Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For we have no continuing city here, but we seek one to come.
Select a thought to read by choosing a collection, the month, and then the day:
“Can that which is unsavory be eaten without salt?”
Job 6:6
“Have salt in yourselves, and have peace with one another.”
Jesus, in Mark 9:50
Salt is valuable not only as a taste enhancer but also as a preservative; it keeps food from spoiling. In the Bible, we learn that there is also a spiritual “salt” that enhances our lives and keeps us from “spoiling”. Spiritual salt enables us to “endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.” God’s salt preserves our soul from sin and gives us a patient, generous attitude toward those who have failed or in whom we see a fault.
Without God’s salt, not one of us would survive difficult situations. We would become bitter and angry at the discipline of the Lord and the trial of our faith. This is what Job meant by his question, “Can that which is unsavory be eaten without salt?”
Job had God’s salt in his soul, and he remained steadfast in his faith toward God in the most difficult of circumstances. Without that salt, Job would probably have done as his wife advised him to do: “Curse God and die!”
Jesus told his disciples that God’s salt was a key to maintaining peace with one another. This salt gives the children of God the attitude Paul exhorted them to have toward one another, when he wrote, “Bear one another’s burdens”, and “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you”, and “With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love”, and “Put on bowels of mercies, kindness, humility of mind, and longsuffering, forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man has a quarrel with any.”
Without salt in our souls, we would rip each other apart, just as the world does, for selfish gain. Fault can be found easily enough, but who has the real love of God, the love that “covers a multitude of sin”?
Under Moses’ Law, no sacrifice was acceptable to God unless salt was added to it. And when Paul exhorted the saints in Rome to “offer your bodies a living sacrifices, holy and acceptable unto God”, he knew that the acceptability of our sacrifice was dependent upon God’s salt being in our souls, keeping us from bitterness against God and from strife among ourselves.