Salt

"Have salt in yourselves." -Mark 9:50 [KJV]

Salt preserves our food from putrefying, and makes it savoury to our palate. Job asks, “Can any thing that is unsavoury be eaten without salt? is there any taste in the white of an egg?”—(16:6.) What salt is to our food, that the doctrines of the grace of God, and the grace of these doctrines are to the soul. Why could not our Lord have plainly told us so, without using the symbol of salt? He loves to deliver Himself in familiar images: they are best suited to our present state. 

Natural things sensibly strike us, and easily convey spiritual truths to the heart. Our tables are not furnished, if salt be wanting. Meat, without salt, is unsavoury. O! then let every meal remind us of our Lord’s words, “Have salt in yourselves.” You have daily need to have your souls seasoned with the grace of God, and the words of Christ. 

(1st.) These will preserve our hearts from receiving, and being putrefied by the seeds of false doctrine. Hearts, well seasoned with the salt of the covenant of grace, will not receive the taint of human error. Thus, we shall be happy in the sense of truth, and the experience of grace in our souls. 

(2d.) We shall be profitable to others. If our own souls are well seasoned with the grace of Christ, we shall be savoury to others. O, how insipid is the talk of the lips, if the seasoning of grace and the savour of love is not in the heart! Why are some professors so backward to speak of the things of God? why do others speak of them in such a tasteless, unsavoury manner? Alas! their own hearts are not well salted and seasoned with grace. Notions float only in the head; they are delivered from the tongue: the heart is not impregnated with the salt and savour of them. O, Christian! be concerned for the glory of thy Saviour, for the comfort of thy own soul, and for the good of others, to have salt in thyself. Live every day, pass every hour under the seasoning, savoury truths of Jesus. 

(3d.) Salt is obtained from the sea. Study, try, and pray to obtain more and more of this precious salt, from the ocean of God’s everlasting love in Christ Jesus. 

(4th.) “With all thine offerings, thou shalt offer salt” (Leviticus 2:13.) O! never forget that it is the grace of Christ which makes both thy person, and thy every offering acceptable to God. And it is this which spreads a savour through thy whole conversation: thou canst not be unsavoury whilst thou livest upon this truth, “God hath made me, a sinner, accepted in His beloved Son.” (Ephesians 1:6.)

Lord, make me know, and taste, and feel 

The savour of Thy heav’nly love: 

Unto my inmost soul reveal 

A foretaste of Thy joys above.

So shall my heart, my lip, my life 

Declare the seas’ning of Thy grace: 

My soul be freed from legal strife, 

To walk with joy before Thy face.

 

-preacher William Mason (1724-1797 A.D.)