Consider:
I. The high task of Christ's disciples as here set forth. "Ye are the salt of the earth." The metaphor wants very little explanation. It involves two things: a grave judgment as to the actual state of society, and a lofty claim as to what Christ's followers are able to do to it. Society is corrupt, and tending to corruption. You do not salt a living thing; you salt a dead one, that it may not be a rotting one. (1) Salt does its work by being brought into close contact with the thing which it is to work upon. And so we are not to seek to withdraw ourselves from contact with the evil. The only way by which the salt can purify is by being rubbed into the corrupted thing. (2) Salt does its work silently, inconspicuously, gradually. We shall never be the light of the world, except on condition of being the salt of the earth. You have to do the humble, inconspicuous, silent work of checking corruption by a pure example before you can aspire to do the other work of raying out light into the darkness, and so drawing men to Christ Himself.
II. The grave possibility of the salt losing its savour. There is manifest on every side, first of all the obliteration of the distinction between the salt and the mass into which it is inserted; or, to put it into other words, Christian men and women swallow down bodily and practise thoroughly the maxims of the world as to life, and what is pleasant, and what is desirable, and as to the application of morality to business. There can be no doubt that the obliteration of the distinction between us and the world, and the decay of the fervour of devotion which leads to it, are both to be traced to a yet deeper cause, and that is the loss or diminution of fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
III. Is there a possibility of resalting the saltless salt, of restoring the lost savour? There is no obstacle in the way of a penitent returning to the Fountain of all power and purity, nor of the full restoration of the lost savour, if a man will only bring about a full reunion of himself with the Source of the savour.
IV. One last word warns us what is the certain end of the saltless salt. God has no use for it; man has no use for it. If it has failed in doing the only thing it was created for, it has failed altogether.
A. Maclaren, A Year's Ministry,1st series, p. 179.
The words before us suggest
I. A dignity. "Ye are the salt of the earth." I need hardly remind you of the worth and honour of salt in the estimation of antiquity. Salt was the indispensable accompaniment of every sacrifice, because of its power to stay the progress of corruption, to keep that on which it was sprinkled, or with which it was mingled, pure and wholesome and sweet; and it was this property of salt, no doubt, that Christ had in His eye, transferring it to spiritual things, when He said to His disciples, "Ye are the salt of the earth." They were salt, because they had been themselves salted with grace, salted with the purifying fire of the Holy Ghost, and so capable of imparting a savour of incorruption to others.
II. A danger; and what is this? That the salt of the earth should lose its own savour, and so become incapable of imparting a savour to others. We know in the natural world how easily a little damp, a little moisture in the atmosphere, will affect the quality of salt; will deprive it of much, if not all, its sharp and biting and seasoning powers; will leave it flat and blunt and strengthless; useless, or nearly useless, for the one purpose to which it is designed. No less a danger besets us.The world in which we live is no favourable atmosphere for us, set as we are to be the salt of the earth. Many things are against us here; many things at work to cause us to abate our edge, to come down from our heights, to lose our saltness. What need, therefore, earnestly to watch against this so urgent a danger!
III. A doom. "It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men." Observe that "trodden under foot of men," which follows the being cast out or rejected of God; for therein lies the stress of the doom, the immeasurable humiliation of it. A Church, from which the savour and strength of Divine grace has departed, perishes not by the immediate hand of God that were too noble a destiny but of men, often the very men whom it sought to conciliate by becoming itself as the world.
R. C. Trench, Sermons Preached in Ireland,p. 106.
I. This sentence takes for granted the well-known doctrine of the general corruption and decay of the world around us. We little know how much we are indebted to the Christianity or, as we call it sometimes, the civilization of the world around us how many men are sober and chaste simply because religion has so seasoned the society round them that they would lose their position if they were not so.
II. "If the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted?" It is possible, then, to have a thing which has lost its essence. A traveller to the Euphrates tells us that when he came to the Valley of Salt he broke off a piece that had been exposed to the rain, sun, and air, and he found that, although it had all the sparkle of the crystal, and all the other qualities of salt, it had lost its savour. And is not this so with many professing Christians? Do they not possess all the outward qualities of the Christian character, being pure in morals outwardly, respectable, decorous in general conduct? But they have allowed themselves to be so exposed, unprotected, to the temptations of the spirit of worldliness around them that all savour is gone all power of giving Christian purpose to the society in which they live. They are like crystals in the Valley of Salt.
III. If you have a secret consciousness that you have lost your savour, let me point out how you may become salt again Go to Him from whom comes out virtue. Go to Him by daily prayer, by daily effort, by daily meditation, by daily repentance, by daily obedience to His voice, as far as you have heard it.
IV. If your desire is to salt the world, you must begin with yourself. You cannot salt other things if you have lost your saltness. If you want to do good, you must be good. Be unobtrusive; do not thrust your advice on any one; and often, when least you expect it, a heart will be opened to you, and God will permit you to save a brother from suffering or from sin or shame.
C. E. R. Robinson, Penny Pulpit,New Series, No. 622.
I. This declaration involves the idea that there is in humanity the liability to corruption.
II. Christ's method for the preservation of society is a personal one. The seasoning influence must come through men.
III. To this seasoning influence godliness is a vital necessity. Godliness is the true and only inspiration to goodness.
W. Garrett Horder, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxvii., p. 180.