When I think of salt, my mind goes to its use in seasoning foods. What would we do without salt in our cooking? Yesterday, I opened my kitchen cupboard and found cooking salt, as you might expect.
But I also found rough crystals of rock salt intended for the salt cellar, flakes of Maldon salt, pale pink Murray River salt, truffle-infused salt, and liquorice salt.
I dug a little further, and discovered that a kind friend had given us a sample pack of crystalised Himalayan salt, Austrian alpine salt, Bolivian rose salt, Persian blue salt, Halit salt from Pakistan, and Kala Namak salt from India. I almost expected to find Australian saltbush salt! And there was this cute little salt grater to add a touch of theatre at the table.
Another friend even gave me a book by Mark Kurlansky titled, Salt: A World History. We love our salt.
But salt is also a metaphor.
Consider that wonderful Australian film, The Castle (1997), and the lead character, Darryl Kerrigan, played by Michael Caton. We observe Darryl’s grounded, unpretentious, family-loving, justice-seeking nature, and we call him “the salt of the earth.”
Or consider the use of the term “salt” in Australian poet James McAuley’s poem, “To any poet”:
Take salt upon your tongue.
And do not feed the heart
With sorrow, darkness or lies:
These are the death of art.[1]
McAuley is not suggesting that poets should eat a little salt to improve the quality of their work. He wants creatives (or perhaps wordsmiths) to avoid self-indulgence, navel-gazing, and negativity as they engage in creative work.
Similarly, when Jesus calls his apprentices “the salt of the earth,” he employs salt as a metaphor for their missional influence in the world. As we saw in the past two weeks, in Matthew 5:10-12, Jesus shifts from the impersonal third person he has used in earlier Beatitudes, and now directly addresses his audience: “Blessed are you…” And in verses 13-16, Jesus identifies who we are in the context of the kingdom he is inaugurating: he says we are salt, and we are light.
Today, I want to reflect on salt (v. 13), and next week we will take a look at light (vv. 14-16). We learn several truths in this statement by Jesus:
- it’s followers of Jesus who are “the salt of the earth”;
- we have crucial roles to play in influencing the lives of others;
- we are “the salt of the earth” – not merely of our family, friends, and village but universally, literally to the ends of the earth.
Biblical scholar Leon Morris captures the meaning of the phrase well when he suggests that Jesus is “thinking of the function of salt as a preservative, as the enemy of decay, and as giving taste to food.”[2]
On the other hand, Jesus himself does not elaborate. So don’t spend too long thinking about the finer details of salt chemistry. Another biblical scholar, Scot McKnight, suggests that Matthew 5:13 “encourages us to re-examine our role in the world as God’s agents of redemption … [It is] a general metaphor urging us to think carefully both about how we influence as well as the possibility of diminishing our influence.”[3]
So how do we share our faith, as agents of redemption, in a world of people who find religion irrelevant, offensive, or outdated? I want to suggest that Jesus invites us to share our faith in ways that are culturally relevant, intellectually thoughtful, and winsomely persuasive. Let’s look at these three ways of being salt in our world.
First: cultural relevance without compromise. In Ephesians 4:15, Paul encourages Christians to “speak the truth in love.” Often, our witness in the wider world, and our relations to one another within the fellowship of the church, lacks a healthy balance between truth and love, between insisting on doctrinal conformity and demonstrating unconditional love, mercy and grace to those who are not like us.
To do its work, salt needs to connect with the food it is supposed to preserve. A Christian who isolates from the wider culture into a Christian ghetto, or an other-worldly eschatology, loses their saltiness.
In reaching out to others, we need to discover methods through which we can be culturally relevant without setting aside our Christian beliefs and practices. Cultural relevance might mean listening well before offering spiritual advice, and keeping up to speed with emerging music, film and books. It may mean understanding why a friend is sceptical of organised religion, why authenticity matters more than tradition, or why people are not looking for quick answers but yearning for love, joy, and hope.
Relevance requires empathy. It means incarnating the good news in real places, among real people, with real understanding.
Second, we must be winsome in reaching out with the good news of Jesus. We need to cultivate the art of graceful persuasion.
To be “winsome” is to be appealing in a fresh and innocent way; to be authentic at a deep level and not just in appearance. A winsome person has a warmth, a genuine kindness, a joy that draws others in. It’s not manipulation or charm but Christlikeness. When Jesus spoke, sinners and sceptics and scribes all leaned in.
Jesus was “full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:14). He never compromised his message by resorting to slick campaign tactics or force. He conveyed the good news with compassion and sincerity.
The tone of our witness shapes the reception of the message. A harsh or superior tone can make even the most beautiful truth. But grace – the kind that surprises, disarms, and welcomes – opens hearts.
As we learn to be winsome, we learn patience. We acknowledge that everyone is on a journey, avoid sarcasm and self-righteousness, and manifest inner joy that leaves others wondering what they’re missing. Winsome faith makes people want to know more – not just about us, but about the Master we follow.
Being winsome also means showing up in the places where people are actually asking life’s big questions. Whether in art, business, health, education, parenting, politics, or whatever sphere we find ourselves in, Christians are called to bring the aroma of Christ (2 Cor 2:15), We do this not through dominance but through distinctiveness and authenticity; not by overpowering others, but by demonstrating love with sincerity and compassion.
Third, we need to engage intelligently with a distracted and disillusioned generation. Being salt involves intellectual depth. In an age of sound bites, manipulative slogans and unregulated outrage, Christians resist the temptation to become simplistic or reactive.
Instead, we present the gospel as the most intellectually satisfying, historically grounded, and existentially hopeful message the world has ever known. A thoughtful faith is a compelling faith.
We must become serious students of Scripture and culture. We need to learn not only what we believe, but why we believe it, and why it matters today. The good news of Jesus speaks to ultimate reality, human identity, justice, beauty, suffering, hope. We need to be able to show how the good news of Jesus meets real needs.
Some people carry wounds from church experience, or from well-meaning but aggressive attempts at evangelism. Others have legitimate questions. So many people today are not asking the question, “Is Christianity true?” but “Is it good?” Their compass is not doctrinal but ethical. So we do well to follow Paul’s advice in Colossians 4:6, “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.”
Jesus warned against salt losing its flavour. In his day, impure salt could degrade and become useless. Similarly, when we lose our distinctiveness, withdraw from the world, or speak truth without love, we lose our impact.
Jesus calls us to be salt. Let us remain salty. Let us live in such a way that people are drawn to us, and feel comfortable asking the big questions when the time is right. Let us speak with grace and sincerity, loving others in ways that surprise and delight.
In doing so, we fulfil the words of our Master Jesus, “You are the salt of the earth.”
Sermon 819 copyright © 2025 Rod Benson. Preached at North Rocks Community Church, Sydney, Australia, on Sunday 20 July 2025. Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Christian Standard Bible (Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020).
References
[1] James McAuley, “To any poet,” in Les Murray (ed.), Fivefathers: Five Australian Poets of the Pre-Academic Era (Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1994), 147.
[2] Leon Morris, The Gospel According to Matthew (Grand Raids: Eerdmans, 1992), 104.
[3] Scot McKnight, Sermon on the Mount (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2013), 55, 57, original italics.
Image source: danhenneman.com
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