salt.

Though in salvation we become new creation, it is a creation that must be feeding on the source to remain new.

That is why Christ talked about us being branches of the vine that is Him.

We must be feeding on Him for us to effectively feed others

In short, we must be getting our saltiness from Him.

We lose our saltiness when we are more interested in releasing the salt we have than accessing the salt we receive from Christ since we will be strained saltless.

It is when we are drained of our saltiness that our proclivity to sin gains the ground.

In simple terms, it is when we continue ministering without the increase of our expansion of the closet that we gradually lose our saltiness.

Then we become like salt without its savour as Jesus said.

Then we become useless to the kingdom, totally useless.

Do not be shocked when you see these verses as you will always see when I teach.

Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. (Matthew 7: 22, 23)

I dare say that they ministered without releasing adequate salt, probably because their level of salt intake was overtaken by the level of their salt output. They therefore gave until they had no salt left.

Then sadly, due to the accolades or rewards their new ‘saltiness’ continued attracting, they did not think it mattered whether they were connected to the source

They therefore continued to thrive without the source of their salt, eventually giving out a completely different savour.

God does not expect us to create salt. He does not expect us to produce salt from ourselves.

He simply wants us to allow Him to saturate His salt in us so that we can produce it when we are squeezed or strained[GM1] .

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)

 

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 [GM1]