13. Ye This must have been addressed especially to the apostles, who doubtless formed the front circle immediately around our Lord. Indeed, Mat 5:12 seems to show that the benedictions were addressed to them. Yet the multitudes, as listeners, were entitled to appropriate their share.

Salt of the earth The earth, the living world of men, is like a piece of meat, which would putrify, but that the grace and Gospel of God, like salt, arrests the decay, and purifies and preserves it. The apostles, and in their degree all Christians, are the substance and body of that salt. They are the substance to which the saltness inheres. Salt have lost its savour If the living body to which this gracious saltness inheres doth lose that quality, whereby shall the quality be restored? Wherewith shall it shall what? be salted? The it refers to the solid salt which has lost its saltness or savour. What, alas! shall ever resalt that savourless salt? The Christian is the solid salt, and the grace of God is his saltness; that grace is the very salt of the salt. Now this solid salt is intended to salt the world with; but, alas I who shall salt the salt? This question the Saviour answers by pronouncing it unanswerable. It is thenceforth good for nothing This shows that it is the savourless salt which needs the salting. And this strong answer shows, too, that in the case supposed, the saltness is not almost, but completely gone. Not a particle of the grace of God remains, or the loser would not be quite good for nothing. Nor is it to be rightly viewed as a mere abstract possibility, which God secures shall never happen, but a practical matter, which may be believed to happen often and ordinarily. Surely the Antinomian dogma that assures the Christian that God secures him from losing divine grace, cannot stand before this warning passage. Trodden under foot of men The symbol of utter perdition.

Our Lord’s allusion to salt that has lost its savour is not without a foundation in natural fact. Salt does lose its saltness by chemical decomposition. But we are inclined to think (with Schoettgen) that the allusion is to the bituminous salt from Lake Asphaltites, which was strewn over the sacrifices at the temple in order, by its fragrant odour, to neutralize the smell of the burning flesh, and which, when spoiled by exposure to sun and atmosphere, was cast out upon the walks to prevent the feet from slipping. Dr. Thomson (vol. ii, p. 44) says: “Indeed, it is a well-known fact that the salt of this country, when in contact with the ground, or exposed to rain and sun, does become insipid and useless. From the manner in which it is gathered, much earth and other impurities are necessarily collected with it. Not a little of it is so impure that it cannot be used at all and such salt soon effloresces and turns to dust, not to fruitful soil, however. It is not only good for nothing itself, but it actually destroys all fertility wherever it is thrown; and this is the reason why it is cast into the street. There is a sort of verbal verisimilitude in the manner in which our Lord alludes to the act: ‘it is cast out’ and ‘trodden under foot;’ so troublesome is this corrupted salt, that it is carefully swept up, carried forth, and thrown into the street. There is no place about the house, yard, or garden, where it can be tolerated. No man will allow it to be thrown on to his field, and the only place for it is in the street, and there it is cast, to be trodden under foot of men.”

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

“You are the salt of the earth,

But if the salt have lost its savour,

With what will it be salted?

It is from then on good for nothing,

But to be cast out and trodden under foot of men.”

‘You are the salt of the earth.’ While these salts were sometimes used as fertiliser they were not very effective as such, and that idea is probably not intended here. The meaning rather is that the disciples are like salt among the people of the world, and the thought of its uniqueness is in mind. There is no replacement for salt. In the same way His disciples were to recognise that they too were unique in the world (as Christians also ought to be, but for the right reasons, not because of peculiarities of behaviour). Salt was famed for its preservative qualities, and for making things palatable. It prevented corruption advancing so quickly, and brought out what was good in food. And it thus both kept things edible and made them enjoyable. It could also be used as a cleansing agent (Exo 30:35; 2Ki 2:19-22; Eze 16:4). In the same way the disciples, behaving in the way described in Mat 5:3-9, will slow down the corruption in the world, and make the world itself a better place by the effects of their example and their teaching, slowing down the spread of corruption, making the world a more tasty place by transforming many of those who are within it, and having a continuing purifying effect.

Note the ‘YOU are’ (the ‘you’ is emphatic). This was spoken to His disciples, not the general run of people. It refers to the same ones as were to be persecuted and reviled for Jesus’ sake (Mat 5:11). The emphasis may be as a contrast to those who would revile them, or it may simply be a positive assessment of them in contrast to the rest of the world. We should note in passing that they are not told to ‘become salt’. That has already been done for them by God. They are rather to reveal the saltiness that God has put within them.

Salt was also used by the Rabbis as a symbol of wisdom (see Col 4:6). This may explain the use above of the Greek verb ‘become foolish’ which probably translates the Aramaic ‘tapel’. This was closely associated with ‘tabel’ which indicates to lose taste and may disguise a typical play on words of a type that Jesus loved. This then reveals the disciples as also being the source of the true wisdom in the world. They are being trained up by Jesus in order to be the world’s source of true wisdom. How sad then if they cease to do His will and become foolish.

But what if through neglect the salt lose its savour? Then it will be useless. It will cease to have any effect and will become fit only to be thrown out onto the streets, to be treated with the contempt that it deserves. This is looking back to His previous indication that the disciples are replacing the prophets, and is introducing the warning of the danger of becoming false prophets, which will be developed in more detail towards the end (Mat 7:15-23). It is therefore at this stage a warning to be careful how they behave, and how they learn and teach.

‘With what will it be salted?’ There is no way of restoring saltiness to the mass of chemicals that the dissolving of the sodium chloride (salt) has left behind. In the same way once His disciples have lost their way they will find it very difficult to get back to what they were (but thank God not impossible, for at that point there is a difference. We are dealing with God’s ability to restore. God can ‘make it again’ (Jer 18:4). But this must not be presumed upon). All they can then hope for is to be tossed out for the rubbish collector to collect, meanwhile being trodden over by heedless men and women.

‘It is from then on good for nothing.’ Once men have lost the salt of a truly godly life they may witness all they like, but they will achieve nothing lasting.

‘Trodden under the foot of men.’ The phrase indicates disdain and contempt, or, even worse, being totally ignored. Once the church is ignored it is a sign that it has lost its savour. The picture is probably that of being tossed out as rubbish into the streets, to be later collected by the rubbish collectors, but meanwhile walked over by all. It has. however, been pointed out that such salts were used in strengthening the flat roofs of houses, with the result that people would then trample it under foot. But this is probably becoming too sophisticated.

Jesus regularly uses the illustration of salt, and it would simply be being pedantic to suggest that they must all have been said at the same time just because of the mention of salt. Consider Mar 9:50; Luk 14:34-35; see also Mar 4:21; Luk 8:16; Luk 11:33. But there is little real parallel and no reason for therefore suggesting that they are the same saying taken up and used in a different context. The picture was such a useful one that He must literally have used it scores of times in different ways. The unfortunate impression given by some scholars, in their eagerness to discern what Jesus might actually have said, which results in their trying to find a core in a number of sayings, is that Jesus simply went around making inane comments, and all the interesting expansions came from the later interpreters, who were all moral geniuses.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

The Disciples Are The Salt Of The Earth (5:13-14).

Jesus’ first declaration about His disciples is that they are the salt of the earth. And this is then followed by a grave warning. For it is possible for (Palestinian) salt to lose its savour. And then what will the result be? It will be fit for nothing but to be thrown away to become the equivalent of the dust under men’s feet.

Analysis of Mat 5:13-14 .

a “You are the salt of the earth (Mat 5:13 a).

b But if the salt have lost its savour (literally ‘become foolish’) (Mat 5:13 b).

c With what will it be salted? (Mat 5:13 c)

b It is from then on good for nothing (Mat 5:14 a).

a But to be cast out and trodden under foot of men” (Mat 5:14 b).

Note the parallels. In ‘a’ it is the salt of the earth, influential and effective, while in the parallel it is useless and rejected, and fit only for men to treat with contempt. In ‘b’ the salt loses its savour, and in the parallel it is thus good for nothing. And in ‘c’ we have the central punch line. If this happens there is no way in which it can be restored.

Note also the advance in thought. First the idea itself, ‘you are the salt of the earth’, then the warning, the salt can lose its savour, then the catastrophic realisation, if it does there is then no way for it to be re-salted, then the consequence, it is useless for anything, and then the result, it becomes something to be trodden under men’s feet.

As we shall see, this combination of advance in thought alongside chiastic comparisons in parallel is a feature of the Sermon on the Mount, a sign of the genius that lay behind it.

In order to understand this illustration we have to know something about Palestinian ‘salt’. It was not pure salt. It was gathered from areas like those around the Dead Sea, and contained considerable impurities. When it was stored there was always the danger of dampness causing the actual salt (sodium chloride) to dissolve leaving behind a tasteless mass. The ‘salt’ would then have lost its savour, and there would thus be no further use for it. Some, however, argue that it is the very impossibility of salt losing its savour that is the point behind the illustration. True disciples cannot lose their saltiness. Therefore those who do simply reveal that they were never salt at all. Either way the point is the same. Without saltiness they are worthless.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

Rather Than Deserving Reproach And Calumniation They Are to Be The Salt of the Earth and the Light of the World (5:13-16).

Having commenced His sermon by revealing what the disciples are, by virtue of God’s active work within them (His ‘blessing)’, and having warned them against persecution as a consequence, in a similar way to the prophets, Jesus now explains the significance of it for them in the context of the world. They are present in the world in their new state as preserving salt and as revealing light. And although through it many will be blessed, that is why they will be persecuted (this is the story of Acts).

Here we have further evidence that His words in the Sermon are mainly directed to disciples. Not only are they to be persecuted for His sake, but their special influence in the world is to be powerful and all-pervading. And this could only be spoken of people in whom verses Mat 5:3-9 have been actualised so that what is spoken of there has become a living experience.

We are aware, of course, of how far the disciples came short of this ideal, certainly for a long time, but at least a beginning has been made. They are now changed men, and on the way to becoming ‘perfect’ (Mat 5:48), fully matured in righteousness and love, even though they have a long way to go. They have therefore even now become agents through whom God will fulfil His purposes. This should comfort us with the thought that we too do not have to have become perfect before this can happen, for He reveals His glory in earthen vessels so that all the glory will go to Him (2Co 4:7).

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

The Chief Functions of the Disciples in the World.

The Lord continues to address His disciples directly:

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

Having experienced the sanctifying power of the Word and Spirit of Jesus, the disciples are a salt. Note the four main qualities of salt: It is white and pure, it prevents rapid decay, it preserves nutriment and flavor, it renders the food palatable and healthy. The Christians are the salt of the earth; their business is to prevent its decay and putrefaction, to use every effort that the moral rottenness of the children of the world does not become excessive and render every class and age of society putrid by its infection, 1Co 15:33. This is not an easy task. But “our defiance, when things go badly, and when the world and the devil give us evil looks, and are as angry as they wish, is this, that He says to us: Ye are the salt of the earth. Where this word shines into the heart that it puts its trust in that and glories without doubting that we are God’s salt, then let everyone be thoroughly angry that will not laugh. I can and may put more defiance and boasting upon a single word of His than they upon their might, swords, and guns. ” If this salt now loses its flavor, it becomes insipid. This is true only of salt that undergoes a chemical process, either by being exposed to rain or by being stored for some length of time, as travelers from the Holy Land report. The figure of Christ is thus particularly apt. Insipid, saltless salt is really a contradiction in itself, and Christians that have lost their distinctive properties have ceased to influence their surroundings for good, have also lost their discipleship. As savorless salt has no value whatever and is treated as refuse; as a certain species of bituminous salt found in Judea which very rapidly became flat and tasteless was spread out in a court of the Temple to prevent slipping in wet weather, so the Christians that have ceased to apply themselves to their business of acting as a moral power in the world, will partake of the judgment of the world. Luther probably is right in saying: “Therefore I have always admonished, as Christ also does here, that salt remain salt and not become insipid, that is, that the chief article of faith be urged. For if that ceases, then not one piece can remain, and everything is lost; there is neither faith nor understanding, and no one can teach or counsel properly anymore.”

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

Mat 5:13. Ye are the salt of the earth This relates to all the disciples who were then present, Luk 14:34 and also to all Christians in general (1Th 5:5. Php 2:15.); but more especially to the apostles. See on Mat 5:16. Salt is the emblem of wisdom,anditservesalsoto preserve things from putrefaction. Now the first disciples of Christ were more especially appointed to diffuse the wisdom of the Gospel throughout the whole world, and to promote the knowledge of Jesus Christ, and holiness and virtue, among men by their doctrines and examples. The meaning is, “Who could instruct and reform you, if you should happen to fall into error or vice; you that are to be entrusted under grace with the sanctification and instruction of others?” Compare Mar 9:49. Col 4:6. Livy calls Greece sal gentium, “the salt of all the nations,” on account of those intellectual improvements which they learned thence. The word , rendered Have lost his savour, may be translated, Is become insipid. This rendering has, I think, a peculiar beauty and strength here. The original might be literally translated, If it be infatuated or grown foolish; alluding to the common figure, in which sense and spirit are expressed by salt. Our Lord’s supposition of the salt’s losing its savour is illustrated by Mr. Maundrell, who tells us, that “in the valley of salt, near Gebul, and about four hours’ journey from Aleppo, there is a small precipice, occasioned by the continual taking away of the salt. In this, says he, you may see how the veins of it lie: I broke a piece of it, of which the part exposed to the rain, sun, and air, though it had the sparks and particles of salt, yet it had perfectly lost its savour, as in Matthew 5. The innermost, which had been connected with the rock, retained its savour, as I found by proof.” See Grotius, and Wetstein.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

Mat 5:13 . ] A figure of the power which counteracts corruption, and preserves in a sound condition the effect which salt has upon water (2Ki 2:20 ), meat, and such like. Thus the ministry of the disciples was destined by the communication of the divine truth to oppose the spiritual corruption and powerlessness of men, and to be the means of bringing about their moral soundness and power of life. An allusion to the use of salt in sacrifices (Mar 9:49 ) is not hinted at here (in answer to Tholuck). Comp. rather Col 4:6 ; Theodoret, Heracleon (in Cramer, Cat . p. 33): . . Without this salt humanity would have fallen a prey to spiritual . Fritzsche, overlooking the positive efficacy of salt, derives the figure only from its indispensable nature . Observe, moreover, how the expression , as a designation of the mass of the inhabitants of the earth, who are to be worked upon by the salt, is as appropriately selected for this figure as for the following one. And Jesus thus even now throws down the thought of universal destination into the souls of the disciples as a spark to be preserved.

] will have become savourless , Mar 9:50 : ; Dioscorides in Wetstein: .

;] by what means will it again receive its salting power? Theophylact: . Laying figures aside: If you, through failing to preserve the powers bestowed upon you, and by allowing them to perish, become in despondency and torpidity unfaithful to your destiny and unfitted for your calling, how will you raise yourselves again to the power and efficiency appropriate to your vocation, which you have lost. [397] Your uselessness for your calling will then be an irreparabile damnum! “Non enim datur sal salis,” Jansen. Grotius well says, “ipsi emendare alios debebant, non autern exspectare, ut ab aliis ipsi emendarentur.” Augustine, de serm. in mont . Mat 1:16 . Luther differently: Wherewith shall one salt? Erasmus, Paraphr.: “quid tandem erit reliquum, quo multitudinis insulsa vita condiatur?” Putting figure aside: Who, then, will supply your place? However appropriate in itself this meaning might be, nevertheless stands opposed to it. [398] See also Mar 9:50 .

.] ab hominibus “ obviis quibusque ,” Bengel.

[397] Whether the salt can really become quite insipid and without power, and thus lose its essential property, is not at all the question. Jesus puts the case. We need not therefore either appeal, with Paulus, to the salt which has been exposed to the weather and become tasteless, which Maundrell ( Reise nach Pal . p. 162; Rosenmller, Morgenland, in loc .) found in the district of Aleppo, or make out of the common cooking salt, saltpetre (Altmann, Vriemoet), or asphalt (v. d. Hardt, Schoettgen), or sea-salt (Ebrard).

[398] This , etc., clearly sets forth its utter uselessness for the purpose for which it was designed , not the exclusion from the community, or the being rejected by Christ (Luther, Chemnitz, and others), to which the idea, “ it is fit for nothing but,” is not appropriate. It would be different if Christ had said , etc. Theophylact understands exclusion from the dignity of teacher; Chrysostom, Erasmus, and others, the most supreme contempt. Observe, moreover, that the expression ( has power for nothing except, etc.), and so on, contains an acumen in its relation to the following passive , etc.

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

Mat 5:13-16 . The course of thought: The more important and influential your destined calling is, all the less ought you to allow yourselves to be dispirited, and to become faithless to your calling through indignities and persecutions; you are the salt and the light! Weizscker rightly claims for this section (in answer to Holtzmann, Weiss) originality in this connection, in which it attaches itself with great significance to the last beatitude and its explanation.

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

DISCOURSE: 1295
CHRISTIANS THE SALT OF THE EARTH

Mat 5:13. 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.

LITTLE do the world think how much they are indebted to those very saints whom they revile and persecute for righteousness sake [Note: ver. 11.]. The extirpation of them (which is so much desired by many) would leave the world an entire mass of corruption, without any thing to heal its disorders, or to stop its progress towards utter destruction. Were they removed out of it, the rest would soon become as Sodom and Gomorrha [Note: Isa 1:9.]. The representation given of them in the text fully justifies this idea. They are called the salt of the earth. This, of course, must be understood of those only who have the spirit of religion in them: for all others, whatever they may possess, are as vile and worthless as the real Christians are good and excellent.

The words before us will lead us to consider,

I.

The worth and excellence of truly spiritual Christians

The use of salt, as intimated in this expression of our Lord, is to keep other things from putrefaction and corruption.
This is the office that has been executed by all the saints of old
[View them from the beginning; and they will all be found active in their generation, and zealous in benefiting the world around them. Noah preached to the antediluvians an hundred and twenty years, indefatigably exerting himself to bring them to repentance. Lot, in Sodom, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds, and strove to turn the people from their horrible abominations. All the prophets in successive ages laboured in the same blessed work, using all their efforts to lead their hearers to the knowledge of the only true God, and to an obedience to his holy laws. How the Apostles acted in relation to this, it is needless to observe. They lived for no other end, but to make known the way of life, and to turn men from darkness unto light, and from the power of Satan unto God.
All, indeed, were not favoured with the same success. Those who preceded the Saviour, rather sowed the seed, than reaped the harvest: but his disciples, through the influence of the Spirit of God upon their labours, were instrumental to the conversion of thousands and of millions; all of whom in their respective spheres endeavoured to disseminate the same principles, and to spread the savour of the knowledge of Christ wherever they went. Take only one man, the Apostle Paul; and who shall say how much corruption he was the means of preventing in the world? ]

This is the office which every Christian, according to his ability, still executes
[Ministers labour for this end in the word and doctrine and private individuals feel themselves bound to co-operate with them, yea, I may say, to be fellow-workers also with God. No one who has received the grace of God in truth, will live any longer unto himself: he will seek to glorify his God, and to do good to those around him. Has he any relations, a father, a mother, a wife, a child, going on in ignorance and sin? he will endeavour by all possible means to rectify their dispositions, and to guide their feet into the way of peace. He will not say with himself, I am but as a grain of salt, and therefore can do no good: he will thankfully employ his influence, how small soever it may be, for the benefit of those to whom it will extend. Even the poorest have access to some poor neighbour like themselves: and the resolution of the weakest will be like that of the Church of old, Draw me, and we will run after thee [Note: Son 1:4.]; that is, Draw me, and I will not come alone, but will bring all I can along with me.

And shall this be thought a small matter? No, surely: for if a Christian be instrumental, even in the course of his whole life, to convert one single person from the error of his ways, he has effected a good, which exceeds in value the whole material world: for he has saved a soul from death, and covered a multitude of sins [Note: Jam 5:19-20.].]

Thus is the truly spiritual Christian, a man of great worth and excellence: but all who profess religion are not of this stamp: the text itself declares that there are some of a very different character; and that nothing can exceed,

II.

The worthlessness of those who have not the savour of religion in their souls

Salt that has lost its savour is here said to be good for nothing; but is trodden under foot of men. This shews the desperate state of those who are not truly alive to God. Their prospects are indeed gloomy in relation to,

1.

Their personal recovery

[Salt that has lost its savour, cannot by any means be restored to its former pungency. And thus it is with those who, after some experience of the power of godliness, have made shipwreck of their faith and of a good conscience. Doubtless, with God all things are possible; and therefore He can restore the most determined apostate: but there is very little reason to hope that he ever will; since he has told us, that such an one shall be given over to final impenitence [Note: Heb 6:4-6; Heb 10:26-27. 2Pe 2:20-22.]

