Jesus didn't intend us to understand His exhortation for us to be the salt of the earth in just one way. Here are some of the most important understandings we were meant to take from it.

In Scripture, mankind, under the unrestrained workings of their own evil nature, are represented as entirely corrupt, lying in ignorance and wickedness as a vast heap ready to putrify.

Thus Jesus wasn't just using this phrase as an exhortation but also a judgment.

After all, you don't salt a living thing; you salt a dead one so it doesn't rot, right?

Jesus was thus saying via implication that human society is a carcass that will rot away and disintegrate without Christians rubbing themselves into its mass to sweeten it and give flavor to its insipidity, to arrest its decomposition and stay its corruption, and to save it from falling to pieces of its own wickedness.

We therefore need to be asking ourselves:

Do we exercise a repressive influence so that evil and degeneracy is ashamed to show itself in our presence?

Do we rebuke and hinder corruption?

Better yet, do we endeavor to bring forth all that is best and purest and highest in the people with we come in contact with?

As MacLaren says, "Every man who does right helps to make public opinion in favour of doing right; and every man who lowers the standard of morality in his own life helps to lower it in the community of which he is a part."

Thus, Christians are to be as salt by our lives and character, by our principles and instructions, and are to prevent or cure the growth of that corruption which prevails in the world—to keep it from entire moral corruption—seasoning it's insipidity with knowledge and grace.

In the same vein, just as salt preserves from decay those bodies which are sprinkled with it, by sharing the gospel we salt and preserve souls for eternity.

Salt also gives food a good taste, and can be thought of here as giving the earth a good flavor to the Divine taste.

Salt is rough and biting, sometimes even harsh and grating—to the depraved palate. This is why Chrysostom tells us it's not to flatter and deal smoothly with men, and we should view the evil-speaking of others not as an inconvenience but rather as a "testimony" of our firmness.

And not only that but if we lose the character for real-and-vital religion, we will become worthless and even contemptible, trampled underfoot as Christ tells us.

This trampling underfoot by the way may be a reference either to:

• the Talmud telling of the salt which had become unfit for sacrificial use in the store-house and was sprinkled in wet weather upon the slopes and steps of the temple to prevent the feet of the priests from slipping, or

• Scripture telling of vanquished cities sown with salt by the victors, that nothing should thenceforth grow there.

Last but not least, there are also some possible Scriptural allusions to salt:

• Leviticus 2:13 tells us that no sacrifice was offered to God unless it were first sprinkled with salt, the natural symbol of incorruption.

• 2 Kings 2:21 tells of Elisha healing the waters of Jericho with salt.

All in all, hopefully as you see now, being the salt of the earth is more than just a phrase. May we, with the help of His grace, live up to our responsibility!