The verses for this week are very challenging. How do we interact with family, acquaintances, or friends who are unbelievers? Do we hide our relationship with Christ? Do our actions match up with what we believe? And finally, are you Kingdom material?
Let’s talk about salt. Aggie makes some good points about preserving, flavoring, and seasoning. These all apply to our interactions with unbelievers. The characteristics we talked about in the beatitudes are to be practiced in our daily lives. Meekness, merciful, thirsting for righteousness, poor in spirit, pure in heart. We live in a world rotten with sin and we, as disciples of Christ, are called to help preserve and purify a decaying world.
We are called to be in the world and influencing others through relationships with friends, co-workers, neighbors, and family. Too many Christians sit on the sidelines waiting for the next guy to do it, or even afraid of injecting anything spiritual into their relationships. As a result the saltiness is lost and their influence for Christ trampled by the masses looking for the next thing to satisfy them. Notice that verses 13 and 14 are directed at “you” not the next guy.
I will be the first to admit that I fail at this regularly. It is easy to let the urgings of the Spirit pass by because I am too busy or lack the self confidence to speak up. There is also pressure to blend in with the group, to be one of the guys. This can be a good thing unless it leads to compromise in my actions and eventually lose my “saltiness”. In I Cor 9:19-23 Paul basically says he became all things to all people so that he might opportunity to influence some with the gospel. Paul was blending with the world, seasoning it, like salt being rubbed into the meat, so he might be able to save a few.
Two other things about salt…it is a common substance and it makes you thirsty. God uses common things powerfully to glorify His name. Don’t think you are not worthy of being used. You need to get in the game. Is your life pointing your friends and co-workers to Christ? Your life in Christ should make others thirsty. Thirsty for the peace, love, mercy, and grace that only comes through relationship with Him. John 7:37-38 “If a man is thirsty let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me…streams of living water flow from within him”.
You are the light of the world. Obviously, our light only exists because of Christ. We are a reflection of Christ to the extent we want to be. Don’t shield it or try to hide it. Your light will illuminate the darkness that exists wherever you have influence. Many will not like it. Others will see Jesus in your character as you spend time with Him and will want know Him too. Don’t be satisfied with the knowledge you have gained. Continue to “hunger and thirst” for righteousness and your light will not grow dim.
Verses 17-20 spell out the bottom line. What does it mean that Christ came to fulfill the law? Some might say he fulfilled it by keeping it perfectly. The “bottom line” is he came to die and therefore cancel any claim the law has on us, who believe in Him. So what does that mean for us? As is apparent in the beatitudes we could never keep the whole law and therefore have no righteousness of our own that would guarantee eternity in heaven.
Are you kingdom material? Does your goodness qualify you for heaven? Human goodness certainly can accomplish a lot. It may lead to success at work, recognition in the community and at home. We all would rather be neighbors with a person who gives back to the community, cares for the poor, has integrity, honesty, and loves his family. They don’t lie, cheat, or gossip. Is that good enough? In verse 20 Christ says that unless you are more righteous than the Pharisees you will not enter the kingdom. The people of that time considered the Pharisees the supreme keepers of the law. He is saying that human goodness is not enough. We need the righteousness that comes as a free gift from God. Read Phil 3:4-9 where Paul, a former Pharisee, calls all his human assets rubbish, not having a righteousness of his own that comes from the law, but righteousness that comes from God, by faith.
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