The state of one who has merely declined in religion is certainly not so desperate; but still it is truly deplorable. If a man had never known any thing of religion, it might be hoped that the truths of the Gospel would influence his mind; but if he be already acquainted with those truths, and they be not able to preserve him, how can it be hoped that they shall have efficacy to restore him? Whilst the heart is yet tender, the Gospel is mighty in operation; because God accompanies it with his power from on high: but when the heart is hardened through the deceitfulness of sin, and the Spirit of God has withdrawn his agency, there is great reason to fear that the man will draw back unto perdition. How solemn are the admonitions given on this subject to the Church at Ephesus [Note: Rev 2:4-5.], and to that at Sardis [Note: Rev 3:1-3.]! Let every one then who has declined in religious exercises and enjoyments, even though his declensions be ever so secret, tremble, lest that threatening be fulfilled in him, The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways [Note: Pro 14:14.].]

2.

Their ministerial usefulness

[All who have received the gift, are bound to minister the same to others, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God [Note: 1Pe 4:10.]. But the man that has lost the savour of religion in his own soul, is ill qualified for this: he has not inclination to do it, he has not courage, he has not ability. When religion flourished in his soul, he could converse upon it with pleasure: Out of the abundance of his heart his mouth would freely speak. But now he can converse on any other subject rather than that: he finds no satisfaction in maintaining fellowship even with the saints: it is not to be wondered at therefore that he has no disposition to instruct the ignorant, and reform the wicked. Indeed, he is afraid lest that proverb should be retorted upon him, Physician, heal thyself: and his own conscience will remonstrate with him in the energetic language of the Apostle, Thou that teachest another, teachest thou not thyself [Note: Rom 2:21-24.]? And though no change has taken place in his intellect in reference to earthly things, his understanding becomes clouded in relation to spiritual things: his gifts in a great measure vanish together with his grace: he once could speak and pray with fluency; but now his mouth is shut; and he experiences the truth of that singular declaration, From him that hath not (that hath not improved his talent) shall be taken away even that which he hath [Note: Mat 13:12.].

But it is observed of the salt, not only that it is good for nothing, with respect to its primary uses of keeping other things from putrefaction, but that it is not fit for the land, nor yet for the dunghill [Note: Luk 14:35.]. The fact is, that salt, when destitute of its proper qualities, has a tendency rather to produce sterility than to promote vegetation, if it be cast upon the land. This is intimated in many passages of Scripture [Note: Jdg 9:45. Jer 17:6. Eze 47:11 and particularly Psa 107:34. the marginal reading. The Salt Sea is the Dead Sea.] And such is the effect produced by those who have lost the power of godliness, and departed from God: they cast a stumbling-block before men, and cause the way of truth to be evil spoken of. The world may do what they please, and the individuals alone are blamed; but let any one who professes religion do any thing amiss, and religion itself must be accountable for it, and the name of God is blasphemed on his account. This indeed is most unreasonable and absurd: nevertheless so it is: and a most aggravated woe is thereby entailed on all who occasion such an offence [Note: Mat 18:7.].]

3.

Their final acceptance

[Even here they are rejected both by God and man. Those who walk consistently, are hated and despised by the ungodly world; but those who walk inconsistently, are despised a thousand times more; and this God has ordained as a just punishment for their treachery [Note: Mal 2:8-9.]. As for his own abhorrence of them, it is scarcely possible for language to express it more strongly than he has declared it [Note: Rev 3:15-16.]. Moreover, if they repent not, the same indignation will pursue them in the eternal world. What reception they will then meet with at his hands, he has plainly warned them [Note: Psa 50:16-22.]. And the saints with whom they associated here, will then disown them, and cast them out of their society [Note: Luk 13:28.]: yea, the very heathen who walked agreeably to the light that they enjoyed, will be admitted into bliss, whilst the lifeless professor of religion, who brought forth no fruit to perfection, will be banished from it with abhorrence [Note: Rom 2:27.]: so true is that expression in our text, They shall be trodden under foot of men!]

Seeing then that the power of godliness is of such importance, we call upon you all,
1.

To seek it

[It is not a lifeless formal religion that will avail for your salvation. The command of God to every one of us is, Have salt in yourselves [Note: Mar 9:50.]. The distinction between the true Christian and the self-deceiver is, that the one savours the things of the Spirit, which the other does not [Note: Rom 8:5. , sapiunt, Beza. See also Rom 2:28-29.]. We must delight ourselves in God, or it will be in vain to hope that ever He will delight in us.]

2.

To preserve it

[The salt may soon lose its savour. Religion is not like the sculptors work, which if left ever so long remains in the state it was: but like a stone rolled up a hill, which will descend again as soon as the impelling force is withdrawn. The stony-ground and thorny-ground hearers shew, that we are prone to depart from God, or to rest in a carnal state whilst maintaining outwardly a spiritual profession. It is a melancholy, and an undeniable fact, that many do begin in the Spirit, and end in the flesh. Let us then stir up the gift of God that is in us, as we would stir a languishing fire; that we lose not the things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward [Note: 2 John, ver. 8.].]

3.

To diffuse it

[We must never forget the office which God has assigned us in our respective spheres. The treasure committed to us earthen vessels, is not for ourselves only, but to enrich others. Our speech should always be with grace seasoned with salt [Note: Col 4:6. Eph 4:29.]. Let us then exert ourselves to the utmost of our power to instruct the rising generation to reform the habits of the world to send the Gospel to the Heathen and to impart to all within our reach the knowledge and salvation of God [Note: If this be a subject for Missions, or Bible Society, or Sunday Schools, or for Visiting the Sick, or Reformation of Manners, the appropriate idea should be exclusively insisted on.].]

Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)

Chapter 16

The Character of the Disciples The Effect of Encouragement influence May Be Lost the Need of Caution

Prayer

Almighty God, thy way concerning us we do not understand: it is enough for us to know that it is thy way. Help us to walk in it step by step, with all patience and hopefulness, knowing that thou wilt bring us at last into a large and quiet place. Thou dost astonish the upright and turn the innocent pale by thy judgments and mysteries, so that we cannot tell what thou doest in the heavens or upon the earth, and when men question us about thee there is no reply upon our lips: we can but say, This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes. He setteth the mighty upon their heads, and turneth their mansions upside down; yea, he changeth the channels of the sea and turneth the rivers into a wilderness; he taketh up the isles as a very little thing, and from his seat upon the circle of the earth the populations are as grasshoppers. This is the Lord’s rule; yea, it is our Father’s reign and sovereignty, and we rest in that, and find ourselves at peace.

We are of yesterday, and know nothing; we close our eyelids and behold we are blind in a moment, we cannot stretch beyond the length of our arms, we are barred and caged in like lives that are watched; tomorrow we die, and the third day are we forgotten as if we had never been. It well becometh us, therefore, to hold our peace, to look on in silence, and with religious wonder, and to wait hopefully for the grand last revelation. Make of us what thou wilt. We would be busier, but that comes from our impatience; we would be more famous and influential, but that is the mischief of our ambition; so we will withdraw wholly our own counsel and purpose, and we will wait as slaves wait upon their masters, asking thee to give us the liberty of thine own love, and to bind us fast with the loyalty of a love created in our hearts by thyself.

The days flee away ere we can count them one by one; they cease to be days, they are like flashes in the darkness and are gone instantly. O that we might number them as best we may, with some view of finding the way in wisdom, and making the reckoning as becometh men of understanding. Help us to know the measure of our life, how little it is, a child’s tiny span, and our time is as a flying shuttle, as a post hastening on its way, as a shadow that continueth not. So teach us, therefore, in our joys to remember how speedily they fall. May the young be wise as the aged, and the aged be as those who have obtained the venerableness of great experience.

The Lord help us to do our work with both hands, and with our whole head and heart, as if everything depended upon us, and then to leave it as if we did nothing at all. Feed us with thy grace, enrich and nourish us with thy most gracious word; may thy doctrine distil as the dew, and thy gospel sing to us as an angel, and charm us out of ourselves into thy great service. May thy promises become exhortations, and in the midst of thine exhortations may we hear the voice of benediction.

Let the Lord’s pity be poured out upon us as from the very fountain of his heart, and may we know that our life is the object of thy compassion, that thou dost not revile us in the heavens or laugh at us in the distant skies; but with all mercifulness and pitifulness of heart dost look upon us as those whose days are as a shadow fast fleeing away; yea, thou hast set up for us the cross the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, our one Priest, our only Saviour, our infinite, our atoning sacrifice; in him we. see how great we are in thy purpose. Help us to behold his priesthood and to avail ourselves of his loving ministry; in all our sin and sorrow, in all our daily vexation and passing trouble, may we enter into his heart as men enter into a sanctuary which cannot be violated.

The Lord hear the prayers we cannot speak, the uprisings and motionings of our dumb hearts; multiply our few words into a great intercession, and let all our utterances be repronounced by our Priest in heaven.

The Lord send messages from his great house to the dwelling-places of those who are ailing, sick, dying, wearying to die, waiting for the angel, longing for some sound of the coming chariot wheels. The Lord send messages to those who are sitting in the gloom of despair, who say they have tried every key upon their girdle and none will fit, who sit down beside barred gates and walls too high to be scaled. The Lord speak his own comforting word to hearts to whom the darkness is a burden, and to whom the night has no star. Preserver of the strangers, take away the loneliness of the stranger’s heart, give him to feel in thine house that he is at his Father’s table and under his Father’s blessing. And grant unto the widow and the orphan, the poor, the lonely, the comfortless, and them that have no helper, some message and assurance that shall recover their heart’s hope, and re-establish them in a wise confidence.

The Lord hold us all as if we belonged to him, and draw us nearer his heart the more the tempter assails. Amen.

Mat 5:13-16 .

13. 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.

14. Ye are the light of he world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.

15. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.

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

There are two ways of looking at this portion of the Lord’s address He is speaking to the disciples that may be inferred from the first verse of the chapter, wherein it says, “When he was set, his disciples came unto him, and he opened his mouth and taught them.” Are we to suppose that these disciples referred to were the salt of the earth and the light of the world, and a city set upon a high hill? Surely not in their merely personal capacity, and in their then condition. Let us take the first view, therefore; namely, that Jesus Christ is speaking of the Jews, and speaking of them he hesitates not to describe them as the salt of the earth, the light of the world, the city set upon a hill. And yet in a very gentle way, but so broad as to admit of no misapprehension, he intimates that the salt has lost its savour, the light has been put under a bushel, and the conspicuousness of the city has become but the greater shame. The effect of this teaching is to remind men of great calling and election, and of great and appalling declension, and to prepare the way for such remedial and reclaiming measures as were in the purpose and counsel of the Eternal. This was not dust that had become drier, it was not clay that had become harder, it was salt that had lost its savour, light that was in danger of being wholly extinguished. Jesus Christ, therefore, recognising the greatness and the grandeur of the call in which the Jews stood, proceeded in this most gracious and gentle manner to indicate the declension into which they had fallen. That is one view.

Take the other view. Jesus Christ sees in those disciples what his church is to be. Not addressing them in their then intellectual and spiritual condition, but looking forward as men look from the germ to the full fruition, he regarded them as the beginning of his own divine kingdom, and addressing them as such, he described them as the salt of the earth, the light of the world, and a city set upon a hill. Both views are, in my opinion, correct. There is enough in each of them to awaken the most solemn reflection, to affect the soul with all the pain of the bitterest humiliation, and to inspire it with all that is most animating in the sacred word. I will take the second view and set it with some breadth before you.

Christ sees the greatest side of our nature, and he addresses that side, because we are more easily and effectually moved by encouragement than by any other influence. Tell a man he is a fool and you cast him into despair. Tell him that he has lost every chance, spoiled every opportunity, neglected all the counsel of heaven, and is no longer worthy of being counted a living creature in God’s universe, and possibly you may burden him with all the distress of absolute despair. The effect will be according to the nature of the particular man who is addressed. Jesus Christ never gave us a discouraging view of ourselves whenever he saw us set in any relation to himself, of earnest listening or religious expectation or incipient desire to be wiser and better men. When we stood before him in the full erectness of our own purity, and came before him with a certificate of our own integrity, and requested to be heard upon the basis of our righteousness, he turned upon us the fury of the east wind, and banished us from his presence as men to whom he had nothing to say. Whenever we grouped ourselves around him and said we would listen with reverence and with religious expectation to what he had to say, then he opened the kingdom of heaven, and not until our capacity was surcharged did he withdraw his gracious and redeeming revelations of truth.

This is the great law of human teaching. If you want your boy to be a gentleman, do not begin by treating him as an invincible and incurable boor. I wait until that lesson gets right down into your apprehension. If you want to encourage your scholars in your Sunday-school or your scholastic establishment, begin by treating them as young philosophers. Give them credit for as much as you possibly can by so doing you will cast them upon themselves in serious reflection, and with some anxiety they will endeavour to respond to the breadth, the sympathy, and the nobleness of your estimation of their capacity and diligence. If you want any man to do his best, trust him with considerable responsibility. Who could do his best if he knew he was watched, suspected, distrusted, and that the object of the vigilant criticism was to entrap him, to find out his defects, and to convince him by multitudinous arguments that he was wholly unfit for his position? Many of us could not work at all under such circumstances; we should simply succumb under their distressing weight if we did not resent them as intolerable humiliations.

Jesus Christ comes to us and says, “Ye are the salt of the earth” says to a man who thought himself useless in the world, “Thou art as pungent salt in the midst of a putrid age,” or, “Thou art as salt cast upon that which is already good, to preserve it from decay.” Jesus Christ adds, “Ye are the light of the world” tells a man who never suspected himself of having any light at all, that it is in him to throw a circle of radiance around his family, his neighbourhood, or it may be his country. Let us learn to follow this example in some degree. We get from men in many cases just what we tell them we expect from them; there is something in. human nature that likes to be trusted with responsibility, something in us that responds to great occasions. Jesus Christ always supplied a grand occasion to his hearers, and he opened the broad and sunny road of hope. He did not point to the low and dank caverns of despair.

Jesus Christ recognises the true influence of good men. He called them salt which is pungent, light which is lustrous, a city set on a hill which is conspicuous, and may be seen afar by travellers and by those who long for home. Some influences are active salt and light; some influences passive a city set on a hill. We must not judge one another’s influence by our own, and condemn any man’s influence in the church because it does not take its tone and range from our own method of doing things. Some clocks do not strike. They have to be looked at if from them we would know the time of day. Some clocks do strike, and they strike in the darkness as well as in the light, and it is pleasant to the weary, sleepless one now and again to catch the tone which tells him that the darkness is going and the light is coming. Do not undervalue me because I am a man of but passive influence. Do not charge me with ambition and madness because I am a man of energetic influence. Let each be what the great, loving, wise Father meant him to be. There is room in his heart for all. The brain makes no noise; the tongue no man can tame is the tongue, therefore, not a divine creation? Yea, verily, God taught it its trick of speech and its wizardry of music. Is the brain not of divine formation because it makes no noise? Yea, verily, it is as the inmost church of the Lord wherein God shows the fullest of his heavenly and immortal splendour.

George Gilfillan, in his most energetic and inspiriting book called “Bards of the Bible,” has some observations upon this matter of silence as contrasted with noise. As a boy I used to be very fond of that rhetorical writer, and as a man I do not renounce him. I have not seen the sentence for twenty years, but I think I can quote it even now in substance. He says, “The greatest objects in nature are the stillest: the ocean has a voice, the sun is dumb in his courts of praise. The forests murmur, the constellations speak not. Aaron spoke; Moses’ face but shone. Sweetly might the High Priest discourse, but the Urim and the Thummim, the blazing stones upon his breast, flash forth a meaning deeper and diviner far.” Young men, store your memory with such words as these, and you will never want to run away from your own society. The chairs may be vacant, but the air will be full of angels.

Yet whatever our influence may be, we may lose it. The salt may lose its savour, the light may be put under a bushel, and a city set upon a hill may turn its lights out, or build its walls against the sun and turn its windows otherwhere. The foolish discussion has been sometimes raised as to whether salt could lose its pungency raised by people who wanted to catch the Saviour tripping in his speech. But in proportion to the difficulty is the solemnity. He who made the salt knows more about it than we do, and whatever may become of the salt, taking the mere letter as the limit of our criticism, we all know as the saddest and most tragical fact in life that some of the grandest intellects have lost their glory, and some right hands always lifted in defence of the right have lost their cunning. Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. What I say unto one I say unto all watch.

Every man sheds a light peculiar to himself. No man has all the light; no one star holds in its little cup all the glory of the universe. One star differeth from another star in glory. Suppose one of the least of the stars should say, “I am going to withdraw from the firmament because I see a great flame, compared with whose splendour I am but as a glowworm in the presence of the sun.” Better for that little foolish star to say, “The God that made yonder great flame trims my lamp, gives me my little sparkle of light.”

There is a right way of using influence. Observe how Jesus Christ puts the matter when he says, “Let your light SO shine before men”; the word so should be emphasized as indicating the manner of the shining. Light may be so held in the hand as to dazzle the observer; light may be brought too near the eyes, light may be set at a wrong angle, light may be wasted, its beams be displayed so as to be of no use to the man who would read or work. Hence it is not enough to be luminous, but so to use our luminousness as to be of use to other people. There are men who, from my point of view, are luminous enough to light a whole country who do not light their own little house. There are men who need to be focalised, all but immeasurable men, with a kind of infinite capacity for anything, and who yet, for want of right setting and bringing together and focalising, live as splendid nothings and die as bubbles die upon the troubled wave. It is not enough, therefore, for us to have light and to be luminous; we must study the great economic laws by which even a little light may sometimes go a long way, and a great light may throw its timely splendour upon the road of him who is in perplexity and doubt.

Our Saviour further teaches us that our light is so to shine that our good works may be seen. He does not say that the worker may be made visible, but that the works may be observed, admired, imitated, may induce men to give glory to the Father which is in heaven. It is thus that his own sun works daily in the heavens: who dares look at the sun when he so shines as to fill the earth with all the beauty of summer? We turn our eyes up to him and he rebukes us with darts of fire; he says, “Look down, not up; look at the works, not the worker.” So we may feast our eyes upon a paradise of flowers, and get much of heaven out of it, but the moment we venture to say, “Who did this where is he?” “Show me the worker,” the sun answers us with a rebuke of intolerable light. So no man hath seen God at any time, but we see his son Jesus Christ. No man hath seen God at any time, yet we count his stars when the great daylight is away; we wonder how they were hung upon nothing, and how they shine without wasting, and what they are porch lamps of a King’s palace, street lamps on a heavenly way who can tell? None, yet the bare question-asking stirs the mind and the heart with a noble wonder that is almost religious. What wonder, then, if you cannot look at the sun, that you cannot look at the God that made the sun? If he is invisible in himself, he is not invisible in his ministry. We also are his offspring. In every little child I see his work, in the meanest human life I see the infinitude of his wisdom and the beneficence of his purpose. In myself I see the divinity of God.

Thus our lesson stands in the meantime. A kind word of encouragement has been spoken to us: we are hot regarded as little, insignificant, contemptible, not worth gathering up: we are spoken of as salt, light, and a city set on a hill. Let us answer the grandeur of the challenge. We have been told that the best influence may decline and die: salt may lose its savour, the light may be extinguished. Let us hear the solemn exhortation, and exercise a spirit of vigilant caution. We have been called to a certain manner of life; let us take heed unto the call, lest having magnificent powers we waste them as rain would be wasted upon the unanswering and barren sand.

Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker

13 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.

