Mark 9 v 49

If you look at the term "lose saltiness" in the Concordance, you will find that it is used only four places in the New Testament (in the entire Bible, I think...). Two of those times the Greek phrase is translated "lose saltiness", but the other two times it is translated "become foolish."

Thus, to be salted is idiomatic for gaining wisdom.

Now, go to 1 Corinthians 3:10-15. You will find that every man's work will be tested with fire, or as with fire. Work that is not of the Lord, or not built with gold, silver, and costly stones, but built rather using man's wisdom or ideas, using wood, hay, and straw, will be burned up.

This is EXACTLY the same as the lesson regarding Jesus being the vine and us being the branches. When he says every branch that does not bear fruit will be cut off and burned, He is NOT talking about the basic grafted branches! This is not a salvation verse at all! This is a verse talking about a similarity between grapes and people that we need to recognize. It is the function, naturally, of a grape vine to bear fruit on its branches. But growing past the fruit, and around it, and sapping energy from the vine, are enormous growths of tendrils-come-branches which have no fruit at all. Beautiful and useless.

And we do the same with our lives. We get all involved in activities which can look so good and beautiful but which are not going to bear fruit because that is not what the Lord WANTS us to be doing! When Jesus promised that every branch that does not bear fruit will be cut off and thrown into the fire (mine go in the compost heap, actually), He was promising that He would keep pruning a person's life of unnecessary activities so that the energy would go into the area where the fruit was, and the fruit would thus be better.

Thus, if everyone is to be salted with fire, the basic biblical interpretation would appear to be that everyone is going to gain wisdom through the parts of their lives the Lord takes off and throws into the fire to be done with it! Some of us enthusiastic folk can spend the most enormous amounts of time sending out lovely shoots everywhere but where the fruit is! And if our work is really going to be of the gold, silver, and costly stone variety, it is going to have to be of the Lord and not of ourselves.

Slowly but surely, each of us learns. We get our wisdom through our trials (which is when we realize we need to get our priorities in order); we get salted with fire.

[ June 14, 2002, 03:34 PM: Message edited by: Helen ]

 

Interesting,

I always thought it had to do with your witness to others -by words and actions.

We are the salt and light of this Earth. If we set a bad example of what Christ is to us, then we are then not worth being called the salt or light. We're not showing others the hope we have in Christ, and the love we have in God. There is nothing special about us that sticks out, (like salt does in bland food, and light does in the darkness).

Now, if we get back on track, we once again become a light in the dark, but what happens is that people will then see us as hypocrytes, and pay us no head. They ignore us, or don't want anything to do with us because they've seen our 'real' side, and think they want to be nothing like us.

Losing your saltiness I think means that you've lost your ability to stick out, (for Christ), in a bland world.

Jonny
^_^