Mark 9:50…“Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again? Have salt among yourselves, and be at peace with each other.”
A baked potato with butter, sour cream, pepper, and “SALT.” The salt is the essence of the taste and heightens the tastes of the other flavors. This is why we have salt and pepper shakers on our tables…we want to enhance the taste.
Sodium is an extremely active element found naturally only in combined form; it always links itself to another element. Chlorine, on the other hand, is the poisonous gas that gives bleach its offensive odor. When sodium and chlorine are combined, the result is sodium chloride--common table salt--the substance we use to preserve meat and bring out its flavor. Love and truth can be like sodium and chlorine. Love without truth is flighty, sometimes blind, willing to combine with various doctrines. On the other hand, truth by itself can be offensive, sometimes even poisonous. Spoken without love, it can turn people away from the gospel. Truth without love divides marriages, destroys parenting skills, and diminishes life.
Yet, when truth and love are combined, much like salt and chlorine, in an individual or a church, we have what Jesus called "the salt of the earth," and we're able to bring taste to our culture and bring out the beauty of our faith. Look Mark 10:2-9:
“Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” “What did Moses command you?” he replied. They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.” “It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,”
Jesus replied. “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. He answered, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.”
What is Jesus teaching us about marriage and divorce? … Jesus is tough and teaches us that marriage is not about lust. Lust of control, lust of power, lust of fleshly desires and sex, but marriage is about keeping your word and living as a united couple for the purpose of mutual edification.” Thus, married Christians should make a difference in the “flavor of the world we live in, just as salt changes meat’s flavor.”
A Christ-follower’s marriage should be above and beyond the world’s view of marriage. It is our calling to unite together and grow together as a couple, as possible parents, and ultimately in serving God and His people. God allowed divorce as a concession to the people’s sinfulness.
It is important to always be reminded…Sinfulness reduces a person ability to live a God like life...much like water will delude salt.
Let me ask you, “Do you bring taste in the life you live?” Do the people around you say, “I know the essence of Jesus because of you.”? Other than your mother, your spouse knows you better than anyone else…does your spouse see you and know that you bring a flavor filled taste to the world and to your home?
Hebrews 13:1-5, “Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. 2 Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. 3 Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering. 4 Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. 5 Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”
Do you bring taste into your world?
Striving to do my best to bring taste into the lives I am blessed to meet! You know I love ya, Don
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