Ver. 13. Ye are the salt of the earth ] As salt keepeth flesh from putrefying, so do the saints the world: and are therefore sprinkled up and down (here one and there one) to keep the rest from rotting. Suillo pecori anima pro sale data, quae carnem servaret, ne putresceret, saith Varro. Swine and swinish persons have their souls for salt only, to keep their bodies from stinking above ground. Christ and his people are somewhere called the soul of the world. The saints are called all things; the Church, every creature, Mar 16:15 ; Tabor and Hermon are put for east and west, Psa 89:12 ; for God accounts for the world by the Church, and upholds the world for the Church’s sake. Look how he gave Zoar to Lot, and all the souls in the ship to Paul, Act 27:24 ; so he doth the rest of mankind to the righteous. Were it not for such Jehoshaphats, “I would not look toward thee, nor see thee,” said Elijah to Jehoram, saith God to the wicked, 2Ki 3:14 . The holy seed is statumen terrae, saith one prophet: the earth’s substance or settlement, Isa 6:13 . (Junius.) The righteous are fundamentum mundi, the world’s foundation, saith another, Pro 10:25 . ( Quia propter probes stabilis est mundus. because on account you may make the earth firm. Merc.) I bear up the pillars of it, saith David, Psa 75:3 . And it became a common proverb in the primitive times, Absque stationibus non stare mundus: but for the piety and prayers of Christians, the world could not subsist. It is a good conclusion of Philo, therefore, Oremus, ut tanquam columna in domo vir iustus permaneat, ad calamitatum remedium. Let us pray that the righteous may remain with us, for a preservative, as a pillar in the house, as the salt of the earth. But as all good people, so good ministers especially are here said, for their doctrine, to be the salt of the earth; and for their lives, the light of the world. ( Doctrina salis est; vita lucis. Aret.) Ye are salt, not honey, which is bitter to wounds. Ye are light, which is also offensive to sore eyes. Salt hath two things in it, Acorem et saporem, sharpness and savouriness. Ministers must reprove men sharply, that they may be “sound in the faith,” Tit 1:13 , and a sweet savour to God; savoury meat, as that of Rebekah, a sweet meat offering, meet for the master’s tooth, that he may eat and bless them. Cast they must their cruses full of this holy salt into the unwholesome waters, and upon the barren grounds of men’s hearts (as Elisha once of Jericho), so shall God say the word that all be whole, and it shall be done. No thought can pass between the receipt and the remedy.

But if the salt have lost his savour, &c. ] A loose or lazy minister is the worst creature upon earth, so fit for no place as for hell, -as unsavoury salt is not fit for the dunghill, but makes the very ground barren whereupon it is cast. Who are now devils but they which once were angels of light? Corruptio optimi pessima, as the sweetest wine makes the sourest vinegar, and the finest flesh is resolved into the vilest earth. Woe to those dehonestamenta cleri, disgraceful ministers that, with Eli’s sons, cover foul sins under a white ephod: that neither spin nor labour, Mat 6:28 , with the lilies, unless it be in their own vineyards, little in God’s; that want either art or heart, will or skill, to the work; being not able or not apt to teach, and so give occasion to those blackmouthed Campians to cry out, Ministris eorum nihil villus: their ministers are the vilest fellows upon earth. (Campian in Rationibus. ) God commonly casteth off such as incorrigible; for wherewithal shall it be salted? there is nothing in nature that can restore unsavoury salt to its former nature. He will not only lay such by, as broken vessels, boring out their right eyes and drying up their right arms, Zec 11:17 ; i.e. bereaving them of their former abilities; but also he will cast dung upon their faces, Mal 2:3 ; so that, as dung, men shall tread upon them (which is a thing not only calamitous, but extremely ignominious), as they did upon the Popish clergy; and the devil shall thank them when he hath them in hell, for sending him so many souls: as Matthew Paris telleth us he did those in the days of Hildebrand. Literas ex inferno missas commenti sunt quidam, in quibus Satanas omni Ecclesiastico coetui gratias emisit. As for themselves, it grew into a proverb, Pavimentum inferni rasis sacrificulorum verticibus, et magnatum galeis stratum esse: that hell was paved with the shaved crowns of priests and great men’s head pieces. God threatens to feed such with gall and wormwood, Jer 23:15 .

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

13. ] The transition from the preceding verses is easy and natural, from the , of which Mat 5:11-12 , were a sort of application, and the allusion to the ancient Prophets, to . . . Elisha healed the unwholesome water by means of salt ( 2Ki 2:20 ), and the ordinary use of salt for culinary purposes is to prevent putrefaction: so (see Gen 18:23-33 ) are the righteous, the people of God, in this corrupt world. It hardly seems necessary to find instances of the actual occurrence of salt losing its savour, for this is merely hypothetical. Yet it is perhaps worth noticing, that Maundrell, in his travels, found salt in the Valley of Salt, near Gehul, which had the appearance, but not the taste, having lost it by exposure to the elements (see the citation below); and that Schttgen maintains that a kind of bitumen from the Dead Sea was called ‘sal Sodomiticus,’ and was used to sprinkle the sacrifices in the temple; which salt was used, when its savour was gone, to strew the temple pavement, that the priests might not slip. This, however, is but poorly made out by him, (Schttgen, Hor. Hebr. in loc.) Dr. Thomson, ‘The Land and the Book,’ p. 381, mentions a case which came under his own observation: where a merchant of Sidon had stored up a quantity of salt in cottages with earthen floors, in consequence of which the salt was spoiled, and Dr. T. saw “large quantities of it literally thrown into the street, to be trodden under foot of men and beasts.” He adds, “It is a well-known fact that the salt of this country, when in contact with the ground, or exposed to rain and sun, does become insipid and useless. From the manner in which it is gathered, much earth and other impurities are necessarily collected with it. Not a little of it is so impure that it cannot be used at all: and such salt soon effloresces and turns to dust not to fruitful soil, however. It is not only good for nothing itself, but it actually destroys all fertility wherever it is thrown: and this is the reason why it is cast into the street.”

, mankind and all creation: but with a more inward reference, as to the working of the salt, than in , Mat 5:14 , where the light is something outwardly shewn .

= , Mar 9:50 .

] i.e. the salt; not impersonal, as Luther has rendered it, womit wird man faizen ? ‘ wherewith shall salting be carried on? ’ for is the nom. to all three verbs, , ., and . The sense is: ‘If you become untrue to your high calling, and spiritually effete and corrupted, there are no ordinary means by which you can be re-converted and brought back to your former state, inasmuch as you have no teachers and guides over you, but ought yourselves to be teachers and guides to others.’ But we must not from this suppose that our Lord denies all repentance to those who have thus fallen: the scope of His saying must be taken into account, which is not to crush the fallen, but to quicken the sense of duty, and cause His disciples to walk worthily of their calling. (See Heb 6:4-6 , and note on Mar 9:49-50 .) The salt in the sacrifice is the type of God’s covenant of sanctification , whereby this earth shall be again hallowed for Him: His people are the instruments , in His hand, of this wholesome salting: all His servants in general, but the teachers and ministers of His covenant in particular. Chrysostom observes, , , (Hom. xv. 7, p. 194). , , . Euthym [41] in loc. There does not appear to be any allusion to ecclesiastical excommunication .

[41] Euthymius Zigabenus, 1116

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

Mat 5:13-16 . Disciple functions . It is quite credible that these sentences formed part of the Teaching on the Hill. Jesus might say these things at a comparatively early period to the men to whom He had already said: I will make you fishers of men. The functions assigned to disciples here are not more ambitious than that alluded to at the time of their call. The new section rests on what goes before, and postulates possession of the attributes named in the Beatitudes. With these the disciples will be indeed the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Vitally important functions are indicated by the two figures. Nil sole et sale utilius was a Roman proverb (Pliny, H. N., 31, 9). Both harmonise with, the latter points expressly to, a universal destination of the new religion. The sun lightens all lands. Both also show how alien it was from the aims of Christ to be the teacher of an esoteric faith.

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

Mat 5:13 . , a late form for , , masculine. The properties of salt are assumed to be known. Commentators have enumerated four. Salt is pure, preserves against corruption. gives flavour to food, and as a manuring element helps to fertilise the land. The last mentioned property is specially insisted on by Schanz, who finds a reference to it in Luk 14:35 , and thinks it is also pointed to here by the expression . The first, purity, is a quality of salt per se , rather than a condition on which its function in nature depends. The second and third are doubtless the main points to be insisted on, and the second more than the third and above all. Salt arrests or prevents the process of putrefaction in food, and the citizens of the kingdom perform the same function for the earth, that is, for the people who dwell on it. In Schanz’s view there is a confusion of the metaphor with its moral interpretation. Fritzsche limits the point of comparison to indispensableness = ye are as necessary an element in the world as salt is; a needlessly bald interpretation. Necessary certainly, but why and for what? might mean the land of Israel (Achelis, Bergpredigt ), but it is more natural to take it in its widest significance in harmony with . Holtzmann (H. C.) sets down to the account of the evangelist, and thinks in the narrow sense more suited to the views of Jesus.

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Mat 5:13

13″You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men.”

Mat 5:13 “You are the salt of the earth” Because of the extreme value of salt in the ancient world (1) for healing and cleansing; (2) for preserving food; (3) for flavoring food; and (4) for sustaining moisture in humans in very dry climates, salt was a prized possession. It was often used to pay soldiers’wages. Christians are called the “salt of the earth” because of their penetrating and preserving power in a lost world. “You” is plural and emphatic like Mat 5:14. Believers are salt (cf. Mar 9:50). It is not an option. The only choice is what kind of salt will they be. Salt can become adulterated and useless (cf. Luk 14:34-35). Lost people are watching.

“if salt has become tasteless” This is a third class conditional sentence which meant potential action. Literally salt cannot lose its strength but when mixed with impurities the salt can leach away and, thereby, the salt content is diluted. Christians can lose and/or damage their testimonies!

The term “tasteless” was normally used in the sense of “foolish” (cf. Rom 1:27; 1Co 1:20).

“It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men” Salt that was unusable as a preservative or flavor enhancer was absolutely useless. It was thrown on the footpaths or roof tops to form a hard top seal. Salt taken from the Dead Sea had many impurities. The people in this part of the world were accustomed to unusable salt.

Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley

ye. Representing the kingdom of Mat 5:3 with Mat 4:17.

are = represent. Figure of speech Metaphor. App-6.

salt. Compare Mar 9:50. Luk 14:34, Luk 14:35.

if. See App-118. b, expressing a real contingency; for, if the salt is stored on the bare earth, or is exposed to the air or sun, it does lose its savour and is fit for no place but the streets (see Thomson’s The Land and the Book, Lond., 1869, p. 381).

his = its.

of = by. Greek. hupo.

of men. Belongs to former clause, as well, by Figure of speech Ellipsis, App-6.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

13.] The transition from the preceding verses is easy and natural, from the , of which Mat 5:11-12, were a sort of application, and the allusion to the ancient Prophets, to . . . Elisha healed the unwholesome water by means of salt (2Ki 2:20), and the ordinary use of salt for culinary purposes is to prevent putrefaction: so (see Gen 18:23-33) are the righteous, the people of God, in this corrupt world. It hardly seems necessary to find instances of the actual occurrence of salt losing its savour, for this is merely hypothetical. Yet it is perhaps worth noticing, that Maundrell, in his travels, found salt in the Valley of Salt, near Gehul, which had the appearance, but not the taste, having lost it by exposure to the elements (see the citation below);-and that Schttgen maintains that a kind of bitumen from the Dead Sea was called sal Sodomiticus, and was used to sprinkle the sacrifices in the temple; which salt was used, when its savour was gone, to strew the temple pavement, that the priests might not slip. This, however, is but poorly made out by him, (Schttgen, Hor. Hebr. in loc.) Dr. Thomson, The Land and the Book, p. 381, mentions a case which came under his own observation: where a merchant of Sidon had stored up a quantity of salt in cottages with earthen floors, in consequence of which the salt was spoiled, and Dr. T. saw large quantities of it literally thrown into the street, to be trodden under foot of men and beasts. He adds, It is a well-known fact that the salt of this country, when in contact with the ground, or exposed to rain and sun, does become insipid and useless. From the manner in which it is gathered, much earth and other impurities are necessarily collected with it. Not a little of it is so impure that it cannot be used at all: and such salt soon effloresces and turns to dust-not to fruitful soil, however. It is not only good for nothing itself, but it actually destroys all fertility wherever it is thrown: and this is the reason why it is cast into the street.

, mankind and all creation: but with a more inward reference, as to the working of the salt, than in , Mat 5:14, where the light is something outwardly shewn.

= , Mar 9:50.

] i.e. the salt; not impersonal, as Luther has rendered it,-womit wird man faizen? wherewith shall salting be carried on? for is the nom. to all three verbs, , ., and . The sense is: If you become untrue to your high calling, and spiritually effete and corrupted, there are no ordinary means by which you can be re-converted and brought back to your former state, inasmuch as you have no teachers and guides over you, but ought yourselves to be teachers and guides to others. But we must not from this suppose that our Lord denies all repentance to those who have thus fallen: the scope of His saying must be taken into account, which is not to crush the fallen, but to quicken the sense of duty, and cause His disciples to walk worthily of their calling. (See Heb 6:4-6, and note on Mar 9:49-50.) The salt in the sacrifice is the type of Gods covenant of sanctification, whereby this earth shall be again hallowed for Him: His people are the instruments, in His hand, of this wholesome salting: all His servants in general, but the teachers and ministers of His covenant in particular. Chrysostom observes, , , (Hom. xv. 7, p. 194). , , . Euthym[41] in loc. There does not appear to be any allusion to ecclesiastical excommunication.

[41] Euthymius Zigabenus, 1116

Fuente: The Greek Testament

Mat 5:13. Ye are the salt of the earth:

The earth would go putrid if there were no salt of grace to preserve it. So, dear friends, if Gods grace is in you, there is a pungent savor about you which fends to preserve others from going as far into sin as otherwise they would have done; Ye are the salt of the earth:

Mat 5:13. But if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted?

If the God-given grace could be taken from you altogether, if you had no sanctifying power about you at all, what could be done with you? You would be like salt that has lost its savor.

Mat 5:13. It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.

Mark this, then, either the saints must persevere to the end, or else the grace of God has done nothing for them effectually. If they do not continue to be saints, and to exercise a saintly influence, there is no hope for them. There cannot be two new births for the same person; if the divine work has failed once, it will never be begun again. If they really have been saved, if they have been made the children of God, and if it be possible for them to lose the grace which they have received, they can never have it again. The Word of God is very emphatic upon that point: : If they shall fall away, it is impossible to renew them again unto repentance Falling may be retrieved, but falling away never can be happy. There are countries where there is found salt from which the pungency has completely gone. It is an altogether useless article; and if there are men, who ever did possess the grace of God, and who were truly Gods people, if the divine life could go out of them, they would be in an utterly hopeless case. Perhaps there are no powers of evil in the world greater than apostate churches; who can calculate the influence for evil that the Church of Rome exercises in the world today?

Mat 5:14. Ye are the light of the world.

The Bible is not the light of the world, it is the light of the Church; but the world does not read the Bible, the world reads Christians; Ye are the light of the world.

Mat 5:14. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.

You Christians are like a city built upon a hilltop, you must be seen. As you will be seen, mind that you are worth seeing.

Mat 5:15. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.

Gods intent is, first, to light you; and, secondly, to put you in a conspicuous position, where men can see you.

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

Let the light of your purity and your good works be as bright as possible, yet let not the light be to your own praise and glory; but let it be clearly seen that your good works are the result of sovereign grace, for which all the glory must be given to your Father which is in heaven.

Mat 5:17-18. Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

See how the great Lord of the New Testament confirms the Old Testament. He has not come to set up a destructive criticism that will tear in pieces the Book of Deuteronomy, or cut out the very heart of the Psalms, or grind Ezekiel to powder between his own wheels; but Christ has come to establish yet more firmly than before all that was written aforetime, and to make it stand fast as the everlasting hills.

Mat 5:19. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

A true man may make mistakes, and so he may teach men to violate some one or other of the divine commandments. If he does so, he shall not perish, for he was honest in his blunder; but he shall be among the least in the kingdom of heaven. But he, who earnestly, perseveringly, and conscientiously teaches all that he knows of the divine will, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven

Mat 5:20. For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Christ does not teach a lower kind of morality than the Pharisees taught. They were very particular about little things, jots and tittles; but we must go further than they went; we must have more righteousness of life than they had, although they seemed to their fellow-men to be excessively precise. Christ aims at perfect purity in his people, and we must aim at it too, and we must really attain to more holiness than the best outward morals can produce.

Mat 5:21. Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment:

God had said, Thou shalt not kill; but the remainder of the verse was the gloss of the Rabbis, a true one, yet one that very much diminishes the force of the divine command.

Mat 5:22. But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment;

And a far higher judgment than that of men;

Mat 5:22. And whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca,

A word of very uncertain meaning, a kind of snubbing word, a word of contempt which men used to one another, meaning that there was nothing in them: Whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca,

Mat 5:22. Shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hellfire.

Christ will not have us treat men with anger, or with contempt, which is a very evil form of hate, akin to murder, because we as good as say, That man is nobody; that is, we make nothing of him, which is morally to kill him. We must not treat our fellow-men with contempt and derision, nor indulge any angry temper against them, for anger is of the devil, but love is of God.

Mat 5:23-24. Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.

Note that this injunction is addressed to the man who has offended against his brother; why is this? Because he is the least likely to try to make up the quarrel. It is the man who has been offended who usually exhibits the nobler spirit; but the offender is almost always the last to seek a reconciliation, and therefore the Saviour says to him, If thy brother hath ought against thee, it is but right that thou shoulder be the first to seek reconciliation with him. Leave thy gift, go away from the prayer-meeting, turn back from the Lords table, and go and first be reconciled to thy brother.

Mat 5:25. Agree with thine adversary quickly,

Always be ready to make peace, not peace at any price; but, still, peace at any price except the sacrifice of righteousness.

Mat 5:25-26. Whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.

And there are some debts of which we cannot pay the uttermost farthing; and there is a prison out of which no man shall come, for the uttermost farthing demanded there shall never be paid. God grant that we may none of us ever know what it is to be shut up in that dreadful dungeon!

Fuente: Spurgeon’s Verse Expositions of the Bible

Mat 5:13-14. , you) sc. the first disciples and hearers of the Messiah. Salt and light are, in nature, things essential, and of widest use. Frequently in Scripture the same thing is first declared by metaphorical expressions, that our attention may be excited: and then, when we have not understood it as we ought, and in the meanwhile have perceived our blindness, it is disclosed in plain words.- , of the earth).- , of the world) The earth of itself is without salt, the world without light.-, …, if, etc.) It is not affirmed in this passage, that salt does lose its savour; but it is shown what, in such a case, would be the lot of the Salt of the earth.-, should lose its savour) Galen,[178] in his observations on Hippocrates, explains (the perf. pass. part. of this verb) by , i.e., which have no feeling; in Mar 9:50, we find , become saltless. It is the nature of salt to have and to give savour; and to this savour are opposed saltlessness, want of taste, value lost.-, shall it be salted) Impersonal. Neither can the salt (see Mark, cited above) nor the earth be seasoned from any other source.-, out of doors) far from any household use.-, and) sc. and therefore.-, to be trodden under foot) There is nothing more despised than one who wishes to be esteemed divine, and is not so.[179]- , by men) i.e., by all who come in its way. This is the force here of the article .

[178] Hippocrates, the greatest physician of antiquity, was born at the island of Cos in the 80th Olympiad, and flourished during the time of the Peloponnesian War. Galen, second only to Hippocrates, was born at Pergamus, in the Lesser Asia, about the year 131.-See ENCYCLOPDIA BRITANNICA.-(I. B.)

[179] The mere man of the world is not so much disgraced by his vanity as is such a one.-Vers. Germ.

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

Mat 5:13-16

5. THE DISCIPLES COMPARED TO SALT AND LIGHT

Mat 5:13-16

13 Ye are the salt of the earth.-The citizens of this heavenly kingdom that Jesus preached was at hand are to become “the salt of the earth.” The citizens of this kingdom are described by the beatitudes, and they are to have a saving influence in the world. Faithful Christians are to the human race what salt is to food-the element which preserves it from corruption and gives savor and relish. How are Christians the salt of the earth? They are present as proof of the success of truth, and are monuments of what the principles of the kingdom will make one; they preserve the life of Christ in the earth; they are the means of spreading the truths of the gospel, and propagating the salvation of Jesus, by which the world is preserved. Salt was used in the Levitical sacrifices. (Lev 2:13.) Livy called Greece “the salt of the nations” as they were enlightened by the wisdom of Greece , so Christians are called by Jesus “the salt of the earth,” because they are to save the world.

But if the salt have lost its savor.-The salt of the ancient world was not purified as it now is; hence it retained all of the less soluble compounds of lime, iron, and other things which occur in all natural salt water; therefore it contained a large quantity of insoluble substance which remained flavorless after the real salt had been dissolved out of it; the eastern salt was generally somewhat dark and dirty. Jesus said if the salt (or mass of material) has lost its genuine salty quality, it is fit for nothing; it is not only good for nothing itself, but it actually destroys all fertility of soil where it is thrown , this is the reason it is cast into the street where it is “trodden under foot of men.” Salt which is pure cannot lose its savor, and is good for its proper uses. So, if the disciples of Jesus have lost their savor, they too are good for nothing but to be cast out. If Christians become untrue to their high calling and degenerate spiritually, they cannot have a good influence on the world.

