Matthew 5:13-16

B. THE MISSION OF THE WISE AND GODLY MAN
TEXT: 5:13-16

13. Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men.
14. Ye are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid.
15. Neither do men light a lamp, and put it under the bushel, but on the stand; and it shineth unto all that are in the house.
16. Even so let your light shine before men; that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.

THOUGHT QUESTIONS

a.

How is it possible for us to do our good works before men, that they may see them, and, at the same time, do it in such a way as not to lose our reward from our Father? (See Matthew 6:1-18)

b.

What would be the condition of the world without the influence of Christians and the Church? One would not be committing the fallacy of formulating a hypothesis contrary to fact, if he: (1) examines those societies where Christ's will is unknown or ignored; (2) bases his answer upon the condition of the world before Jesus came; or, (3) upon God's infallible judgment which in itself is based upon perfect knowledge of man's actions and motives. (Romans 1:2; Eph. Ephesians 2:1-3; Ephesians 2:11-12; Ephesians 4:17-19; Ephesians 5:3-12)

c.

What do you think would be the impact upon Jesus-' Jewish audience made by the words earth and world in the phrases: Ye are the salt of the earth. the light of the world-'?

d.

Who really gets the credit for the things we do?

PARAPHRASE

You are the world's salt: you stand in the same relation to the world as does salt to meat which is decomposing, But if salt becomes insipid or tasteless, how is its saltiness to be restored or the meat to be preserved? That is, if you lose your power to preserve from moral corruption, how could you restore that lost power? And how would the world, in that case, be preserved from corruption, decay and death? Just as insipid salt is thus useless and deserves to be thrown out on the streets to be trampled by men, likewise, you too would be morally good for nothing to God, and would deserve all the contempt that men could heap upon you,

You are the world's light. It is impossible to hide a city built on a hilltop. When a lamp is lit, it is not put under a peck-measure, but on a lampstand, where it gives light to everyone in the house. And you, like the lamp, must shed light among your fellows in such a way that when they see the good you do, they may praise your heavenly Father.

NOTES

Jesus has indicated the character and blessings which fall to the wise and godly man in God's kingdom, He proposes to make of His disciples something as great as the prophets. (See Matthew 5:12) Now He describes another facet of their ideal character and something of their work as well as the influence they are to have upon the world.

Matthew 5:13 Ye are the salt of the earth. Jesus maintains as undeniable fact that His disciples are this salt. Whether or not they will serve effectively in that capacity, as good salt preserves meat from spoiling, will depend upon the flavor of their discipleship; however, there is no escaping the fact that they, because of their relationship to Jesus, are already this salt. Ye: this is spoken to a group of peasants, unlettered fishermen, small town folk. without reputation or standing, members of a small, haughty, exclusive, hated race. For the moment, Jesus looks at His disciples not as they were then, but at what ideally they could become and do to their society, He was trying to get them to see in themselves the ability to transform the moral tone of their age! By calling them the salt of the earth. He set before them the most positive, far-reaching program imaginable: preservation of the world from destruction! Of the earth is another hint of the universality of Jesus-' gospel, because it looks beyond the confines of one small people to all the nations under God-s loving care.

Ye are the salt is an unexplained metaphor. It must be asked, therefore, what those points of nature or function might be which are common both to the disciple and to salt. We see that:

1. Salt preserves from decay. This is a tacit but implicit judgment regarding the earth: the actual condition of society is rottenness and corruption, a judgment verified elsewhere. (Romans 1:18-21; Galatians 5:19-21; Ephesians 4:17-19; Ephesians 4:22) But salt does not preserve by acting upon itself: it preserves that which needs its influence by being brought into contact with every inch of that which will corrupt without it. Jesus-' disciple is of little value to the community as long as his influence remains boxed up in a church building or monastery. The contact of the spiritual salt must be scattered so as to affect every part of the decomposing neighborhood. The monastic tendencies of those Christians, who have no Christ-like influence outside the four walls of the local meeting place of the Church, drastically fails Jesus at this point. (Note Jesus-' example and reasoning: Matthew 9:10-13; Luke 15; Luke 19:1-10.)

