Salt and Light

Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. MATTHEW 5:13

Having described the Christian character in the Beatitudes, our Lord at once turns to the Christian’s place in the world. Ye are the salt of the earth. Ye are the light of the world. Lloyd-Jones’s sermons on these two verses, both of which can be read on Ochorus, are among his most direct, and they address a question that pressed hard on the church of his day and presses still: what is the relationship between the Christian and the society around him?

Not out of the world

He began by rejecting one answer outright. The Christian life does not mean withdrawal from the world. That, he argued, was the error of monasticism, which taught that true holiness required separation from ordinary society and a life of contemplation behind walls. Our Lord’s words forbid it. Salt that is kept in the cellar preserves nothing. Light hidden under a bushel shines on no one.

I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. JOHN 17:15

The Christian is in the world though not of it. He is to be otherworldly in his mind and outlook, but he is to live out that outlook in the office, the factory, the home and the street. That is where the salt is needed.

What the metaphor says about the world

Lloyd-Jones pointed out that the statement Ye are the salt of the earth is not only a description of the Christian. It is, by implication, a description of the world. Salt was used in the ancient world chiefly to preserve meat from corruption. To call Christians the salt of the earth is to say that the earth, left to itself, is corrupting.

He found in the twentieth century abundant confirmation. He recalled the easy optimism of the thinkers at the end of the nineteenth century, who expected the new century to be a golden age of progress, education and peace; and he set beside it the two world wars and the horrors that followed. The biblical view of the world, he argued, had been vindicated by history. Humanity left to itself does not rise; it decays.

The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. GENESIS 6:11

How salt works

What then does the Christian do? Lloyd-Jones’s answer was characteristically careful. Salt works not by noise but by presence. It does not need to announce itself; it simply is what it is, and its presence checks corruption. So the Christian, by being what he is — by his character, his conduct, his refusal to join in the world’s corruption — acts as a restraint upon the evil around him. His mere presence in a room can change the tone of a conversation.

He applied this pointedly. The great hope for society, he argued, is not a programme of the church but an increasing number of individual Christians, each exercising this preserving influence in his own circle. He appealed to the Methodist revival of the eighteenth century, and the transformation of English society that followed it, as proof that genuine Christians in large numbers change a nation.

When the salt loses its savour

But our Lord adds a warning. Salt that has lost its savour is good for nothing. Lloyd-Jones took this as a solemn word to the church. A Christian who has become like the world has lost the very thing that made him useful. He no longer preserves anything, and he is trodden under foot of men. The world does not respect a worldly Christian; it despises him.

Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. ROMANS 12:2

He saw this as one explanation of the church’s weakness in his day. It had tried to win the world by becoming like it, and had succeeded only in losing its savour.

The light of the world

The second figure goes further than the first. Salt is negative: it prevents corruption. Light is positive: it reveals, guides and illuminates.

Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. MATTHEW 5:14

In the sermon on this verse, Lloyd-Jones dwells on the astonishing fact that our Lord said these words to a crowd of unimportant people from the world’s point of view. Ye — you, and you alone — are the light of the world. The world talks constantly of its own enlightenment, he observed, yet in the things that matter most it remains in gross darkness. Its knowledge of things has multiplied; its knowledge of how to live has not.

The Christian is light because he is joined to Christ, who is the Light of the world. He reflects a light that is not his own. And he shines both by his life and by his word. Lloyd-Jones insisted on both. A Christian who talks but does not live has no light; but a Christian who lives well and never explains why leaves the world admiring him rather than glorifying God.

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. MATTHEW 5:16

He pictured the ideal: a Christian so evidently different — so calm under pressure, so free from the world’s dependence on artificial pleasures, so balanced — that his neighbours are driven to ask what he has. Then he can tell them.

Where care is needed

Lloyd-Jones was wary of the church as an institution becoming absorbed in political and social campaigns, and he believed its first calling was to preach the gospel and make Christians, not to reform society directly. Many evangelicals since have thought he drew that line too sharply, and that Christians have a clearer calling to public justice and mercy than he allowed. The reader may weigh that. But his central point stands untouched: no programme can do what salt and light do, and a church that has lost its savour will change nothing, however busy it is.

Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men. 2 CORINTHIANS 3:2

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Think of the places where you spend most of your week. Is your presence there felt as salt? What would change if it were?

2. Ask whether you have become so like the world around you that you have lost your savour. Name one specific area.

3. Consider whether your light shines by life alone, by word alone, or by both. Which needs strengthening?

4. Pray this week for one colleague or neighbour by name, and look for a natural opportunity to explain your hope.

5. Read Matthew 5:13–16 each day this week and ask God to make you useful where He has placed you.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You have called me the salt of the earth and the light of the world. I confess that I have often hidden my light and lost my savour.

Keep me in the world but not of it. Let my life be a check on the corruption around me, and my words a light to those in darkness.

Deliver me from conforming to this world. Transform me by the renewing of my mind.

And let those who see my life be drawn not to admire me, but to glorify my Father in heaven. Amen.