14 Ye are the light of the world.-Salt operates internally, in the mass with which it comes in contact; the sunlight operates externally, irradiating all that it reaches; hence the disciples of Jesus are “the salt of the earth,” with reference to the masses of mankind with whom they are associated; but “the light of the world,” with reference to the vast and variegated surface which feels its structifying and gladdening radiance. Light is not only opposed to darkness, but it overcomes it; it dispels darkness; so the truth and holiness possessed by the disciples of Jesus, who is the true light, dispel the world’s darkness, by overcoming its ignorance and sin. The world lies in moral darkness; it is enveloped in spiritual chaos; the light of Christ is to shine through his disciples on the world. Such light cannot be hidden, any more than “a city set on a hill” not only is it not hidden, but it occupies a very prominent place. Possibly Jesus has in mind the comparison between the city on a hill and a group or church of his disciples; their influence cannot be ignored in the world. There is no greater light for God than the church that is filling its mission in a community.

15, 16 Neither do men light a lamp, and put it under the bushel.-The word “bushel” is from the Latin term “modius,” which was about equal to a peck; it was used for measuring grain and was a common article. The lamps then were of earthenware or of metal in the shape of a saucer, turned up on one side to hold the wick; olive oil was used to burn in them. The proper place for the lamp was “on the stand” and not “under the bushel.” It would be of no service to anyone if put “under the bushel.” “The stand” was the place for the lamp to diffuse the light and expel the darkness; if put under a bushel, the darkness is not expelled. The disciples of Jesus should not conceal the light of the knowledge of the gospel; neither should they attempt to live as a hermit; Jesus intended that his disciples live in human society and diffuse their light to those who are in spiritual darkness. A Christian cannot fill his mission by living alone. If the lamp is placed on the stand, which is its proper place, then “it shineth unto all that are in the house”; it becomes a blessing to all who may come under its influence; so the life that a Christian must live is the life of service to all whose life may be touched by his life.

Even so let your light shine before men.-Jesus draws his own conclusions and makes his own application. He says “let” your light shine before men, not shine your light before men. Christians should keep their light burning and should let nothing hide the light. The purpose of light is to dispel darkness; if a disciple of Jesus is not dispelling darkness somewhere, his light is under a bushel or has become extinguished. Christians should boldly uphold the truth that others may be blessed by the truth. The purpose of Christians letting their light shine is not for self-glorification, honor, or exaltation, but that other men “may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” Jesus gives a little different turn when he refers to their “good work,” yet it is by these “good works” that the Christian’s light shines before others. There should be no false display of piety or boasts of one’s goodness as a member of the church, but the “good works” or the life will proclaim the life of Christ. Others are to be brought to glorify God through the light that shines from Christians.

[Christians shine through their honest lives and upright deportment among men. Those who lack uprightness of character can do nothing to help forward the religion of Jesus Christ. He was holy, harmless, separated from sinners, and became higher than the heavens. Christians, in their anxiety to make money and get rich, go in debt, fail, and bring reproach on themselves and the cause of God. Lying and stealing are closely allied. They are different degrees of the same evil disposition. A lie is dishonesty in word. To steal is a lie developed into action. All lying, prevarication, falsehood, deception are condemned severely by God, and dim the light and life of a disciple of the Lord.]

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

Chapter 10

Lessons from Salt, Light, and the Law

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. Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.

(Mat 5:13-20)

Our Lord Jesus Christ was truly the Prince of preachers. He who is the subject of all true preaching is also the example all true preachers should follow. He wisely used common, ordinary, simple things, with which all his hearers were familiar, to illustrate and enforce the doctrine he taught. In the passage now before us he used salt, light, and the law to show us the characteristics of true Christianity. He shows us in these verses that the grace of God changes people from the inside out, making them both righteous before God and useful to one another. In these eight verses of Inspiration our Savior teaches us three very important lessons. May the Holy Spirit of God now seal them to our hearts.

True Christianity

First, our Savior here demonstrates the character of true Christianity (Mat 5:13-16). All that glitters is not gold. They are not all Israel which are of Israel. And not all who profess to be Christians truly are Christians. Christianity radically changes men and women. Grace gives men and women new motives and principles of life that set them apart from the rest of the world.

Believers are the salt of the earth. 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 (Mat 5:13).

Salt has a peculiar taste and quality. Nothing can really imitate it well. When mingled with other things, it imparts some of its taste and preserves other things from corruption. It is useful as long as it retains its savor, its saltiness. But once that is lost, it is useless. But how do these things apply to us?

There is clearly an application here to those who preach the gospel. The preaching of the gospel preserves society from total corruption. It preserves Gods saints from the corrupting influence of the world. And when a preacher departs from the preaching of the gospel, he is utterly useless. However, these words must not be restricted to gospel preachers.

Our Lords intention was that these words be applied by every believer to himself. C. H. Spurgeon was correctly noted, In the believers character there is a preserving force to keep the rest of society from utter corruptionThere is a secret something, which is the secret of the believers power. That something is savor. It is not easy to define it, but yet it is absolutely essential to usefulness.

This teaches us the necessity of perseverance. If the savor of Gods grace could be lost, it could never be restored (Heb 6:1-6). Thank God! Grace cannot fail to save a man; but if grace could fail to save a man, there would be no hope for any. You can salt meat. But no one can salt salt. If grace fails, everything fails! Thank God for grace that cannot fail, for salt that cannot lose its savor (2Co 12:9).

Believers are the light of the world. Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven (Mat 5:14-16).

It is the property of light to be utterly distinct from darkness. The least spark in a dark room can be seen at once. Of all things created, light is the most useful: it fertilizes; it guides; it cheers. It was the first thing called into being. (Gen 1:3). Without it, the world would be a gloomy blank. (J.C. Ryle)

Again, there is clearly a reference to those who preach the gospel of Christ (2Co 4:4-6). Christ himself is the Light of the world (Joh 1:4; Joh 8:12; Joh 9:5). The gospel of Christ is the means by which that Light shines in the world. It is our responsibility to give out the Light. Our object is that chosen sinners, being converted by the light of the gospel, may glorify God, our Father, by repentance and faith in Christ.

Still, these words must not be applied only to gospel preachers. You who trust Christ are the light of the world. The church of Christ is the light of the world. As the moon reflects the light of the sun, so those who trust him reflect the light of Christ, the Sun of Righteousness.

We are to dispel the darkness of ignorance, sin, and sorrow by proclaiming the glorious gospel of Christ (Mat 5:14). God intends for us to be conspicuous in our testimony regarding his grace and his Son (Mat 5:15). Yet, the light of the gospel shines forth, not in our words, but in our works (Mat 5:16). The works by which the light shines forth from Gods elect are not religious works of self-righteousness, or displays of religious devotion (Mat 6:2-3; Mat 6:5-6; Mat 6:16-18), but works of faith and love in the daily affairs of life. Christianity is not a show of religion, but a life of devotion to Christ.

True shining is silent, but yet it is so useful, that menare forced to bless God for the good which they receivewhen they mark the good works of his saints (C. H. Spurgeon). It ought to be our constant prayer and desire before God that he would give us grace to be useful to others, to improve the lives of those whose paths we cross, to make them happier and better for having come into contact with us.

The emblems our Lord used here of salt and light are instructive. Christ is the salt of the covenant (Lev 2:13; Num 18:19; Mar 9:49). Our Savior, as we have already observed, is the light of the world. It is because Christ is in his redeemed (Col 1:27), and only because Christ is in us that believers are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Were it not for the fact that Christs seed are in the earth, the whole world would be in a state of putrefaction and utter darkness (Php 2:15).

Scripture Unity

Second, in Mat 5:17-19 our Lord shows us the unity of the Old Testament and the New Testament. Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

This is a point of great importance. The Bible is one Book, not two. The religion of the Old Testament and the religion of the New Testament are the same. Totally disregard as false any religious teacher or any doctrinal system that would teach you to despise, disregard, or ignore any part of Holy Scripture, suggesting that it applies only to people of another age. The Book of God was written for you and me (Rom 15:4). Be sure you grasp and firmly hold to the unity of Gods Holy Word.

The Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled all the types and requirements of the law and all the promises and predictions of the prophets. He fulfilled all the Old Testament prophecies, all the types of the ceremonial law, and all the requirements of the moral law as our Mediator (Mat 2:6; Luk 4:16-22; Act 4:27-28; Luk 24:25-27; Luk 24:44-47; Rom 10:4). In all things he magnified the law of God and made it honorable by his obedience and death as our Substitute (Isa 42:21). Nothing can be more blessedly comforting than beholding the Son of God by faith as our law-surety, and our law-fulfiller. As such he is the Lord our Righteousness, and is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.

Let me be perfectly clear. Gods people do not, in any way, despise or disregard his holy law. We rejoice in the fact that in Christ we are free from the law. The Scriptures plainly declare that believers are not under the law (Rom 6:14-15; Rom 7:1; Rom 7:9; Rom 10:4). We have no curse from the law (Gal 3:13), no covenant with the law (Heb 8:10-12), and no constraint by the law (2Co 5:14).

Yet, every believer loves and delights in Gods holy law (Rom 7:22). The law is Gods measure, the only measure of right and wrong (Rom 7:7). The law shows men their sin and their need of Christ as their Redeemer and Savior (Rom 3:19-20; Gal 3:19-22). And the law restrains wicked men from the wickedness that is in them (1Ti 1:8-9).

Let no one imagine that the gospel lowers either the law of God or the holiness of his saints. Nothing can be further from the truth. The only person who truly fulfils and honors the law is the sinner who is saved by grace, through faith, without the law (Rom 3:31). And the constraint of grace in the heart is far more powerful than the constraints of the law written in stone (Rom 12:1-2; 1Co 6:19-20; 2Co 8:9).

Our Substitute

Third, in Mat 5:19-20 our Savior demonstrates to all the necessity of an infinitely meritorious substitute. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. Robert Hawker, in his commentary on these two verses, wrote

These are very strong expressions of Christ, in proof that nothing short of a whole and complete obedience to the law, can justify a soul before God. And hence the presumption of the Scribes and Pharisees. Oh! the folly of the Pharisees of the present hour! Oh! the blessedness of being found, as Paul was (Php 3:8-9), in Christs righteousness!

The scribes and Pharisees were, in their day, the most highly respected and admired religious leaders in the world. Everyone stood in awe of them. But our Lord Jesus said to his disciples, Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Those words must have been astounding to the people who first heard them. The scribes were the religious scholars of the day. They were the men who copied and expounded the Scriptures. They gave their lives entirely to this one great work for God and his people. They consecrated themselves to this one noble work.

The Pharisees were the strictest sect of the Jews. No one exceeded the Pharisee in outward morality, obedience to the law, saying of prayers, tithing, sabbath keeping, Scripture memory, personal righteousness, and public approval. Yet, our Lord declares, Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you cannot be saved!

Is the Son of God here telling us that we must do more and be better than the scribes and Pharisees? Is he saying that we must gain a greater measure of personal holiness than those men had? Not at all. In fact, he is saying just the opposite.

The Master is telling us that it is utterly impossible for any man to gain favor with God on the basis of his own, personal righteousness. There never has been a child of Adam upon this earth good enough, righteous enough, holy enough to inherit or inhabit the kingdom of heaven, and there never shall be.

You and I must get every thought of personal righteousness out of our minds, and the very word good out of our vocabulary, when we think or speak of any human being in God s sight! We have no righteousness of our own before God, and no ability to produce righteousness. Indeed, all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags (Isa 64:6) before the holy Lord God.

If we would be saved, we must have the righteousness of God in Christ imputed and imparted to us. It is this righteousness that exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees! Do what you may, without the righteousness of God in Christ, you cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. And the only way anyone can get that righteousness is by faith in Christ. Only God can give us the righteousness of God. Let me show you five things from the Word of God about this matter of righteousness.

1.God demands perfect righteousness (Lev 22:21). He says, Walk before me and be thou perfect (Gen 17:1). He will accept nothing less. Without perfect righteousness no one can ever enter into heaven (Rev 21:27; Rev 22:11-14).

2.You and I have no righteousness and no ability to produce righteousness. We used to be righteous; but we lost it in Adams fall. We cannot do righteousness (Rom 3:9-19). Even our imaginary righteousness is sin (Isa 64:6).

3.The Lord Jesus Christ, by his obedience to God as our Representative and by his sacrificial death as our Substitute, has established and brought in everlasting righteousness for Gods elect (Jer 23:6; Dan 9:24). In his obedience to God as our Representative he lived the life we could not live. In his sin-atoning death as our Substitute he paid the debt we could not pay, making full satisfaction to divine justice for us. In order to enter that perfect kingdom we must be made perfectly righteous by the righteousness of Christ (Rom 5:19; 2Co 5:21). It is Christ himself who is that Holiness we must have, without which no one shall ever see God and live (Heb 12:14).

4.The righteousness of Christ is imputed to Gods elect in justification (Rom 4:3-8). Our sin was imputed to Christ at Calvary. Though he never committed sin, he was made to be sin, and became responsible under the law for our sins as our Substitute. In exactly the same way the righteousness of Christ has been imputed to all who trust the Lord Jesus Christ, though we never have performed a righteous deed. Just as the law punished Christ for our sin, which was legally imputed to him, the law of God rewards every believer for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us.

5.The righteousness of Christ is imparted to redeemed sinners in regeneration (2Pe 1:2-4; 1Jn 3:4-9). If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new (2Co 5:17). If I am born again by the Spirit of God, I have a new nature created in my soul; a righteous nature is imparted to me, by which I reign as a king over the lusts and passions of my flesh. Yes, Gods people do sin. Sin is mixed with all we do so long as we live in this body of flesh. But sin no longer reigns over us. We are no longer under the dominion of sin (Rom 6:14-16; Gal 5:22-23). The believers life is a life of faith, godliness, and uprightness.

The Amen

In Mat 5:18 our Lord Jesus uses the word amen, here translated verily, for the first time. Our Masters use of this word is very significant. This is one of his precious names, by which he distinguishes himself as the Christ, our God-man Mediator (Rev 3:14). Using it as he did throughout his earthly ministry, the Lord Jesus puts his name to that which he declares (Isa 65:16). He is declaring that the thing stated is certain, sure, and true, as certain, sure, and true as him who is the Amen, the Faithful and True Witness, the beginning of the creation of God.

Our Lord frequently began his discourses with this word and often repeated it Verily, verily, I say unto you. Yet, no one else in the Scriptures ever used this word as he did, introducing a statement with it, as if to give what he was about to say his own divine oath, attaching his honor as our God-man Mediator to the certainty of what he was about to declare. All the promises of God are yea and amen in Christ Jesus (2Co 1:20.) Strictly and properly speaking, they are his promises, for he is himself the one great promise of the Bible. Therefore, it is written of Gods elect in Isa 65:16, That he who blesseth himself in the earth shall bless himself in the God of truth. That is to say, in the Amen.

Whenever we use this sacred name by which our Savior identifies himself, in public worship and in private, let us remember our blessed Savior with faith, love, adoration, and gratitude. No one should say Amen in the church ignorantly (1Co 14:16).

Fuente: Discovering Christ In Selected Books of the Bible

The Salt of the Earth

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

The exact position of these words in the Sermon on the Mount must be carefully remembered. They follow immediately after the Beatitudesthose sayings in which Christ had described the various qualities of character essential to the citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven, that is, for one who would obey the rule which He had come on earth to establish and extend. A citizen of that Kingdom, Christ had just taught His hearers, must be humble-minded: he must grieve over the sin and the various evils which exist in the world; he must be gentle; he must desire righteousness above all things; he must be merciful; he must be pure-minded in the fullest sense of the words; he must do all in his power to promote peace; and he must be prepared to suffer in order that righteousness may be promoted and extended. A character which fulfils these conditions, that is, a character of which these virtues are the factors, is the character desired by Christ, and such a character is His own.

Immediately after this description has been given, as soon as ever this ideal has been set us as the standard, Christ addresses the words of the text to those who were following Him and learning from Him. To them He looked to cultivate this character. And for a moment He thinks of them, not as they actually were, but as He would have them be. For a moment He treats them as if His ideal for them were already realized in them; He does not say ye shall be, but ye are the salt of the earth. The spirit of all the united qualities commended in the Beatitudes is the salt of the life of the world. All of themmeekness and humility and purity and the restrun up into two: the spirit of love and the spirit of righteousness. These, then, embodied in human life, are the salt of the earth, the salt of Churches and nations, of all forms of human activity, of thought, of imagination, of business, of the daily life of men. These keep humanity fresh and living, preserve it from corruption, and add to it the savour which secures to men their true and enduring enjoyment of life. But chiefly, in Christs present idea, they were the freshening, purifying, preserving element in His Kingdom.

I

The Salt and its Savour

Ye are the salt of the earth.

1. Salt is one of those superfluities which the great French wit defined as things that are very necessary. From the very beginning of human history men have set a high value upon it and sought for it in caves and by the seashore. The nation that had a good supply of it was counted rich. A bag of salt, among the barbarous tribes, was worth more than a man. The Jews prized it especially because they lived in a warm climate where food was difficult to keep, and because their religion laid particular emphasis on cleanliness, and because salt was largely used in their sacrifices.

Both in Hebrew and in Roman bywords, salt is praised as a necessity of human life. Homer calls it divine, and Plato speaks of it as a substance dear to the gods. It is an indispensable element in the food both of men and of animals. It is so cheap and plentiful with us that we can hardly realize that there are places where there is what is known as salt starvation, which is in its way even more painful than hunger or thirst. A missionary tells us that in Africa he has known natives who have travelled fifty or sixty miles in search of salt. Their hot African blood, lacking the purifying and health-giving salt, has broken out in painful ulcers which drain the life and energy; and when the mission-house has been reached they have begged in piteous tones, not for money or bread, but for salt.1 [Note: J. G. Mantle, Gods To-Morrow, 22.]

Chloride of sodium (common salt) is fortunately one of the most widely distributed, as well as one of the most useful and absolutely necessary, of natures gifts; and it is a matter of much comfort to know that this mineral exists in such enormous quantities that it can never be exhausted. Had not, says Dr. Buckland, the beneficent providence of the Creator laid up these stores of salt within the bowels of the earth, the distance of inland countries from the sea would have rendered this article of prime and daily necessity unattainable to a large proportion of mankind; but under the existing dispensation, the presence of mineral salt, in strata which are dispersed generally over the interior of our continents and larger islands, is a source of health and daily enjoyment to the inhabitants of almost every region. Even supposing that the whole of the mines, brine pits, and springs become exhausted, we can fall back on the sea, whose supply is as boundless as its restless self; and there is as little fear of its exhaustion as there is of the failure of the suns heat.1 [Note: W. Coles-Finch, Water: its Origin and Use, 167.]

2. From one point of view it was an immense compliment for the disciples to be spoken of as salt. Their Master showed great confidence in them. He set a high value upon them. The historian Livy could find nothing better to express his admiration for the people of ancient Greece than this very phrase. He called them sal gentium, the salt of the nations. But our Lord was not simply paying compliments. He was giving a clear and powerful call to duty. His thought was not that His disciples should congratulate themselves on being better than any other men. He wished them to ask themselves whether they actually had in them the purpose and the power to make other men better. Did they intend to exercise a purifying, seasoning, saving influence in the world? Salt exists solely to purify, not itself, but that which needs its services. The usefulness of the Church as a separated society lies wholly in the very world from which it has been so carefully separated. It exists to redeem that world from itself. Out of love for that world it is sent by the same impulse of the Father as sent to it His only-begotten Son; and the damning error of the Pharisee is that he arrests this Divine intention in mid career, arrests it at the point where it has reached him, arrests it for his own honour and his own benefit, refusing to let it pass through him to its work on others.

(1) Salt is most largely used as an antiseptic, for allaying corruption, and for stopping the effects of climate upon animal matter; it is a preservative of sweetness and purity in that with which it is associated. So the presence of Christs Church in the world, of a Christian man or woman in the smaller world of his or her own circle in society, is to be preservative: to allay corruption, to maintain life, to ward off decay and death, to uphold a standard of right, without which the world would be a far worse place than it is.