2. Salt produces its effect secretly but surely without furious Fanfares and earth-shaking commotion. Jesus wants a man whose personal purity CONTROLS the moral tone of any group in which he happens to be, or by whose presence in a given situation he defeats the corruption of the morals of others. This corruption shows itself in the lowering of the standards of honesty, diligence in work, conscientiousness just as much as in the corruption of the ethics of physical chastity. Every saint of God must be a walking conscience whose conduct, character and conversation bring God's law right into the evil society, whose seriousness of purpose points solemnly to the reality of the judgment. Basically, Jesus-' people must be anchorlike conservatives who hold the line against the corrupting bacteria of every purportedly new theology and new morality. Not only is Christians-' gospel vigorously opposed to that which contradicts God-s revealed theology and morality, but also their very presence in the world tends to make intellectual cowards of the innovators until these latter can gain the upper hand, since men have tended to acknowledge the Christian morality as right even if unwilling to live it. But Jesus has other plans for winning the battle through energetic evangelism and conservation of the gains. (Matthew 28:18-20; Colossians 1:27-29)

3. Salt retains its value only if it maintains its distinctive character, If the salt lose its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? This is an ominous warning of the doom of the degenerate disciple, for Jesus speaks of one who has truly possessed this inner reality of regenerate power but has lost it, A problem arises regarding the second part of Jesus-' rhetorical question: wherewith shall WHAT be salted? the earth? or the salt itself?

a. If the salt lose its savor, wherewith shall the earth be salted? God wishes to use you to save this world from its headlong plunge into moral rottenness and destruction, but if your moral stamina be exhausted, with what other means could He save it? (Cf. Ephesians 3:9-10) This interpretation suggests the impossibility for a corrupt Church to have any significant effect to stop the world's forward rush into final moral dissoluteness. No other gospel can substitute God's plan of redemption in Christ; likewise, no social uplift organization can fill the gap left by a degenerate Church.

b. If the salt lose its savor, wherewith shall its saltiness be restored? Modern, purified salt does not lose its quality; hence, some would suggest that Jesus is saying that, just as it is absurd that salt should lose its flavor and therefore it would be impossible to restore its saltiness, so, you, my disciples, cannot lose your preserving power. But Jesus was describing salt that His hearers knew only too well. Who among them had not at one time or another bought some of that salt native to Palestine? It came chiefly from the crystals gathered from the residue of evaporated water taken from the Dead Sea, It is said that this salt changes its flavor because of the presence of salts other than sodium chloride, actually losing its saltiness and worth through exposure to the sun and rain. At that point it might look like salt, but it fails to do what good salt does. This fact suggests the not unlikely interpretation of Jesus-' question: Once lost, salt's distinctive character and usefulness cannot be restored, A degenerate disciple, or any group of them, is of no use to God and cannot be restored to their former character unless they repent and turn to Him who constituted them salt in the first place. This exception is an important difference between the literal and spiritual salt, since the former cannot repent. Jesus is not teaching the impossibility of repentance on their part, but the impossibility of another'S renewing them to their original state. (See Hebrews 6:4-6 with which compare 1 Corinthians 5:1-8; 2 Corinthians 2:5-11)

