“Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” (Luke 14:34-35)

Jesus warned about the consequences of not continuing in a distinctive lifestyle of following Him, which He likened to salt that lost its flavor. This analogy illustrates a really important concept of maintaining ourselves in Christ in order to be useful in the mission of Christ.

Salt is distinct – it adds flavor, it preserves, and it purifies. BUT, if it loses its saltiness, it is ineffective and therefore useless.

You know how you can cook up some food and it just tastes bleh, but when you add salt, it’s a night and day difference in the flavor? We are called as followers of Jesus to be distinct, to stand out from the world; we are to be the salt that brings that night and day difference to a world that’s spiritually devoid of the flavor of Christ.

Salt has a unique effect, simultaneously causing a wonderful flavor while creating a desire for water. If we are being salt, we will be a wonderful flavor to a bland world in need of Jesus and they will in turn desire the water of the Word to quench the thirst we’ve helped create as salt.

If we allow the saltiness of our faith to be corrupted or transformed into something else altogether, we lose our distinctiveness as salt – we lose our distinctiveness as followers of Jesus.

All of our actions, our character, our integrity, all that we say and do, should all reflect Jesus. If we start mixing in the world’s values like a spice mixture with our salt, then we’re no longer distinctive because we’d be something else entirely, having been conformed by the world instead of transformed by the renewing of our minds. That in turn results in losing effectiveness in sharing the message of the gospel.

Quick example - If you had a sore throat, we’d all agree that gargling salt water is a great method of helping your throat heal. But what if you replaced that salt with taco seasoning, would you still want to gargle with that? That sounds crazy, right? Taco seasoning has salt mixed with a lot of other seasonings and it would not be effective in treating a sore throat like pure salt water does. In the same way, if you’re mixing with the world, it’s like offering a throat gargle as taco seasoning and it’s useless to the one with a sore throat.

But Jesus took this even further because He said that if salt has lost its saltiness, it’s of no use and is thrown away. A flavorless salt is completely worthless because it doesn’t serve any purpose at all whatsoever. If one loses their essence of Christ-likeness in the way that salt loses its flavor, they’re not of any use in advancing the kingdom of God.

If we want to remain useful and spiritually flavorful, we have to preserve the flavor of our faith by growing in our relationship with Jesus. This goes back to the words Jesus spoke from last week’s devotional – deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Jesus. This is an abiding relationship full of prayer, His word, and living a sanctified life obedient to Christ. This is living set apart, being distinctive in our faith, and being the genuine salt to a world so desperately in need of the flavor of Jesus.

In light of this, let’s maintain our saltiness by being in the word, in prayer, and obedient to God so that we will be useful in bringing taste, preservation, and purity to a world in need of Jesus, impacting lives and glorifying God through our distinctive Christ-likeness that makes others thirst for the Living Water!