YeChristians, ye that are lowly, serious, and meek; ye that hunger after righteousness, that love God and man, that do good to all, and therefore suffer evilye are the salt of the earth. It is your very nature to season whatever is round about you. It is the nature of the Divine savour which is in you to spread to whatsoever you touch; to diffuse itself, on every side, to all those among whom you are. This is the great reason why the providence of God has so mingled you together with other men, that whatever grace you have received of God may through you be communicated to others; that every holy temper and word and work of yours may have an influence on them also. By this means a check will, in some measure, be given to the corruption which is in the world; and a small part, at least, saved from the general infection, and rendered holy and pure before God.1 [Note: John Wesley.]

(2) To put our Lords comparison in its full relief, however, we must add the sacrificial use of salt in Hebrew worship as well as in the rites of heathen antiquity. No offering of cakes or vegetable produce was laid on Jehovahs altar saltless; perhaps this seasoning was added even to animal sacrifices; certainly it entered into the composition of the sacred incense. With all this in their minds, Jesus audience could understand Him to mean no less than this, that His disciples were to act on society (Jewish society, of course, in the first place) as a moral preservative, keeping it from total decay, and fitting it to be an oblation, not distasteful, but acceptable, to Jehovah. The thought was far from a new one to the Hebrew mind. Remembering how the world before the flood perished because all flesh had corrupted his way, except one salt particle too minute to preserve the mass; how ten men like Lot would have saved the cities of the lower Jordan; how it marked the extreme ripeness to destruction of the Israel of Ezekiels day, that even these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, had they been in it, could have delivered neither son nor daughter; no Jew could miss the point of our Lords words to His Twelve around Him, Ye are the salt of the land. When He spoke, the corruption of His nation was extreme, as His own sermons show us; and effete Judaism was fast ripening for its fall.

(3) Salt gives relish to what would otherwise be tasteless or unpleasant; and Christs people are, if we may so speak, the relishing element in the world, which prevents it from being loathsome altogether to the Lord. So Lot was in the cities of the plain the one savour which made them even so long endurable. There was not much salt in Lot; but there was a little, there was a righteous soul that at least vexed itself because of the unrighteousness around it, if it did not do very much to arrest that unrighteousness. And because of Lot, God almost spared the place, would have spared it had there been only a few more like him, or had he been just a little truer than he was. Even so Christians are to be as salt to the earth, which, without them, would be in a manner loathsome, being so possessed with mean and base and ignoble souls.

A king asked his three daughters how much they loved him. Two of them replied that they loved him better than all the gold and silver in the world. The youngest one said she loved him better than salt. The king was not pleased with her answer, as he thought salt was not very palatable. But the cook, overhearing the remark, put no salt in anything for breakfast next morning, and the meal was so insipid that the king could not enjoy it. He then saw the force of his daughters remark. She loved him so well that nothing was good without him.1 [Note: A. C. Dixon, Through Night to Morning, 197.]

(4) Salt does its work silently, inconspicuously, gradually. Ye are the light of the world, says Christ in the next verse. Light is far-reaching and brilliant, flashing that it may be seen. That is one side of Christian work, the side that most of us like best, the conspicuous kind of it. But there is a very much humbler, and a very much more useful, kind of work that we have all to do. We shall never be the light of the world, except on condition of being the salt of the earth. We have to play the humble, inconspicuous, silent part of checking corruption by a pure example before we can aspire to play the other part of raying out light into the darkness, and so drawing men to Christ Himself.

I was once travelling in an Oriental country, where life was squalid, women despised, and houses built of mud; and of a sudden, I came upon a village where all seemed changed. The houses had gardens before them and curtains in their windows; the children did not beg of the passer-by, but called out a friendly greeting. What had happened? I was fifty miles from a Christian mission-station, and this mission had been there for precisely fifty years. Slowly and patiently the influence had radiated at the rate of a mile a year, so that one could now for a space of fifty miles across that barren land perceive the salt of the Christian spirit, and could see the light of the Christian life shining as from a lighthouse fifty miles away. That was the work to which Jesus summoned the world,not an ostentatious or revolutionary or dramatic work, but the work of the salt and of the light. The saying of Jesus is not for the self-satisfied or conspicuous, but for the discouraged and obscure. A man says to himself: I cannot be a leader, a hero, or a scholar, but I can at least do the work of the salt and keep the life that is near to me from spoiling; I can at least do the work of the light so that the way of life shall not be wholly dark. Then, as he gives himself to this self-effacing service, he hears the great word: He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it, and answers gladly: So then death worketh in us, but life in you.1 [Note: F. G. Peabody, Mornings in the College Chapel, ii. 53.]

II

The Salt without the Savour.

If the salt have lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted?

1. Salt may lose its seasoning power. In Christs era salt frequently reached the consumer in a very imperfect state, being largely mixed with earth. The salt which has lost its savour is simply the earthy residuum of such impure salt after the sodium chloride has been washed out. Blocks of salt were quarried on the shores of the Dead Sea and brought to Jerusalem, and a store of this rock-salt was kept by the Levites in the Temple to be used in the sacrifices. It was very impureusually containing a large mixture of sandand in moist weather the saline ingredient deliquesced and, trickling away, left the porous lump in its original shape, but all its substance, all its savour gone. For food it was no longer fit seasoning. Cast on the altar it would no longer decrepitate and sparkle, and in flowers of flaming violet adorn and consume the offering. Even the farmer did not care to get it. The gritty, gravelly mass was good for nothingonly fit to be pounded and sprinkled on the slippery pavement, and trodden under the feet of men.

I have often seen just such salt, and the identical disposition of it that our Lord has mentioned. A merchant of Sidon having farmed of the Government the revenue from the importation of salt, brought over an immense quantity from the marshes of Cyprusenough, in fact, to supply the whole province for at least twenty years. This he had transferred to the mountains, to cheat the Government out of some small percentage. Sixty-five houses in JneLady Stanhopes villagewere rented and filled with salt. These houses have merely earthen floors, and the salt next the ground in a few years entirely spoiled. I saw large quantities of it literally thrown into the street, to be trodden under foot of men and beasts. It was good for nothing. Similar magazines are common in Palestine, and have been from remote ages; and the sweeping out of the spoiled salt and casting it into the street are actions familiar to all men. Maundrell, who visited the lake at Jebbl, tells us that he found salt there which had entirely lost its savour, and the same abounds among the debris at Usdum, and in other localities of rock-salt at the south end of the Dead Sea. Indeed, it is a well-known fact that the salt of this country, when in contact with the ground, or exposed to rain and sun, does become insipid, and useless. From the manner in which it is gathered, much earth and other impurities are necessarily collected with it. Not a little of it is so impure that it cannot be used at all; and such salt soon effloresces and turns to dustnot to fruitful soil, however. It is not only good for nothing itself, but it actually destroys all fertility wherever it is thrown; and this is the reason why it is cast into the street. There is a sort of verbal verisimilitude in the manner in which our Lord alludes to the actit is cast out and trodden under foot; so troublesome is this corrupted salt, that it is carefully swept up, carried forth, and thrown into the street. There is no place about the house, yard, or garden where it can be tolerated. No man will allow it to be thrown on to his field, and the only place for it is the street; and there it is cast, to be trodden under foot of men.1 [Note: W. M. Thomson, The Land and the Book, chap. xxvi.]

2. What is a saltless Christian? A saltless Christian is one who has gone back to the earthly, the worldly, the carnal. The heavenly element is no longer in the ascendant; the salt has lost its savour.

(1) One sign of deterioration is to be found in a lowered and attenuated ideal. Christ has little by little become almost a personal stranger. We do not seek His company, watch His eye, listen for His voice. The thought of Him does not send a thrill of joy into the heart. We have not renounced Him or consciously taken another Lord in His place. But we have lagged so far behind in the journey that He is quite out of our sight and reach. We can no more honestly say, as once we could say with a kind of rapture, He is chief among ten thousand, and altogether lovely. It is the inevitable result from this changed relationship to Christ that the cross has dropped from our back (we did not feel it drop, nor do we miss it now that it is gone); there is nothing in our lives, or activities, or general profession, that is irksome or troublesome, compelling sacrifice, and earning joy. The world is apparently neither worse nor better for us. Really it is worse. The candlestick is still in its place, the candle is still feebly burning, but in a moment it may go out, and then where shall we be?

If you take a red-hot ball out of a furnace and lay it down upon a frosty moor, two processes will go onthe ball will lose heat and the surrounding atmosphere will gain it. There are two ways by which you equalize the temperature of a hotter and a colder body; the one is by the hot one getting cold, and the other is by the cold one getting hot. If you are not heating the world, the world is freezing you. Every man influences all men round him, and receives influences from them; and if there be not more exports than imports, if there be not more influences and mightier influences raying out from him than are coming into him, he is a poor creature, and at the mercy of circumstances. Men must either be hammers or anvil;must either give blows or receive them. I am afraid that a great many of us who call ourselves Christians get a great deal more harm from the world than we ever dream of doing good to it. Remember this, you are the salt of the earth, and if you do not salt the world, the world will rot you.1 [Note: A. Maclaren.]

(2) Another sign of deterioration is a growing indifference to all great enterprise for Christ. Few things are more exhilarating, more invigorating, more uplifting, more solemnizing, than a mighty gathering of Christian people, met, let us say, for a great missionary anniversary, to hear the glad tidings of the progress of the Redeemers kingdom, and to return to their homes, stirred, joyful, thankful. The man whose heart is cold to all this, sceptical about it, indifferent to it, and who yet looks back on days when every word spoken, every blow struck, every triumph won for Jesus, was a joy which few things else equalled, has good reason for asking himself what has happened to him to make the growth of the Kingdom of Christ so small and dull and unattractive and commonplace a thing. The change is assuredly not in the purpose of Jesus, or in the value of the soul, or in the duty of the Church, which is His Body.

If, as can be reasonably argued, the historian may trace an increasing deterioration in the moral worth of Alexander Borgia from the period when the influence of Cesare at the Vatican replaced that of Juan, the fact has its obvious explanation. Rodrigo Borgia was a man of extraordinary vitality, with unusual reserves of power for his years. His energies had found their chief outlet in keen interest in the functions of his office as he understood them. His sensual indulgences, however disreputable, were never the first preoccupation of his nature; they were rather the surplusage of a virile temperament to which such interests as art, letters, or building made no serious appeal. In any position but that of the Vicar of Christ his excesses would have passed unremarked. If they weakened, as they undoubtedly did, his spiritual authority, they had hitherto scarcely detracted from the respect due to his political capacity. But in proportion as he surrendered his initiative in affairs and shared the control of policy, of finance, and of ecclesiastical administration with Cesare, the less worthy elements of his nature asserted themselves more forcibly. It was inevitable that in such a man abdication of responsibility should have this result, till in the end Alexander became a thoroughly evil man; evil, in that under guise of natural affection, in reality through cowardice, he allowed his authority, both spiritual and political, to be shamelessly exploited. Thus knowingly and without resistance Rodrigo Borgia steadily yielded to the worst impulses of his nature.1 [Note: W. H. Woodward, Cesare Borgia, 136.]

3. When the salt has lost its savour it is good for nothing. There are some things, the chemist tells us, which, when they have lost their own peculiar form and utility, are still of some good, for they can be put to other and baser uses. But to what use can a dead Church be put? You may try to galvanize it into newness of life by artificial means, but, after all, it is nothing more than a corpse. All that can be truly said of such an attempt is that it was an interesting experiment. A mere profession of religion is either an embarrassment or, what is worse, a fatal delusion. This old world of ours has undergone many material changes during its existence, yet it has grown more and more beautiful, in spite of them, as the forces of evolution have unfolded themselves. But there is one change it could hardly survive as the habitation of man, and that is the lost consciousness of the presence and power of God with the people, or the loss of the sweetness and beauty of the Redeemer of men as revealed in the lives of those faithful souls who sincerely love Him. For the Church which has lost its savour there will come a day when men, overwhelmed by their disappointment, and maddened by their sense of its lost savour, will tear it to pieces, just as the enraged mob in Paris is said to have torn the fillet from Reasons brow and trampled it under their feet.

If the salt should lose its savour, if the regenerative force should die out of the Churchif there were a Church into which the spirit of the world had passed, a Church which had become assimilated by the world, a Church which had somehow learnt to speak the worlds language and to justify the worlds morality, and to echo the worlds phrases, a Church which are and drank at the worlds table without the world becoming aware of any protest, or any discomfort, or any fear, a Church which, instead of awakening consciences, sent them to sleep, instead of exposing the worlds plagues flattered them into excusing or forgetting them: in the name of God what use, or place, has such a Church on the face of the earth? Such a Church has falsified the first law of its existence. It has killed out the very conscience which it was created to sustain. It has destroyed the very power of remedy from sin which it alone held in charge. It has poisoned the wells of human hope. If the very salt have lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men.

The really amazing thing is that such immense numbers of people have accepted Christianity in the world, and profess themselves Christians without the slightest doubt of their sincerity, who never regard the Christian principles at all. The chief aim, it would seem, of the Church has been not to preserve the original revelation, but to accommodate it to human instincts and desires. It seems to me to resemble the very quaint and simple old Breton legend, which relates how the Saviour sent the Apostles out to sell stale fish as fresh; and when they returned unsuccessful, He was angry with them, and said, How shall I make you into fishers of men, if you cannot even persuade simple people to buy stale fish for fresh? That is a very trenchant little allegory of ecclesiastical methods! And perhaps it is even so that it has come to pass that Christianity is in a sense a failure, or rather an unfulfilled hope, because it has made terms with the world, has become pompous and respectable and mundane and influential and combative, and has deliberately exalted civic duty above love.1 [Note: A. C. Benson, Joyous Gard, 197.]

Glanced over some lectures of Mr. Gores on The Mission of the Church. He tells a story of St. Thomas Aquinas which is new to me. The Pope said to him, as the bags full of the money of the faithful, who had crowded to the Jubilee, were carried past: Peter could not say now, Silver and gold have I none. No, was the reply, neither could he say, Arise, and walk! 2 [Note: Sir M. E. Grant Duff, Notes from a Diary, 18921895, i. 138.]

The Salt of the Earth

Literature

Austin (A. B.), Linked Lives, 221.

Brooke (S. A.), Short Sermons, 22.

Chadwick (W. E.), Christ and Everyday Life, 134.

Church (R. W.), Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford, 110.

Cope (F. L.), A North Country Preacher, 161.

Dixon (A. C.), Through Night to Morning, 194.

Dyke (H. van), The Open Door, 63.

Frst (A.), Christ the Way, 31.

Gough (E. J.), The Religion of the Son of Man, 57.

Hamer (D. J.), Salt and Light, 3.

Hamilton (J.), Works, vi. 212.

King (T. S.), Christianity and Humanity, 267.

Lyttelton (E.), The Sermon on the Mount, 113.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions: St. Matthew i.viii., 178.

Mantle (J. G.), Gods To-Morrow, 19.

Meyer (F. B.), The Directory of the Devout Life, 33.

Miller (J.), Sermons Literary and Scientific, ii. 369.

Peabody (F. G.), Mornings in the College Chapel, ii. 52.

Smith (N.), Members One of Another, 153.

Smith (W. C.), The Sermon on the Mount, 37.

Symonds (A. R.), Fifty Sermons, 352.

Tait (A.), The Charter of Christianity, 97.

Thorold (A. W.), Questions of Faith and Duty, 179.

Trench (R. C.), Westminster and Other Sermons, 281.

Whately (R.), Sermons, 251.

Christian World Pulpit, xl. 360 (A. Melville); lviii. 183 (H. S. Holland); lxx. 49 (A. Clayton); lxxvi. 75 (W. Glover); lxxxii. 282 (N. Marshall).

Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible

the salt: Lev 2:13, Col 4:6

if: Mar 9:49, Mar 9:50, Luk 14:34, Luk 14:35, Heb 6:4-6, 2Pe 2:20, 2Pe 2:21

Reciprocal: 2Ki 9:33 – and he trode Ecc 10:1 – a little Jer 6:30 – Reprobate silver Jer 24:2 – naughty Eze 15:3 – General Eze 16:6 – polluted Eze 43:24 – cast salt Mat 25:30 – cast Luk 8:5 – it Act 8:1 – and they Rev 11:2 – tread

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

THE CHRISTIAN IN SOCIETY

Ye are the salt of the earth.

Mat 5:13

Our present topic is the Christian in society. The words of the text were spoken to those whose social surroundings were far less favourable than ours. We may indeed be thankful that for us the world around us is not so vile a world as it was then.

I. The Christians mission.The Christian has a definite mission for society. He is to become its salt, to preserve it from corruption. Whether men will hear or whether they will forbear is a question outside our account. Our responsibility ceases with the witness-bearing. But let us be persuaded of this, that the influence of a thoroughly consistent holy soul upon others around it cannot be measured.

II. Attitude to amusements.As one who has pledged himself to a high and sacred cause, you will bring to the debatable ground of amusements a sensitive, and at the same time an enlightened consciencea strong sense of the fitting, and a wholesome dread of causing avoidable offence to fellow-believers. You will feel that a brothers or a sisters moral and religious well-being, committed in a measure to you as their keeper, is too precious a trust to be jeopardised for the sake of some paltry, transitory gratification. You will decline to take the low ground of the worldling revealed in the common question, Where is the harm? It is just on this territory that the lines of demarcation run between the Church and the world, and the interests of religion can hardly be served by our making these lines as faint as possible.

III. In, but not of, the world.It is possible that some here, dependent entirely on the wishes and the direction of others, have been caught in the vortex of what is generally accepted as fashionable life. It may not be easy for you to be in the world and yet not to be of it. But your heart and its issues are at least your own. Your real self lies at your own disposal. That is free. If in Gods Providence you are placed in a position of peculiar temptation, in circumstances exceptionally unfavourable for the growth of personal piety, be assured that you may claim special grace to keep you steadfast.

Bishop Alfred Pearson.

Illustrations

(1) Silence often checks evil as effectually as a spoken reproof. We know of one who, when at school, would rise and leave the room if a profane or impure word escaped the lips of any of his schoolfellows. As he was captain of his school eleven, this firmness did much. Another we well know whose personal influence at Oxford was so strong, that his presence in his college boat was sufficient to check all unhallowed speech.

(2) The Christian is neither a Stoic, nor a Cynic; yet he finds daily cause for watchfulness and restraint. A believer will not often be tempted to gross crimes. Our greatest snares are usually found in things lawful in themselves, but hurtful to us through their abuse, engrossing too much of our time, or of our hearts, or somehow indisposing us for communion with God.

Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary

5:13

The teaching of Jesus contains many illustrations drawn from nature and the customs of mankind. Salt has two outstanding qualities; preservation of articles with which it comes in contact, and rendering food more agreeable to the taste. The lives of true disciples will shed the truth among men by example and teaching, and thus contribute to the salvation of their souls. And next, the trials or hardships of this life will be easier to bear, will “taste better” for having the salt of divine truth mixed with them. But if the salt losses its savour (“to make flat and tasteless”) it will not be of any use either as a preservative or palliative. The first it is a pronoun for the earth which cannot be salted if it (the salt) has lost strength. Such salt is fit for nothing but to be trodden upon as the soil of the ground. Likewise. if the disciples of Christ cease to be an influence for good–cease to practice the principles taught by their Master, they will finally be rejected and trodden upon by the Judge.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

Mat 5:13. Ye, i.e., the disciples, though not yet forming a distinct organization. The influence here spoken of depends not upon external organizations, but upon the power of Christ in the individual believers.

The salt of the earth. Salt preserves, Christs disciples preserve the world from utter corruption.Salt seasons food and prevents insipidity; Christians are to give a spiritual seasoning to what is made stale, flat, and unprofitable by earthly minds; comp. Col 4:6. The first thought is the prominent one. The earth refers to society as it exists.

But. A warning against pride.

If the salt have lost its savour. A mere supposition,yet salt in the East does lose its saltness by exposure, or foreign admixture rendering it impure, and is then good for nothing, except to destroy fertility. Dr. Thomson (The Land And The Book, vol. ii., pp. 43, 44) mentions an instance coming under his own observation. Pure salt cannot lose its savor. The doctrinal bearings of the figure need not be pressed.

Of men. No special emphasis seems to rest upon this phrase. The early date of the sermon forbids an exclusive reference of the verse to excommunication or deposition from the ministerial office.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

THE CODE OF THE KINGDOM

The King has announced His kingdom at hand, and now declares the laws or code of that Kingdom. These which we began to speak of in the last lesson, have a two-fold application, ultimately to the Kingdom when it shall be set up, and approximately and in an accommodated sense to the Christian at present. Except at the first of these is kept in mind, confusion and uncertainty must attend the interpretation.