As a practical result, this latter interpretation contains the former, since any disciple or congregation, having irremediably lost their power to save the world through faithlessness or refusal to repent, cannot be substituted with something which is not salt, and the world remains lost. The lesson is clear: God-s plan to use good salt to preserve the earth in righteousness has been thwarted by every case of savorless salt. And what is it yet good for? Nothing but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men! Here is the tragedy of uselessness: the catastrophe hides in the fact that the degenerate disciple does not even sense his failure before men and his uselessness to God. (Cf. Samson, Judges 16:20) Luke reports (Luke 14:34-35) this same figure of speech used by Jesus here, but adds this interesting detail: It is fit neither for the land nor for the dunghill; men throw it away. Many things which have become corrupt or decomposed are useful for making fertilizer to throw on the land. But savorless salt is not even of this much use in that it destroys fertility wherever it be thrown. The only place left for it is the roadway where fertility is no problem. Not only useless but also contemptible are those Christians who continue to maintain the forms of godliness but have long ago lost their power. Such a Church deserves to be downtrodden by the heel of men who have not been fooled by her hypocrisy and she will finally be cast out in shame by the very God whose name she claimed to uphold. (Matthew 13:41-42; Luke 13:6-9; Revelation 3:1 b, Revelation 3:8; Revelation 3:15) The fraudulent, faithless Church or individual member who refuses or neglects his duty to labor to preserve the morality of the community or else is too cowardly or hesitant to meet the great moral issues of the day, not only is contemptible in the eyes of the world, but also undermines future efforts of genuine Christians! Not only is this a failure which is bad enough in itself, but it is a failure which embarrasses the valiant efforts of others.

In view of this fatal moral breakdown which concludes so tragically both in the thwarting of God's determination to use THAT Church or THAT Christian to influence the world, and in the loss of that Church or member as well as the world they were supposed to save, let us briefly notice some of the warning signals of salt losing its savor:

1. When there is a loss of distinction between the Christian and the world he is supposed to save, then real, serious deterioration has begun to set in. This is the chameleon character which is more and more controlled by the environment rather than that clear, courageous ethical sense that sets the pace in terms pleasing sometimes only to God. (Romans 12:2; 1 Corinthians 15:33) That self-dedicated separation unto God, which is holiness of the highest quality, begins to fade out as more and more evidences of agreement with the world crop up here and there.

2. When we find a Church or Christian that maintains the forms of religion but basically possesses no vital force of internal godliness, then we have encountered savorless salt. These are people who look like Christians, but do not do what Christians are supposed to do. (2 Timothy 3:5; Titus 1:16)

3. Because the purpose of salt is to preserve from corruption every inch of that with which it is brought into contact, a growing indifference toward Christ's first love, the saving of mankind by the preaching of the gospel, is indication of deterioration. (Matthew 9:13; Matthew 20:28; Matthew 28:18-20; Luke 19:10; John 12:47; Revelation 2:4-5)

Other commentaries also mention the seasoning power of salt which renders food more palatable, but the figure breaks down with the question: palatable to whom? To God? If so, how did He make out with so little salt before Jesus scattered the sons of the kingdom throughout the earth? To mankind in general? But mankind is not the eater but the meat! To the Christian? But he is the salt. Jesus-' meaning probably revolves around the idea of preservation only.

Matthew 5:14 Ye are the light of the world. Christ Jesus Himself is the only true Light of this world. (John 8:12; John 9:5; John 12:35; John 12:46; Matthew 4:16) His disciples, according to Jesus-' metaphor here, do not merely reflect His light, but burn as lamps lit from His fire. (John 12:36; Philippians 2:14-16; 1 Thessalonians 5:4-8; cf. Romans 2:19) However, we differ from the literal clay lamps filled with oil (Matthew 5:15) in that we are able to grow more into His likeness and reflect His glory (2 Corinthians 3:17 to 2 Corinthians 4:6). What do Christians and light have in common?

1.

Light makes sight possible in the darkness. Darkness is often used in the NT to mean:

a.

Ignorance which is the lack of opportunity to learn, or the failure to see connections between possessed knowledge and its practical expression: Matthew 4:16; Luke 1:79; John 9:39; 1 John 2:11.

b.

Moral perversity which refuses to admit truth which condemns it: John 3:19-20; John 9:41; John 12:37-43; Matthew 6:23; 1 John 2:8-11.

c.

