In the ancient world, salt was an expensive valuable commodity. Households used salt to preserve and protect meat from decay. Salt was the medicine of choice among physicians to ward off disease and infection. Employers even used salt to pay workers for a job well done. But if an employee were unproductive, he would be declared “not worth his weight in salt.”
Notice in the text that every offering was to be salted. Salt was the opposite of leaven, a symbol of evil and sin, meaning all we offer to God must be pure, sincere, and purged of hypocrisy. Every spiritual offering must be free of earthly contaminates before it can be offered to a holy God. When you and I worship God in our giving and service out of pure hearts and undefiled motives, we do so with a well-salted offering worthy of Him.
Jesus also stressed the importance of salt when He challenged His followers to be the salt of the earth (Matthew 5:13). Our world is extremely ill and prone to sin. The Christian, therefore, is to be a salty preservative to slow down and counter the rottenness and evil so pervasive in our day.
However, there is another aspect of salt that is of supreme importance in fulfilling Jesus’ commission—salt generates thirst. Christ-followers are to make the unbelieving world thirsty. May we be used not only to preserve what is just and pure but also to make all those we encounter thirsty for the things of God.