We have two figurative descriptions of disciples, Salt and Light (Mat 5:13-16). Salt is a preservative, and true Christian disciples counteract worldly corruption. They are the light of the world whose conduct is to reflect the Savior. These two descriptions are a text for what follows, which shows how the disciple is to preserve the world and shine in it.

We have a statement of Christs relation to the law, (Mat 5:17-20). His mission was not to set aside the Old Testament, but to fill it out, in that He obeyed the law perfectly, and fulfilled in Himself all the prophets had spoken of the Coming One. He also completely revealed the meaning of the Old Testament, which involves the warning of Mat 5:19, made necessary by what He says in Mat 5:20.

We have a comparison between righteousness outward and inward (Mat 5:21-48). The righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees was outward and ceremonial, that of the Kingdom of God on earth must go deeper. The spirit of murder is anger (Mat 5:21-22, compared with 1Jn 3:15). Raca (a word of contempt) uttered against a brother will involve a condemnation by the Sanhedrim, and thou fool shall subject the guilty one to hell fire when the Kingdom is on earth. In the meantime these penalties show us Gods estimate of sin now and always, and intensify our thanksgiving for the salvation we have in Christ.

As anger is the spirit of murder, so a lustful look is adultery (Mat 5:27-30). It were better to be blind than be guilty of it. The Greek word for hell is Gehenna, the place in the valley of Hinnom where human sacrifices were formerly offered and which is used in Scripture as identical with the lake of fire. Divorce is linked with adultery, and becomes adultery under the circumstances indicated (Mat 5:31-32). The command against swearing (Mat 5:33-37) does not forbid legal oaths, but profanity, which includes expletives common in everyday speech. Retaliation (Mat 5:38-42) is personal, not judicial nor governmental. If the cause were that of another we have no right to do some of the things here commanded, or permit others to do them, but they are clearly within ones own rights. This is how men will act in the Kingdom, and how they ought to act now. And the absence of such a spirit shows how far we are from God, and what it is to be lost. What would become of us, without a Savior! This leads to the law of love (Mat 5:43-47) which is as far from human hearts in their natural state as the foregoing. Our example is God (Mat 5:48), but who has attained to it? And if not, how can we see His face, except as He has in grace made provision for us in His Son?

Following these laws on our relation to others, we have those touching the religious life, i.e., our relations to God almsgiving (Mat 6:1-4), worship (Mat 6:5-15), fasting (Mat 6:16-18), all of which must be done as in the presence of the Father. The Lords Prayer will be dealt with in Luke.

Next are laws relating more particularly to ones self trust (Mat 6:19-34), self-judgment (Mat 7:1-6), prayer (Mat 7:7-12), false teachers (Mat 7:13-20), future reward (Mat 7:21-23). Under the head of trust, note (Mat 7:22-24), that the eye cannot look to earth and to heaven at the same time; and (Matt. 7:34), that lack of trust is always pessimistic of the future. Under self-judgment, we are not denied privilege, or liberated from the duty, of passing upon the conduct of others and the evil that is in the world, which would be contradictory of Mat 18:15-18; 1Co 5:12-13 and other places; but to defer judgment as to motives, the sources from which such conduct or evil springs. (Romans 14.) To abuse this spirit of restraint, however, and permit evil to remain unjudged, would be to cast that which is holy unto the dogs.

Reasons for the Golden Rule (7:12) have been suggested thus: (1) We are to be careful about judging others; (2) we should seek divine wisdom in doing so; and (3) which obtained, would lead us to act in love towards all.

How many foolishly say they live by the Golden Rule! The Bible and experience prove that no one has ever done so except Him who uttered it. And yet it is that by which the man out of Christ elects to be judged! What madness! Some tell us that Christ borrowed this word from the sacred books of the east, but this is folly, for what is found there is merely a negative teaching, while this is positive. What you would not have others do to you, do not to them, is different from doing to others what you would have them do to you.

Under false teachers, note that fruits (Mat 7:20) does not necessarily mean open immorality, but the counterfeit of the truth of God. False prophets and teachers are sometimes very attractive in their lives, but their words, rightly understood, are inconsonant with Holy Writ.

The conclusion of this discourse shows our Lords mind to be resting on the end of the age, and the incoming of the Kingdom. That is how our study of the Old Testament taught us to interpret the phrase, in that day (Mat 7:22).

QUESTIONS

1. What is meant by the code of the Kingdom?

2. What two figures of speech describe the relation of disciples to the world?

3. In what sense did Christ fulfill the law and the prophets.t 4. What does Gehenna refer to, and how is it used in Scripture?

5. What kind of retaliation does our Lord refer to?

6. What is meant by Judge not?

7. Does any one really live by the Golden Rule?

8. What is meant by the fruits of false prophets?

Fuente: James Gray’s Concise Bible Commentary

Our Saviour compares Christians in general, and his ministers in particular, unto salt, for a double reason.

First, Because it is the nature of salt to preserve things from corruption and putrefaction, and to render them savoury and pleasant. Thus are the ministers of the gospel to labour and endeavour, by the purity of their doctrine, to sweeten putrifying sinners, that they may become savoury to God and man; and may be kept from being fly-blown with errors and false doctrine.

Secondly, Because salt has a piercing power in it, which subdues the whole lump, and turns it into its own nature: such a piercing power is there in the ministry of the word, that it subdues the whole man to the obedience of itself.

As it Christ had said, “Ye are to be preachers and patterns to the world; ye are appointed by your pure doctrine, and good conversation, to purge the world from that corruption in which it lies: but if you lose either soundness of doctrine, or the savour of a good conversation, you will be wholly useless, as to these great ends, and must expect to be cast off by me, as unsavoury salt is cast to the dunghill.”

Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament

Mat 5:13. Ye Not the apostles, not ministers only; but all who possess and manifest the graces spoken of in the preceding verses, and are truly holy and righteous; are the salt of the earth Appointed to be the means of preventing or curing the growth of that corruption which prevails in the world, and of seasoning mens minds with wisdom and grace. But if the salt have lost its savour Or, be grown insipid, and therefore want seasoning itself, wherewith shall it be salted By what means can its lost virtue be restored? The word , rendered have lost its savour, has peculiar strength and beauty, and is literally, be infatuated, or, grown foolish, alluding, says Dr. Doddridge, to the common figure, in which sense and spirit are expressed by salt. It is thenceforth good for nothing It is wholly useless, and left to be thrown out of doors, and trampled on by men as the common dirt in the streets: thus worthless and contemptible will you, my disciples, be, even in the most eminent stations, if you lose your character for real and vital religion. The following passage of Mr. Maundrell, quoted by Dr. Macknight, illustrates our Lords supposition of salts losing its savour. In the valley of Salt, near Gebul, and about four hours journey from Aleppo, there is a small precipice, occasioned by the continual taking away of the salt. In this, says he, you may see how the veins of it lie; I brake a piece off it, of which the part that was exposed to the rain, sun, and air, though it had the sparks and particles of salt, yet it had perfectly lost its savour. The innermost part, which had been connected to the rock, retained its savour, as I found by proof.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

XLII.

THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT.

(A Mountain Plateau not far from Capernaum.)

Subdivision C.

INFLUENCE AND DUTIES OF MESSIAH’S SUBJECTS.

aMATT. V. 13-16.

a13 Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and be trodden under foot of men. [Salt has been used from time immemorial as an agent in the preservation of meats. The multitudes which heard Jesus were familiar with its use in curing fish. “The pickled fish of Galilee were known throughout the Roman world” (G. A. Smith). It is worthy of note that the salt of Palestine gathered from the marshes is not pure. Because of the foreign substances in it, it loses its savor and becomes insipid and useless, when exposed to the sun and air, or when permitted for any considerable time to come in contact with the ground; but pure salt does not lose its savor. The verse teaches that God’s people keep the world from putrefaction and corruption. There was not salt enough in the antediluvian world to save it from the flood, in Sodom to save it from fire, nor in Canaan to preserve its people from destruction. It also teaches–as does experience–that a disciple may lose those qualities which make him salt.] 14 Ye are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. [As light dispels darkness and enables a man to see his way, so the Christian, by his teaching and example, removes ignorance and prejudice, and discloses the way of life. The church, reflecting the light of Christ, is of necessity a conspicuous body, so that neither its blemishes nor its beauty can be concealed. For air and for [234] protection cities were frequently built upon hills. Jerusalem and Samaria were both hill cities.] 15 Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel [a common measure, found in every Jewish house, and containing about a peck], but on the stand; and it shineth unto all that are in the house. [Lamps were then crude affairs without chimneys, in which, for the most part, olive oil was burned. Candles were not then known. The word candle, where used in the King James version, is a mistranslation.] 16 Even so let your light shine before men; that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven. [The light of the Christian is to shine not ostentatiously, but naturally and unavoidably. It is to shine not only in his teaching or profession, but in such works and actions as unprejudiced men must acknowledge to be real excellencies. Moreover, it must so shine that it shall not win praise for itself, but for him who kindled it. Men do not praise the street lamps which protect them from robbery and assault, but they praise the municipal administration which furnishes the lamps.]

[FFG 234-235]

Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)

Mat 5:13-37. Mt. here brings together material (a) found scattered in Lk., (b) peculiar to himself.

Mat 5:13-16. Salt and Light.Good men are not only rewarded in the coming age, they help the world now and save it from both insipidity and corruption. To appreciate the value of salt one must live in a land where it is rare, and much more highly prized than sugar. The second clause of Mat 5:13 (cf. Mar 9:50, Luk 14:34) was a current proverb; salt was heavily taxed, and therefore often so adulterated as to lose its salinity. With the third clause cf. Heb 6:4-8; Heb 10:26-29, and the fate of Judas Iscariot. With Mat 5:14 cf. Rom 2:19 (Jews), Php 2:15, Act 13:47, Joh 8:12. The connexion between the two parts of Mat 5:14 is the conspicuousness of an elevated character. Ideally a true disciple (Mat 5:15) cannot hide his light (the word translated bushel means a measure holding about a peck); actually it is only too possible (Mat 5:16). In Mat 5:15 the light may be the influence of preaching (cf. Luk 8:16; Luk 11:33); in Mat 5:16 it is the influence of deeds (cf. 1Pe 2:12).

Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible

Verse 13

Lost his savor; if the Christian character loses the life and spirit of piety.

Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament

ye are the salt, &c. That is, you, 0 ye Apostles, who are sitting here next to Me, to whom I have spoken primarily the eight Beatitudes-ye are, by My election and appointment (for I have chosen and appointed you unto this) the salt of the earth, i.e., ye ought to be, and by My grace ye shall be. Christ passes from the Beatitudes to salt, because He delivers His moral teaching after the manner of the ancients, by short, separate maxims, and because the connection here may be easily traced. You, 0 Apostles, whom I choose to be, after My example, humble, meek, &c., shall, in so being, be the salt of the world.

You ask why does Christ call His Apostles the salt of the earth rather than the gold, or silver, or precious stones? I answer, because salt is a thing universally necessary and useful. Salt is as it were the balsam of nature, which preserves and seasons almost all things with which it is mixed, and keeps them from corruption. Thus the Apostles were the salt, i.e., the balsam of the earth.

2. Salt denotes the office, power, and dignity of the Apostles. For salt is the symbol of wisdom. For as salt seasons food and makes it savoury, so does wisdom season the mind and make it wise. Thus in Latin a foolish man is called a man without salt (insulsus) or unsalted, according to the verse of Catullus-

“Not one grain of salt in so big a body.”

The Apostles therefore were salt because they corrected the unsavoury morals of the world, and made them wise and savoury.

3. Salt, says Pliny (lib. 31, c. 10), contains two elements, of an igneous and watery nature-igneous because it is sharp, like fire, and if it be cast into fire it makes it flare up; and if salt be cast into water it is dissolved in it. The same Pliny adds (c. 9) that there is nothing more beneficial to the body than salt. The Apostles therefore were the salt of the earth, because by their igneous force they kindled it with the love of God, and by their aqueous flow of words and their wisdom they watered its dryness as with a spiritual dew, and made it fruitful, that it should bring forth the fruit of good works and all virtues.

4. Salt flavours insipid food, and by its pungency renders it pleasant and wholesome. Thus the Apostles have emended the insipid and foolish opinions, mistakes, and customs of men by their forcible language, and made them pleasing to God and the angels.

5. As salt penetrates flesh, and preserves it from corruption by drying up the humours by which flesh is corrupted, so have the Apostles taken away from the minds of men the corruption of fleshly concupiscences, and preserved them for the immortality of everlasting incorruption. So Cicero (lib. 2 de Nat. Deorum) says, “What hath a sow besides its flesh? Chrysippus says that a soul hath been given it for salt, lest it should corrupt.” Thus to men who, like sows, were wallowing in flesh and blood, God bath given the Apostles, as it were salt and a soul, which might spiritually animate them, lest they should putrefy.

6. Salt excites thirst. So the Apostles have excited a thirst for heavenly things. Hear S. Hilary. “The Apostles are the preachers of heavenly things and, as it were, sowers of eternity: they bring immortality to all upon whom their speech is sprinkled.” Or Euthymius: “Ye have been chosen by Me to cure all the putridity of the world: ye are the salt of the earth.”

7. Salt, by its pungency, bites and pricks, dries and burns. Listen to Pliny (lib. 31, c. 7): “The nature of salt is igneous, and yet an enemy to fire. Putting it to flight, it dries substances and binds them together. But salt has such power over dead and putrescent substances that by its means they will endure for ages.” Thus, too, the Apostles, by their sharp and fiery speech, and by their life, have bitten, pricked, dried up, and shaken off the vices of men. Hear S. Gregory (Hom. 17): “If we are salt we ought to season the minds of the faithful. As is among brute beasts a rock of salt, so ought to be a priest among the people, that whosoever is joined to a priest, he may be seasoned, as if from a rock of salt, with the seasoning of eternal life.” Let priests read that entire homily of S. Gregory’s, and they will find it a golden mirror for their life, that they may be the salt of the earth. Wisely saith S. Chrysostom, “Do you wish to know if the people of any place are righteous? Look what sort of a pastor they have. If you find him pious, just, sound, believe the people will be the same, for they are seasoned with the salt of his wisdom.”

But if the salt have lost his savour, &c. If an apostle, if a bishop, if a priest-who ought, like salt, to season the morals of others-shall, through gluttony, uncleanness, fear, or flattery, lose the vigour of his spiritual salt, who shall restore it to him? No one. This may be seen in the case of some of the priests and pastors of the past age, who either led scandalous lives, or else were ignorant and negligent in instructing the people wandering in, or verging upon, heresy. Whence the ecclesiastical order came into sad contempt, whence the heresies of Luther, Calvin, and the rest sprung up, who, says Maldonatus, are like unto unsavoury bugs: when they are alive they bite, when dead they give out an offensive smell.

Trodden under foot, &c. “For it is not he who suffers persecution,” says S. Augustine, “who is trodden under foot of men, but he who is so foolish as to fear persecution. For only an inferior can be trodden down; but an inferior he cannot be whose heart is fixed in heaven, although his body may suffer many things upon earth.”

Although salt be of an igneous nature, yet it dissolves if it be mingled with water. A good religious priest too is dissolved and becomes effeminate, if he associate too much with women, even pious ones. Hear what the Elder, cited by John Moschus, says in his Spiritual Meadow, c. 217: “My little children, salt is of water; and if it approach water, forthwith it fails and is dissolved. A monk suffers the same from a woman; and if he approach a woman, he too is dissolved, and comes to such a pass that he is no more a monk.”

So too does a priest come to naught if he be too accommodating to people of the world. Let him remember that he ought to be salt, and preserve his vigour, gravity, and liberty in rebuking vices. Let him not be ashamed to profess openly that he is an ecclesiastic and a religious, that is, a worshipper of God, a spiritual person, a despiser of the world, a lover of heavenly things. “Let him enter with another man’s, let him go out with his own,” says our S. Ignatius. That is, in the beginning, let him accommodate himself to the disposition and speech of seculars, but afterwards let him dexterously bring them round to spiritual things, to change of character, to sanctity of life. Thus shall he be as the salt of the world.

Ye are the light of the world. Ye are; again this means, ye are by My election and commission what ye ought to be in actual truth. The light of the world, that ye may by the light of your doctrine and evangelical life illuminate the world obscured by the darkness of errors and sins. So S. Hilary.

S. Chrysostom (Hom. 10 in Epist. ad Timoth.) says, “For this purpose hath He chosen us, that we should be as lights, and act as leaven, that as angels we should be conversant with men on earth, that we should act as men with boys, as spiritual with those who are carnal.” The sun is in heaven, but from thence it disperses its rays upon the earth; so do thou be with thy mind in heaven, whilst thy body is on earth, that thou mayest by thy conversation, and the example of thy virtue, illuminate, warm, and kindle it; so shalt thou be a light and a sun to the world.

S. Chrysostom adds something to be pondered deeply: “Assuredly, there would be no heathen, if we Christians took care to be what we ought to be; if we obeyed God’s precepts, if we bore injuries without retaliation, if when cursed we blessed, if we rendered good for evil. For no man is so savage a wild beast, that he would not run forthwith to the worship of the true religion, if he saw all Christians acting as I have said. And that you may learn that it is so, consider how many one Paul drew to the knowledge of God. If we were all like him, how many worlds might we not be able to win?”

A city set on an hill, &c. Christ here compares His Apostles, 1. To salt. 2. To light. 3. To a city conspicuous on a mountain. The Church, that is to say, the prelates of the Church. are often compared in the Psalms to the same thing, as Ps. xlvi. and xlviii. and lxxxvii; also Is. lx., lxv., and Ezek. xl. As, therefore, a city upon a mountain cannot be bid, but strikes the eyes of all beholders, so do apostles, prelates, and priests come before the eyes of all men, that if they discharge their office rightly, and preach the gospel more by their lives than by their words, they will attract many to Christ, and have praise of all: but if they do otherwise, they will turn many away from the Saviour and be blamed by all.

Neither do men light a candle, &c. A candle is not wont to be bid under a bushel, i.e., under a vessel, as the Syriac, the Hebrew, and S. Luke have it, of measurement, but it is placed on high on a candlestick. So be ye, 0 ye Apostles! who are placed on a higher step of office and dignity, that ye may enlighten all by your preaching and sanctity.

Allegorically. SS. Hilary, Ambrose, and Bede say, that it is here meant that the light of the Gospel was not to be shut up within the narrow confines of Juda, but to be placed upon the height of Rome, that it might illuminate all the subject nations.

1 Candle, Gr. , i.e., lamp, torch, candle, anything which gives light; for torches and candles are properly placed upon stands, and in Italy, lamps upon lamp-stands. So also the Hebrew lappid, which we translate, lamp or lantern, signifies anything which gives a light of flame. Hence lamps and torches, as here and elsewhere in Scripture, signify holy, and especially Apostolic men, who illuminate others by the light of their doctrine and holiness, and who inflame them by the fire of their charity. Whence Christ says of John the Baptist, “He was a burning and shining lamp.” (Vulg.) So Enoch and Elias are called two olive-trees, and two candelabra. (Rev 11:4.)

Let your light, &c. That they may see, &c. The particle that denotes that the Apostles of Christ and all their followers must be careful to shine both in word and example, not for themselves but for God, in order that they may draw men to God; and by considering this we may reconcile what is here said with Christ’s teaching in chap. vi. 1, 2, and 5. “Take heed that ye do not your righteousness before men, that ye may be seen of them.” The emphasis is upon these last words, that the Apostles should not do righteous works with any such end in view as being glorified and praised by men; but here Christ commends the doing of good works before men, so this only end be kept in view, that they may glorify God by them. Hear S. Gregory (3 p. Pastor. Admonit. 36): “Why then is it commanded that our work shall be so done as not to be seen, and yet that it shall be seen, but that what we do must be hidden, so that we ourselves be not praised, and yet must be made manifest that we may increase the glory of our Heavenly Father? For when the Lord forbids our doing our righteousness before men, He immediately adds, lest we should be seen of them; and when, on the other hand, he tells us that our good works should be seen of men, he forthwith subjoins, that they may glorify your Father which is in heaven. Whether, therefore, works should be seen, or not seen, He showed must be according to the end we have in view.”