The state resulting from ignorance and unwillingness to learn the truth: Luke 22:53; John 1:5; Acts 26:18; Romans 13:12; 2 Corinthians 6:14; Colossians 1:13; I Pet. 8:9; 1 John 1:5-6.

Some of these passages fuse the concepts, as does Ephesians 4:17-19 and 2 Thessalonians 2:9-12. Some people are in the dark because they are ignorant (Romans 10:14-17), more because they wilfully ignore the light (Romans 10:1-3), but all are in the dark without Jesus. Therefore, the light that is intended to illuminate this darkness is primarily the revelation of God Himself seen in the face of Jesus; secondarily, the disciples of Jesus who are being changed into His glorious likeness from one degree of brilliance to another, becoming thus His kind of light and capable of illuminating as did He. (2 Corinthians 3:18 to 2 Corinthians 4:6; Romans 12:2; 1 John 3:2-3; 2 Peter 1:3-4) As long as He was in the world, Jesus was the Light of the world (John 9:5; cf. John 1:4-14), but in His absence He has chosen to enlighten the lost by the testimony of His written word carefully proclaimed by the word and consistent lives of His followers.

The Christian's opportunity to be a teacher of the world lies in his pointing men to Jesus. But to do this he will have to expose men's sins causing them to see their profound need of the Savior. (Ephesians 5:3-13) Notwithstanding the obvious necessity to expose man's true nature to him, he just does not enjoy the ghastly picture that the Christian draws of him, The gospel calls evil and worthless almost everything that the worldly man thinks valuable. The world-man can react in one of three ways: he can humble himself and accept his condemnation and be saved to walk in the light too, or he can ignore the gospel claims if the Church is not too insistent and the exposure of his sins minimal, But if the blazing glory of God radiates from the life of one man of God, disclosing the worldling-s wickedness and hypocrisy for all to see, he may smash back at the light, hating the Christian and all that he stands for, doing all in his power to get that light turned off, This may be the very reason why Jesus said Blessed are the persecuted for my sake before He said You are the world's light. Jesus is the Light of the world and our identification with Him may get us killed too.

2. But light cannot help if not placed in a prominent position. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. This is just a truism based upon the ancient concept of civil defence, The city and the hill have no particular significance except as the one serves to make the other visible. ALL Jesus means by this is that the Christian, by the attitudes he shows, by his actions that give meaning to his confession and by his faithful testimony to the gospel, will be a man who stands out in a crowd, Jesus declares: You just cannot hide the obvious! Matthew 5:15 Neither do men light a lamp and put it under the bushel, but on the stand; and it shineth unto all that are in the house. (A popular expression with Jesus: Mark 4:21; Luke 8:16; Luke 11:33) The word bushel (modios) refers to a grain measure somewhat equivalent to our peck measure. At any rate, it is not intended for hiding lighted lamps! On a bill. on the stand: these phrases bespeak the most advantageous position for performing this greatly needed service. There is no secret discipleship here! To many who would retain much of their life for their own use, this glaringly public confession of Jesus Christ would certainly be regarded as one of the distinct disadvantages of His service. But Jesus will have nothing of covert discipleship. He knows that we are tempted to pretend not to be salt, so as not to irritate the rotting, selfish flesh around us, for such annoyance will mean persecution for us. It is a temptation to scurry about searching for anything that will hide our light, or to wish that our city were not so clearly visible. Here Jesus gently urges His hearers to count the cost of discipleship, for it will mean being in the public eye either for good or for ill. Later He will begin to put the pressure on. (Matthew 10:32-33; Mark 8:38; Luke 14:25-35)

But why must the disciple stand out so publicly even if it means he will be an easy target for abuse? So that lost men may look up and see a Christian standing firm against the storm of life's uncertainties, take courage and rejoice that righteousness and true life are yet to I be had. Why stand? Because some might repent and be saved because of the unadulterated Christian witness of one godly man who dared to stand. Why stand? Because in the message of Christ Christians have wisdom that is indispensable for solving humanity's greatest questions.