Think not that I am come to destroy (Gr. , to dissolve, abolish) the law and the prophets. Christ’s special meaning in this place is that He came to fulfil the moral precepts of the Law by teaching and expounding them more perfectly, and by substituting the sanction of eternal for temporal rewards and punishments, and by adding to things of precept evangelical counsels of perfection, as will be plain from what follows. It is also meant that Christ supplied the imperfection of the Law of Moses by justifying us through faith and the sacraments of the New Law, which He instituted, which the Law of Moses could not do.

Verily I say, &c. Verily, Gr. Amen-i.e., “in truth;” whence Aquila translates the Hebrew amen by -i.e., faithfully, truly, certainly. As S. Jerome says (Epist. ad Sophron.), “Amen is the word not of one who swears, but of one who affirms something he is about to say, or confirms something which he has said. In the former case it is prefixed, in the latter it is affixed, as it were a seal.” This may be seen from Deu 27:26, &c., and 1Co 14:16. Wherefore the LXX translate the word by , may it be done. In this place Amen has the meaning of affirming and gravely asserting.

Moreover, Christ Himself is called Amen, Rev 3:14: “Thus saith the Amen, the Faithful Witness.”

Until heaven pass away. Not by nature and the perishing of nature, but by the mutation of its condition-that is, until heaven be changed from this state of corruption to a new and glorious state at the Resurrection. In other words, before the end of the world, when heaven and earth shall pass away, i.e., shall be renewed, it is necessary that all things which are written of Me in the Law be fulfilled. Or, rather, until heaven pass away means until it wholly perish. The sentence is a hypothetical one, and means, sooner may heaven be destroyed, sooner the earth be riven in twain, sooner the universe come to an end, than the minutest point of the Law not be fulfilled, either in this life or in the life to come. So long, therefore, as heaven and earth shall stand, so long the whole Law shall stand. Heaven and earth shall endure for ever, much more shall the whole Law endure eternally, according to these words of Christ, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” Whence the Greek is in the past tense, , meaning, the whole frame of the universe shall perish sooner than the Law of God.

Hear S. Irenus. “Now, of the name , Jesus, the letters iota and eta, i and e, make up the number 18. These, say the Valentinians, are the eighteen ons; and this is why the Saviour said, one jot or one tittle, &c.”

A similar phrase is used in a similar sense (Psa 72:7): “In his days justice shall arise, and abundance of peace until the moon be taken away;” also Psa 89:37, meaning, “The sun and moon shall endure for ever, much more shall the throne of Christ remain eternally.”

One jot. Christ, speaking to Hebrews, said, one yod, as the Syriac has. For the Greek translator substituted the equivalent, iota. Yod in Hebrew, like iota in Greek and i in Latin, is the smallest letter in the alphabet. From the letter yod, although the least, Valentinus, as S. Irenus testifies, constructed the greatest heresy-viz., that of his ons, in truth portents of names, rather than names of real existences.

Or one tittle (Vulg. apex) of the law. He calls the apices of the law, not the Hebrew points and accents, which were not invented by the Rabbin until long after the time of Christ, but the tops or little extremities of the letters in which the Law was written.

Till all be fulfilled. All things, that is, which have been spoken concerning Me and My acts, My Church and Sacraments in the Law and the Prophets. Again, all things mean all which have been commanded, or promised, or threatened.

Whosoever therefore shall break, &c. Of these least commandments-viz., which the Law just spoken of commands, or in respect of which I am about to explain and perfect the Law. This is why He subjoins, I say unto you that unless your righteousness, &c. It does not mean, then, that all the commandments of the Law are very small; but that he should be condemned who should break one of even its smallest precepts, or, like the Pharisees, pervert them by a false interpretation, as by teaching, for example, that only outward adultery, not inward concupiscence, was forbidden by the Law. We must observe in this place that commandment is to be taken strictly for a weighty precept binding under the penalty of mortal sin, like the Ten Commandments. For he who shall break one such commandment, although the least in the Decalogue, shall surely be condemned. For it is entirely probable that certain trifling things in the Old Law, although they were commanded by God Himself, bind only under venial sin and temporal punishment. Such, I mean, as taking a bird together with her young ones in the nest, seething a kid in its mother’s milk, &c. Not such as these are here called least commandments, but those which are least amongst the great commandments, such as to look upon a woman to lust after her, which the Pharisees considered a very small thing, and scarcely a sin at all.

Shall be called the least. Shall be accounted the least; shall be looked upon as vile; shall be had in contempt by God and the holy angels, as the last of men, and altogether unworthy to be admitted into the kingdom of heaven, but to be damned and cast into hell. Wherefore S. Chrysostom and Theophylact interpret least to mean not at all, because in heaven there are none who are not great, as S. Augustine says, “all kings of heaven, sons of God.”

In the kingdom of heaven. Strictly so called, say S. Chrysostom and Theophylact. But S. Augustine and others interpret the kingdom of heaven here to mean the Church.

But whosoever shall do and teach, &c. Great, viz., a doctor, father, and prince of the disciples whom he has taught. And all the commandments of the Law are reckoned as having been done, when whatsoever has not been done is pardoned by God, says S. Augustine. For a fault is corrected and compensated for by penitence. As S. Bernard says (Tr. de dispensat. et prcept.), “A part of rule is regular correction.” When, therefore, the guilty one undergoes this, he fulfils the rule.

Moraliter. Learn from hence the right way and method of teaching, that a doctor should first do what he is about to teach. Christ, says S. Luke, began to do and to teach. He was first Himself poor, humble, meek, a mourner, and then He taught, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Let a doctor therefore examine his conscience before God before he teach, whether he be poor in spirit, meek, and soon; let him see whether he cleave to the world or to Christ, for that he may be Christ’s he ought to break his pledge of friendship with the world, and be able to say with S. Paul, “If I yet pleased men I should not be the servant of Christ.”

For I say unto you that except your righteousness shall exceed, &c., i.e., be more abundant, excellent, full, and perfect. Your righteousness, i.e., your observance of the Law. For it fulfils that which the Law declares to be just or righteous. It also makes us really just before God. As the Apostle says, “Not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.” (Rom 2:13.)

Ye have heard that it was said, i.e., commanded. Ye have heard, i.e., from the Scribes, teaching and expounding the Law of Moses. Christ here begins to show in detail that He was not dissolving the Law, but fulfilling it, and that Christian righteousness ought to excel Judaic and Pharisaic righteousness. Christ therefore here proposes and prefers Himself and His own doctrine both to the Scribes and Pharisees, who by their , or traditions, perversely interpreted the Law, as is plain from verses 20 and 43, and to the Law of Moses itself. For Christ added to the Law precepts of explicit belief concerning God the Three in One, and concerning Christ’s Incarnation, Passion, and Redemption. He moreover supplied the defects and imperfections of the Old Law, for the Law of Moses was given to the comparatively uninstructed Jews, and this Law Christ perfected by His Evangelical Law.

Thou shalt not kill. Many thought that by this law murder only was forbidden, but Christ here teaches that by it even all angry words, blows, reproaches, are forbidden, for such things are, as it were, preludes leading by a direct road to homicide.

But I say unto you, &c. Christ here explains and fulfils the commandment, Thou shall not kill, and teaches that even inward anger is forbidden by it. I say unto you. I decree, assert, and sanction, I who am Legislator of all law, Evangelical, Mosaic, and natural.

Whosoever is angry. The Greek adds , rashly, without cause. But the Roman Codices, S. Jerome, and S. Augustine (lib. 1, Retract., c. 19) omit it. But those or similar words must be understood. For unlawful anger is what is here treated of; since anger for a just cause, as for example against sin and sinners, is both lawful and praiseworthy. Anger has been for this very purpose implanted in man’s nature, that it should make them brave against vice, and against those things which are really their enemies.

Observe, anger is the thirst for vengeance, and is itself a mortal sin if it deliberately contrive, or wish for, any serious evil of body, or goods, or reputation of one’s neighbour, or rejoice in such evils, even though he deserve them, for he who is angry rejoices in them not as fruits of justice but of revenge. But anger is a venial sin if it desire some trifling calamity to one’s neighbour, even though the anger be violent, and flame out both internally and externally. Lastly, anger is no sin at all if it be assumed from zeal for righteousness, for the extirpation of sin and sinners. Such was the anger of Mattathias when he slew the legate of Antiochus, who was forcing the Jews to sacrifice to idols. (1 Mac.2:25.) Such was the anger of Christ when He drove the buyers and sellers out of the Temple.

Hear S. Chrysostom on the words in Ps. iv., Be ye angry and sin not: “We may be angry lawfully, for Paul was angry with Elymas, and Peter with Sapphira. But I should not call this anger without qualification. I should call it philosophy, carefulness. The father is angry with his child, but it is because he cares for him. It is he who avenges himself who is rashly angry, but he who corrects the faults of others is of all men the meekest. For even God is angry, not to revenge Himself, but to correct us. Let us therefore imitate Him. Thus to act is divine, otherwise it is human anger.” Hear also S. Gregory (on Job v. 2, Anger slayeth the foolish man): “There is an anger which springs from zeal for righteousness. This is the anger which, because Eli had it not, he roused against himself the vengeance of the wrath of God. For the sword of the eternal Ruler flames against him who is lukewarm in correcting the vices of those who are placed under him.”

Shall be in danger of the judgment. Judgment here is to be taken in a somewhat different sense from that in which it occurs just above, Whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment. For there the human tribunal by which men were condemned to death for murder is meant; but here is understood the Divine judgment, which judges and condemns venial anger to temporal punishment, such as purgatory, but deadly anger to eternal punishment, i.e., to hell.

How vile a thing anger is! See S. Basil and S. Chrysostom (Hom. on Anger); Cicero (4 Tuscul.), where, among other things, he says, “Is there anything more like to madness than anger-anger which Ennius well calls the beginning of madness? The colour, voice, glare of the eye, impotence of words and deeds, what have they to do with sanity? What is more shameful than Homer’s Achilles-than Agamemnon quarrelling? Anger brought Ajax to madness and death.”

But whoso shall say to his brother, &c. Raca. 1. S. Chrysostom thinks raca here signifies thou, as if any one should say contemptuously to his neighbour, Go thou about thy business, what wouldest thou?-to address any one as thou out of disrespect.

2. Theophylact says raca means one worthy of being spat upon, for rok means spittle; but this would be a worse form of reproach than to call any one a fool, which Christ here places as the worst reproach.

3. Some think raca here is the Greek , ragged.

4. And more probably, S. Augustine, Rupert, Anselm, and others think raca is an interjection of despising and opposing, and that by it are denoted all the tokens of an evil-disposed mind, whether murmuring, shouting, or spitting, or wrinkling the brow, and so on.

5. And last, S. Jerome, Angelus Caninius, and others think that raca is a Hebrew word, derived from ric, i.e., “empty,” though not in brain, as S. Jerome says, for that would be a fool; but empty in purse; so that raca would mean a man of straw, a pauper. So the Vulgate translates Jdg 11:3.

Lastly, George Michaelis, the Maronite (in Promio Grammatic Syriac, c. de prstantia Syr. Lingu) says raca is Syriac, and has three meanings-1. A tortoise, which animal is considered so deformed by the Syrians that they nauseate and abhor it; so too, the Italians, when they would speak of a man slow and deformed, say, pare tartaruga, like a tortoise. 2. Raca, from rac, “he has spit.” For the Syrians, when they would burn any one up with ignominy, call him raco, i.e., “spat upon;” or raca is the same as rauco, i.e., “spittle;” for a Syrian, to show that he made no account of a person, would say, “Thou art but as spittle to me.” 3. Raca with the Syrians means one despised, vile, abject, dirty; and this is the sense in which I think the word raca is here used by Christ. Thus far Georgius.

It is certain that raca is more than to be angry, less than to say, Thou fool! Again, raca is ambiguous. It may be venial, or it may be mortal; but to say, Thou fool, is certainly a mortal sin.

In danger of the council. Gr. , from which word the Jews called their highest tribunal the “Sanhedrim.” As though Christ had said, “He shall be obnoxious to the judgment of the highest court, the Sanhedrim.”

Observe, the Talmudic Doctors, and from them Franc. Lucas, Maldonatus, and others, say that the Hebrews had three courts: The first din mammona, which was a court for the trial of money causes; it was a court presided over by three judges. The second court was din mishpat, or the Court of Judgment, i.e., for capital offences. By this tribunal cases of murder were examined and decided. This court consisted of twenty-three judges. The third was the Sanhedrim, which consisted of seventy-two judges, by which grave causes and crimes were tried, such as heresy, false prophets, idolatry, apostacy, &c. Christ, omitting the first, alludes here to the two latter tribunals, and calls the second the judgment, the third , the Sanhedrim, the council. The meaning is, that the proportion between anger and a reproachful word, and between the punishment of both, was the same as between the judgment of Mishpat and the Sanhedrim, or the highest tribunal-that as the latter excelled the former, so the penalty of an opprobrious word exceeded the penalty of anger. For in this comparison, as is usual, it is not necessary to make everything apply. There is, then, a catachresis in the words judgment and council. For by judgment is signified the lesser fault of anger, and consequently the lesser condemnation and penalty; and by council the greater fault and the severer punishment.

The meaning then is, as a murderer under the Old Law was in danger of the judgment-namely, that his cause should be tried by the criminal judges, and he himself condemned to death; so in like manner anger, which is the first step to murder, is a criminal cause, and consequently pertains not to the lowest tribunal of Mammona, but of Judgment, not human but Divine; so that if it should be intense and voluntary, that is, with a deliberate intention of inflicting death or grave evil upon his neighbour, he should for this be condemned to death, not temporal but eternal.

But if anger should break forth into a rough word, such as raca, a man would sin grievously-grievously I say, because he would manifest anger by an outward sign, which would pertain to the tribunal of the Sanhedrim, to be heavily punished, according to the degree of the fault. But if he should say, Thou fool, it would not be a case for the Judgment, but would render him liable to the damnation of hell.

From this explanation it appears, in opposition to the Stoics and Jovinian, that there are degrees of faults and punishments, that some sins are worse than others, and so deserve a severer punishment from God. Whence there is sin which is venial, and there is sin which is mortal. Consequently, in opposition to Calvin, there is clearly a distinction between hell and purgatory.

But whosoever shall say, Thou fool, &c. Under this word fool, we are to understand all kinds of revilings, calumnies, reproaches, curses, which are mortal sins, if the be uttered grievously to dishonour our neighbour, or if the desire to do him injury and revile him, spring from the heart. For the gravity or triviality of a contumelious word must be weighed by the intention of the speaker. If you say it in joke, or not really to dishonour, but to correct, it is not formal, but material contumely, says D. Thom. (2. 2. q. 72, art. 2). Hence parents may severely correct and reprove and rebuke their children, and masters their servants, if it be done with moderation, and for just correction. Thus Christ calls Peter Satan (Matt. xvi. 23), and Paul calls the Galatians “foolish” (Gal 3:1). Again, the gravity of the contumely must be measured by the dignity of the person spoken to. For to say to a grave and honourable man, “Thou fool,” is a grave contumely; but to call a man a fool who really is one, is a comparatively light reproach.

Of hell fire. The Arabic has, the fire of hell. S. Jerome observes that Christ here first uses the word Gehenna for hell. It is nowhere in the Old Testament used in that sense. Gehenna is derived from ge, a valley, and Hinnom or Ennon, a Jew so called. Gehenna is the valley of Hinnom. It was a pleasant vale near Jerusalem, in which parents were accustomed to burn their children in sacrifice to Moloch; and they beat drums that their cries and wails might not be heard. Hence the same place was called Tophet, i.e., “a drum.” Wherefore, Christ here speaks of the Gehenna of fire, to show that nothing but fire, and that eternal fire, is meant. See Isa 3:33, where Gehenna and its torments are graphically depicted. For Tophet is ordained of old, &c.

Ver. 23.-Therefore, if thou bring thy gift, &c. If thy brother have anything to complain of in thee, any wrong for which to expostulate with thee, as that thou hast called him raca, or fool. This is the force of therefore in this passage. It would appear that the Scribes taught that all sins, and especially violations of the Sixth Commandment, were expiated by sacrifices and offerings at the altar of God, even when no satisfaction was made for a wrong done to one’s neighbour. But Christ teaches the contrary, and sanctions the law of justice and charity, by which He bids that satisfaction must first be made to our neighbour who has been injured by us either in word or deed. Wherefore he subjoins,

Leave there thy gift, &c. This is a precept both of law and of natural religion, which has been by Christ in this place most strictly sanctioned, both because by the Incarnation of Himself He has, in the very closest manner, united us all to Himself and to one another. This greater union, which we have therefore through Christ, demands greater love and unity among Christian brethren: so He has said, “A new commandment give I unto you, that ye love one another.” Furthermore, the sacrifice of the Eucharist is more holy than the ancient sacrifices. It is the gathering together and the communion of the Body, of which we all partake; and therefore we are all mutually united to Christ and one another. Hence it is called communion, that is, the common union of all. Since therefore the Eucharist is a sacrifice, as well as a Sacrament and profession of mutual love and peace, it is necessary that all discord should be done away, and that those who have offended should reconcile themselves to those whom they have offended before this holy Synaxis, lest they be found liars. For in truth he is a liar who takes the Sacrament of union, that is, the Eucharist, and is not in union with, but bears a grudge or rancour against, his neighbour.

This is why it used to be the custom at Mass, that before Holy Communion, Christians were wont to give one another a holy kiss, as a symbol of reconciliation and union, in place of which what is called the Pax is now bestowed.

S. John the Almoner, Patriarch of Alexandria, to fulfil literally this precept or counsel of Christ, was once standing at the altar to say Mass, when he remembered that a certain cleric had conceived a hatred for him, and although he was the offended party, yet he asked his pardon first, and being thus reconciled, he went with him joyfully to the altar and finished the sacrifice, saying with confidence to God, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” as Leontius records in his Life. He adds that the same John repelled Damianus, a deacon, from Communion, and said to him, “Go first and be reconciled to thy brother.” Damianus promised so to do, when the Patriarch gave him the Sacred Mysteries.

Agree, Gr. , i.e., be of good will, Syriac, a friend: with thine adversary, Gr. , i.e., thine accuser, thy prosecutor, Syriac,Beel dinoch, “the master, or lord of thy lawsuit,” Arabic, with him who is at law with thee: the uttermost fathing, i.e., of thy debt.

You will ask, who is this adversary? 1. Tertullian (lib. de Anim), answers, it is the devil. He is Satan, i.e., our adversary.

2. S. Athanasius, or whoever be the author of Qust. S. Script. ad Antioch. (qust. 26), thinks the adversary means the flesh: for it is an adversary to the soul. “For the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh” (Gal 5:17). But we must not agree either with the devil, or the flesh, which is what we are here told to do by Christ.

3. The same Athanasius says with better reason, elsewhere, that it is our conscience, for this is our adversary, and stings us when we do ill, until we agree with it, by following its dictates.

4. SS. Augustine, Anselm, and Bede are of opinion that God, or the law of God is meant, for these fight against our lusts. Wherefore clearly we ought to consent unto them, lest we incur the punishments with which they threaten us. But these are mystical, or symbolical interpretations.

Wherefore I say with SS. Jerome, Hilary, and Ambrose, that by our adversary is here meant any one who has been unjustly offended, or injured by us, and is therefore in a position to be able to accuse us before God. With such a one Christ in the preceding verse bade us be reconciled.

Note that there is here a Hebraism, and a parabolical form of expression, in which it is not necessary to adapt every word, but the general scope and meaning is what must be chiefly considered. And these, in this case, are rather hinted at than expressed. The sense then is this:-As a debtor, or one who is accused by a prosecutor before a judge, acts prudently if he agree with his adversary before judgment, and so escape the condemnation of the judge, prison, or infamy, so in like manner do thou act; and if thou hast injured thy brother in any way, as for instance by calling him raca, or a fool, thou hast made thyself a debtor, as it were, to restore him to honour: come in then, and be reconciled with him speedily, before thou be delivered as guilty to God the judge, who by a righteous vengeance shall deliver thee to prison, until thou shalt pay all thy debt. That prison is hell, or purgatory, according to the greater or less heinousness of thy sin. The word until, seems to bear a reference to purgatory, as though it signified terminable punishment, which is purgatory, whereas the punishment of hell has no end.

Farthing. Greek, . This is a word which has been borrowed from the Latin, like many others which are found in the Evangelists, such as prtorium, centurio, &c.

The quadrans, here translated farthing, was the fourth part of the Roman as, and is put for any very small coin. And the spiritual application is, that every debt, even the very least of the fault of anger, must be paid and atoned for after this life, in the place of justice. Wherefore in this life, where is the place for mercy, agreement and pardon, let us be reconciled to our adversary-i.e., whomsoever we have injured, either by word or deed. I have read in a history that a certain servant who had departed this life appeared to his master, who asked him of his state and condition. The servant answered, “I am in that place where every debt is exactly and rigidly reckoned, and where not so much as a straw is overlooked.” Doctor Jacobus also relates that a certain religious man, who had departed this life, appeared in vile raiment and with a sad countenance, and said to a companion, “No one believes, no one believes, no one believes how strictly God judges, and how severely He punishes.”

Ver. 27 and 28.-Ye have heard, &c. . . to lust after her-that is, with the design and object of indulging sinful passion with her-hath already committed adultery with her in his heart. Because by adultery he hath already corrupted her in his mind, and therefore before God, who beholds the heart, he is an adulterer, and as an adulterer he will be punished by Him.

Christ passes from anger to concupiscence, because these two passions have the greatest influence over men. And as He explained the commandment, Thou shall nor kill, to forbid anger, so He here explains Thou shall not commit adultery to forbid concupiscence. For many of the Scribes and Pharisees greatly erred in their exposition of this precept as well as of the former. For although they knew that it was commanded by the tenth precept of the Decalogue, Thou shall not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nevertheless they erred-1. Because they understood it of concupiscence, not altogether internal, but such as is wont to break out in touch, kisses, lascivious words, and such like, according to the maxim, “The law prohibits the hand, not the mind.” But this is true of civil and state law, which only punishes external wrongdoing, but not of the law of God, which weighs and chastises the inmost thoughts of the heart. Josephus, the Jewish historian, fell into this very mistake, when, in the twelfth book of his Antiquities, he cites Polybius as saying that Antiochus Epiphanes perished miserably because he had wished to spoil the temple of Diana. Josephus finds fault with Polybius, saying, “To have wished merely, and not to have effected the sacrilege, does not seem a thing worthy of punishment.” And R. David Kimchi, cited by Gerebrard (Ps. lxvi.), says, “Even if I should see iniquity in my heart, which I was even prepared to carry out in act, that it should be in the presence of God, and if I should utter it with my lips, yet will not God hear it-i.e., it will not be imputed to me for wickedness. For God does not reckon an evil thought as a work, unless it be against the faith of God and religion.” Thus, too, there are many in this day who say, “To think evil is not a sin, but to do evil.”

But this is a crass error, known and confuted by Aristotle and other heathens. For free will is the proper test and criterion of goodness and wickedness, of virtue and vice. For if free will seeks what is good and honest, it is itself good and laudable; but if evil, it is evil and blameworthy. Wherefore the external act, as, for instance, of adultery, is not, speaking precisely, a sin in itself (as in plain from the case of idiots being adulterers), unless it proceeded from free will. For from free will it derives all its formal sinfulness.

2. The Scribes erred in thinking that immodest looks, touch, kisses, &c., were not sins of adultery and fornication, but of concupiscence, and so were done against the Tenth Commandment, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, but not against the Seventh. In opposition to this Christ here teaches the contrary, and so expounds the Seventh Commandment that all impurity is forbidden by it, because all such things are the road to adultery, and so a kind of beginning of adultery.

3. They were in error who thought that by this commandment only concupiscence in respect to another man’s wife, but not of any unmarried woman, was forbidden. This error Christ here corrects, and teaches that all impurity between the sexes is forbidden by this law.

Vers. 29 and 30.-But if thy right eye, &c. It is plain that there are here two parables, taken from the two most excellent and most useful of our bodily members-the right eye and the right hand. And Christ signifies that everything which entices us to sin must be cast away, however dear, precious, and necessary it may be to us. He makes mention of the eye first, because he had just before said, Whoso looketh upon a woman, &c. 1. Thus, S. Chrysostom (Hom. 17), by the right eye and hand, understands a woman beloved, such a one as he had just been speaking of, that she must be cast off, if by her look, voice, or gesture she provoke to lust. 2. S. Augustine (lib. de Serm. Dom. in Mont., lib. 1), understands any friend and minister, even one who is necessary. 3. S. Hilary, Theophylact (in loc.), Cyril, Pacian (Epist. 3), understand parents and relations, that intercourse with them must be cut off, if it leads us into sin. 4. S. Jerome understands affections and vices of the mind. 5. Auctor Imperfecti considers that by the right eye and hand the mind and will are meant, which must be called away from carnal pleasures.

But more simply and plainly you may take the right eye and hand to be actually meant, but in such a sense as to subserve the meaning of the parable, and to be parabolically explained. For there is here a continuous parable, in which Christ has regard to concupiscence of sight. Christ is dealing with such an implied objection as this which follows: “You may urge that if the eye and the sight are adulterous when they look upon a woman to lust after her, what then shall I do with the eyes which God has given me to see with?”

Again, it is a metaphor taken from surgery. As those who are sick and injured take care that a surgeon should amputate or remove the most noble and useful of our members, if their remaining imperil the safety of the whole body; so, also, I admonish you, 0 my faithful people, that ye endure any loss whatsoever, rather than commit a sin, especially a deadly sin; that, indeed, whatever is a stumbling-block to you and draws you to sin, although it be as dear and necessary to you as your right eye, you should altogether pluck it out and cast it from you, at whatever cost to you of pain and inconvenience: for example, that ye should put away the sight of an eye, even if modest in other respects, that is, the friendship and society of female relations, a wife, a son, a parent, if they bring upon you peril of sin, i.e., if by other means you are not able to escape sin, for it is better to enter into heaven having one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell. But because it is always possible to escape from sin in some other way than by cutting off a member, it is not lawful to cut it off and so mutilate oneself. Thus it was that Origen, who made himself a eunuch for the sake of chastity, was condemned by the Church. Finally, the concupiscences which have to be cut off and mortified by every one so tenaciously cleave to the eyes and the body, yea, to the soul itself, that they cannot be rooted out without great force and sense of pain, so that they who cut them off suffer as much as if they plucked out an eye or a tooth. They who have gone through it know what it is. Whence it is called mortification, because it produces the feeling and pain of death.

Thus according to the letter, SS. Aquilinus and Andomarus, as is related in their Lives in Surius, who had been blind, and recovered their sight by a miracle, asked of God that they might be again deprived of sight, that they might be free from the distractions and temptations to which sight gives rise. Furthermore it was by a special leading of God that the virgin mentioned in the Spiritual Meadow of Sophronius, plucked out her eyes and sent them to her lover, who persecuted her with his attentions, because he was ravished with the beauty of her eyes. When he received this gift the lover was smitten with compunction, and exchanged his secular for a monastic life.

S. Antonius asked Didymus, a blind man, whom S. Jerome calls his seer, that is, his teacher, if he grieved over his blindness. He was silent for a little while, and nodded; then he said, “A prudent man ought not to grieve because he is without eyes, which are possessed by flies and bees; but he ought to rejoice, because he has greater opportunities for opening the eyes of his mind, by which he may see God and divine things.”

Ver. 31.-It has been said, &c. See what I have written upon the giving a bill of divorce in Deu 24:1.

Ver. 32.-But I say unto you, &c. Christ here corrects and settles the law of divorce. 1. Because the law easily conceded divorce for various causes. But Christ permits it only on account of fornication, if a wife be an adulteress; and from an adulterer the innocent wife is at liberty to depart, according to that maxim, “If a man break his marriage vow that may be broken with him.” 2. The Law conceded both to the woman who was put away, and to the husband who repudiated her, the liberty of contracting a second marriage. But Christ denies it to both. 3. The Law conceded to the husband alone the power of giving a writing of divorcement. But Christ, with respect to this matrimonial right places the man and the woman upon a perfect equality, as S. Paul teaches, 1Co 7:4.

Except for the cause of fornication. By fornication here some understand any sin whatever, that is, in the form of a sort of spiritual fornication with any creature, leaving God, the Creator and Husband of the Soul. Thus S. Augustine, Origen, in loc. But this is taking it in too loose a sense.

By fornication others understand infidelity. For this is constantly called fornication by the prophets, that is to say, spiritual and mystical fornication.

But expositors, ancient and modern, passim, understand fornication here in its strict, literal sense, as denoting all illicit sexual intercourse.

You will say it is lawful to put away a wife if she endeavour to draw her husband into any sin, as is laid down in the chapter, Qusivi de divortiis, and as Christ Himself sufficiently indicates, ver. 29. Also if the wife practise sorcery, or compass her husband’s death; so that it is lawful to put a wife away for other causes besides fornication.

I answer, what you say is true, but Christ here assigns fornication as the only cause of divorce, both because it is the only proper cause of divorce, speaking in a strict sense, from marriage, as being immediately destructive of it, whilst the others are general causes, and would absolve a Christian from any union whatever; also because the divorce of even a repentant adulteress is conceded in perpetuity, so that although the wife repent of her adultery the husband is not bound to receive her again to his house, whereas in the other cases he is bound to receive her back again to favour; lastly, because Christ here wishes entirely to exclude all such causes of divorce as the wife’s deformity, poverty, disagreeableness, &c., which were common among the Jews. And to them He is here addressing Himself.

And whoso shall marry her that is put away committeth adultery. Cajetan and others here repeat the words, excepting for the cause of fornication, as though it were lawful for the man putting away the adulterous wife, and for the adulteress herself, to enter again into matrimony. But what S. Paul says (1Co 8:11), is plainly repugnant to this idea. For he there bids the innocent wife remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her adulterous husband. See what I have there said; and this is the constant usage and interpretation of the Church, of which more on chap. 19:9.

Ver. 33.-Again, ye have heard, &c. Thou shall perform, i.e., Thou shalt pay, shalt fulfil what thou hast sworn unto the Lord, or by the Lord that thou wilt do. So S. Chrysostom properly explains that by oaths are here meant vows confirmed by an oath, that we are bound to render them, that is, perform them unto God. Suarez explains differently. “If thou desirest to swear, swear by the true God, not by idols.”

Ver. 34.-But I say unto you, &c. Christ here explains and perfects the third precept of the Decalogue, which the Scribes and Pharisees had explained falsely. For, 1. they asserted that an oath became an oath, and was binding, if it were made by God, and called Him to witness, but not so if it were sworn by creatures. Christ here teaches the contrary. For in creatures the Creator is understood, for they were made by God, and all that they have and are is from God. For he who swears, calls God, who is the prime Verity, to witness his oath. He therefore who swears by a creature, either makes that creature a God, which is the sin of idolatry, or else it behoves to understand God the Creator in the oath.

2. The Scribes erred, who thought that by this precept perjury only was forbidden. On the contrary Christ here teaches that by it every oath is forbidden, all irreverence and abuse of the name of God.

But I say unto you, &c. From this passage, the Pelagians, as S. Augustine testifies (Epist. 89, q. 5.) taught that no oath was lawful for Christians. The Waldenses thought the same, as we see from the Council of Constance, and the Anabaptists of the present day hold the same opinion, who will not swear in a trial at the bidding of the judge.

But this is an error of faith, which the perpetual practice of the Church, as well as the example of God Himself, of S. Paul, and the Saints condemns, as is plain from Psa 110:4; Rom 1:9; Phi 1:8; 1Co 15:31, &c. Reason itself shows us the same thing; for an oath is an honour to God as the prime Verity, because he who swears appeals to Infallible Truth as his witness. Wherefore an oath is an act of religion, and the highest worship, so that it be done in truth and justice, as Jeremiah says, 4:2.

You will ask, Why, then, does Christ say, Swear not at all? S. Bernard answers (Serm. 65 in Cant.) that this is not of precept, but only of counsel.

2. Others allow that this is a precept, but one which only forbids perjury.

3. Others think that the command, Swear not at all, applies only to swearing by creatures, not by God. To this opinion S. Jerome inclines.

But all these explanations are forced and incorrect, and are refuted by what follows; for Christ bids us swear not at all, (1) because, as S. Augustine says (de Verb. Apostoli), “False swearing is destructive, true swearing is perilous, swearing not at all is safe.” Not at all-i.e., “As far as lieth in thee, that thou shouldst not affect nor love swearing, nor take any pleasure in an oath, as though it were a good thing.” Again, to swear is, per se, a moral evil of irreverence with respect to God; just as it is a moral evil, per se, to kill any one; yet there are cases in which it is a duty. So it is with an oath. In Paradise it was not lawful to swear, nor will it be lawful in heaven. So great is the majesty of the Name of God that It must not be called to witness unless necessity compel. For to invoke It about small and worthless things is to make It small and vile, just as would be the action of one who should call the king as witness about a single guinea. Hence the saints were cautious about swearing. In the Life of S. Chrysostom it is recorded as a notable thing that he never swore. The same is testified of S. John the Almoner.

You will ask whether also for Christians it is lawful to swear? For (1) many of the Fathers seem to say that it is not. SS. Jerome, Chrysostom, Euthymius, say that swearing was permitted by God to the Jews, lest they should swear by idols, but is not permitted to Christians. (2) Theophylact and Euthymius are of opinion that an oath was a legal precept of the old law, like circumcision. Wherefore, as the latter has been done away by Christ, so has the former. (3) Others think that an oath was allowed by God to the Jews, as being uninstructed, imperfect, and hard of belief, but has been forbidden to Christians because more perfect things become them as being more perfect, and because they ought to beware of the slightest peril of perjury. That in the same way divorce was permitted to the Jews, lest they should kill the wives whom they hated; and yet Christ takes away this permission from Christians. Thus think S. Hilary (in loc., Can. 4), S. Ambrose (in Ps. 119, Serm. 1), S. Basil (in Ps. 13), Chromatius and Origen (in loc., Tract. 35), Epiphanius (Hres. 19), S. Athanasius (Serm. de Passione et Cruce Domini), S. Chrysostom (Hom. ad pop.).

If you object that in Holy Scripture God took an oath, as in Gen 22:16, SS. Athanasius, Basil, and Ambrose answer that such oaths of God were not strictly speaking oaths, but. asseverations only-or promises; or, as S. Ambrose says, God may swear because He is able to fulfil that which He swears, and He cannot repent of it. But a man ought not to swear because he has not any certain power of doing that to which he pledges his oath.

If, further, you object that surely S. Paul swore when he said (2Co 1:23), “I call God to witness upon my soul” (Vulg.), S. Basil answers that this is not really an oath, but only a simple mode of speech, uttered with the appearance and form of an oath as a stronger affirmation.

But I say that not to the Jews only, but to Christians, is it lawful to swear. This is of faith, as is plain from the perpetual sense, use, and practice of the Church. “For of all strife among men”-even Christians-“an oath for confirmation is the end,” says the Apostle to the Heb 6:16. Moreover, in Scripture there is no affirmative precept for swearing, as there is for praying, sacrificing, loving and praising God, honouring parents, &c., because an oath is not, per se, desirable, but only for the sake of something else, and, as it were, per accidens, in such sort that it is a kind of medicine for unbelief. And there is a negative precept for swearing, namely that you shall not commit perjury or swear by false gods, but only by the true God. There is also a conditional precept that if you swear you shall only swear what is just, true, and necessary.

You may say, Christ here solemnly says to Christians, Swear not at all. I answer, this is true because, per se, it is unbecoming and improper to call the Great and Good God to witness about human disputes on account of men’s mutual distrusts, unless this impropriety may be excused by mutual necessity, as it is often excused by the want of witnesses and other judicial proofs.

To the Fathers who have been cited, I reply that they seem to have spoken in the same sense that Christ did, because they saw men often swearing falsely or unjustly, and, still more frequently, lightly, foolishly and rashly; hence on account of the peril of these things, they forbade an oath to Christians, that they should refrain from it as much as possible. But if any one is careful to avoid such dangers, then it is lawful for him to swear in a case of necessity. This is plain from S. Chrysostom, who, in his homilies to the people of Antioch, frequently and sharply rebuked their habit of rash swearing. And to those who wondered at his so doing, he thus replies. “I say and repeat, as I am accustomed, because ye say and repeat what ye are accustomed.” And he declares that he will not cease from this repetition until they leave off swearing. “For a hard knot a hard and constant wedge must be used.”

Neither by heaven, &c. It seems that the Jews were wont to swear by heaven and earth, and similar oaths. And because the Pharisees thought that these oaths, being made by creatures, were of small account, Christ here teaches the contrary-viz., that he who swears by heaven or earth, swears by God their Creator, who has placed the throne of His glory in heaven, and his footstool on earth.

Ver. 37.-But let your communication be, &c.-i.e., a simple affirmation, or negation. For what is more than these, Gr. . The Syriac has, what is added beyond these. In the Hebrew Gospel ascribed to S. Matthew, we have ain, ain, ken, ken-that is no, no, so, so. In this passage a simple affirmation or negation is opposed to an oath; so in S. James (v. 12) ; and it means that whatever is added to these in the way of swearing, is of evil. So S. Chrysostom and S. Jerome, or rather Paulinus, Epist. ad Celantium.

Of evil. Evil here may be taken either in the masculine or the neuter gender. If the masculine the devil is meant, who, as a ringleader of all iniquity, incites thee to swear without necessity, and so draws thee on by degrees to swear falsely, which is the sin of perjury. So Theophylact, Maldonatus, and others. If you take the neuter, it means cometh of vice, either your own or another’s-that is to say, the custom of swearing arises either from your own vice of levity or irreverence, or else from another man’s incredulity and distrust. Because a man does not believe my simple assertion, I confirm my words by an oath, which, however, is a fault become necessary since the fall of man. So S. Augustine.

Vers. 38 and 39.-You have heard, &c. This was the law of retaliation. But I say unto you, Resist not evil. That is, an evil or unjust thing, or an injury done to thee by a wicked man. That is, do not requite evil by evil, injury by injury. Or better, resist not evil, taking evil in the masculine-i.e., the evil man who injures you. The Greek , though both meanings amount to much the same thing.

Note-1. That the ancient lex talionis was just, but in practice it was often unjust, and sprang from a desire of revenge, by which one who had had an eye or tooth plucked out brought before the magistrate the person who had injured him, and demanded, by way of retaliation, that his eye or tooth should be plucked out. But Christ supplies the deficiency of this law and perfects it, by opposing to the lex talionis the law and counsel of patience, and to a disposition thirsting for revenge the law of meekness.

Fuente: Cornelius Lapide Commentary

5:13 Ye {2} are the salt of the {d} earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be {e} salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.

(2) The ministers of the word especially (unless they will be the most cowardly of all) must lead others both by word and deed to this greatest joy and happiness.

(d) Your doctrine must be very sound and good, for if it is not so, it will be not regarded and cast away as a thing unsavoury and vain.

(e) What will you have to salt with? And so are fools in the Latin tongue called “saltless”, as you would say, men that have no salt or savour and taste in them.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

Mat 5:13-16 have been called the epilogue to the Beatitudes and have been compared to the prologue to the Ten Commandments (Exo 20:3-6). [Note: Edersheim, 1:529.]

By placing "you" (Gr. hymeis) in the emphatic position in the Greek text, Jesus was stressing the unique calling of His disciples (cf. Mat 5:14). Salt was important in the ancient Near East because it flavored food, retarded decay in food, and in small doses fertilized land. [Note: Eugene P. Deatrick, "Salt, Soil, Savor," Biblical Archaeologist 25 (1962):44-45.] Jesus implied by this metaphor that His disciples could positively affect the world (Gr. kosmos, the inhabited earth, i.e., humankind). They had the opportunity through their lives and witness to bring blessing to others and to retard the natural decay that sin produces in life. As salt thrown out on the earth, they could also produce fruit to God. Some critics have wondered how salt could lose its saltiness since sodium chloride is a stable compound that does not break down.

"But most salt in the ancient world derived from salt marshes or the like, rather than by evaporation of salt water, and therefore contained many impurities. The actual salt, being more soluble than the impurities, could be leached out, leaving a residue so dilute it was of little worth." [Note: Carson, "Matthew," p. 138.]

The most obvious characteristic of salt is that it is different from the medium into which its user places it. Jesus’ disciples likewise are to be different from the world. As salt is an antiseptic, so the disciples are to be a moral disinfectant in a sin-infested world. This requires virtue, however, that comes only through divine grace and self-discipline. [Note: Tasker, p. 63.]

In modern Israel weak salt still often ends up scattered on the soil that tops flat-roofed houses, which the residents sometimes use as patios. There it hardens the soil and so prevents leaks. [Note: Deatrick, p. 47.] God will use disciples either as vessels unto honor or as vessels unto dishonor (cf. Rom 9:21; 2Ti 2:20).

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)