Matthew 5:16 Even so let your light shine before men. Paul observes that anything we do is conspicuous to someone whether we wish it so or not. (1 Timothy 5:24-25) Therefore this is not a question of parading our virtues for men's admiring notice nor a conscious effort to display one's self. If the lampstand and the lamp had personality, their every effort and final purpose would not be to present themselves as the best of their kind, but humbly to give the light every advantage to shine brilliantly. But the museum of human history is quite cluttered with the wrecked lives of men and institutions who could not resist the temptation of self-glory. What motives will save the Lord's devotees from the .same peril?:

1.

The realization that the world, to which we are the light of God, is LOST and grovelling in its darkness. Out of this grasp of the situation will arise so sincere a concern for men's souls that it will permeate our prayers, conduct and conversation and will give us that courageous humility that makes us truly helpful to men without seeking our own glory. Further, if we see the world through Jesus-' eyes as it really is: dishonest, corrupt, fickle and incapable of permanent satisfaction, then we will not seek its praise. Rather, we will tend to see through its hollow applause.

2.

The true motive of our actions must be that men may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven. This means simply that the goal of our deeds must be to get them to glorify God because of what they see us do. We will need no bell-ringing or trumpet-blowing to call attention to our religion. Just the sheer novelty of a man practicing exactly what he preaches immediately focuses the world's gaze upon him. People usually begin an immediate and critical inspection of his life to see if- he really is all that he would have them become. The world is quick to sense hypocrisy and selfishness in those who profess devotion to the Master. (Study John 3:21; 1 Timothy 4:12-16; 1 Timothy 6:1; Titus 2:1; Titus 2:5 b, Titus 2:7-8; Titus 2:10; Titus 2:14; Titus 3:8; Titus 3:14) And what if they see the opposite of what is pretended? (Romans 2:17-24) Peter expresses this exhortation so well:

As each has received a gift, employ it for one another, as good stewards of God-s varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who utters oracles of God; whoever renders service, as one who renders it by the strength which God supplies; in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion for ever and ever, Amen, (1 Peter 4:10-11)

3.

Study Jesus-' method as He let His light shine before men, because when He did His good deeds, God got the glory. (Matthew 9:8; Matthew 15:31; Mark 2:12; Luke 5:25-26; Luke 7:16; Luke 13:15; Luke 17:15-18; Luke 23:47) The apostles caught this same spirit (Acts 4:21; Acts 11:18; Acts 21:20; Galatians 1:24), for what they did caused men to return spontaneous praise and thanks to God.

Men might never during their earth-life give God the glory for His power to make such men as these Christians, but the final day of vindication will reveal all and God will be glorified, (1 Peter 2:11-12; 2 Thessalonians 1:10-12) Sometimes one's good conduct serves to silence the slander of those who would discredit the Church and her message. (Cf. Titus 2:7-8) But this must never turn us aside from the one goal of Jesus, the one important task of man, the ultimate joy of the Church and the consummation of the ages: seeking to turn everything to the glory of God our Father. (John 15:8; 1 Corinthians 10:31; 2 Corinthians 9:13; Philippians 1:9-11; 1 Peter 2:9)

FACT QUESTIONS

1.

List the three metaphors Jesus used to express the mission or work of the truly wise and godly man.

2.

Show how each metaphor expresses some phase of the Christian's character or work.

3.

Is it possible that salt should lose its savor? How does a knowledge of Palestinian life help answer this question?

4.

What is implied about the nature of the earth that makes salt so necessary to its preservation?

5.

What is stated and meant about the Christian who has lost savor?

6.

How may this same meaning be applied to the church in the same condition in a given geographical area?

7.

What is the meaning of the bushel?

8.

What is the connection between a city set on a hill and a lamp put on the stand?

9.

What is implied about the nature of the world that makes light so necessary to its illumination?

10. State Jesus-' meaning given in these three metaphors without mentioning either salt, light or city.