Christian Purity Requires Us to be Spiritually Salted With Fire

In the Old Testament (OT), when God through Moses put his system of sacrifices into effect, certain offerings sacrificed in the fire were required to be seasoned with salt. According to scripture, salt was a significant part of God’s covenant with his people:

And every oblation of thy meat offering shalt thou season with salt; neither shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking from thy meat offering: with all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt. Leviticus 2:13

All the heave offerings of the holy things, which the children of Israel offer unto the LORD, have I given thee, and thy sons and thy daughters with thee, by a statute for ever: it is a covenant of salt for ever before the LORD unto thee and to thy seed with thee. Numbers 18:19

…thou shalt offer a young bullock without blemish, and a ram out of the flock without blemish. And thou shalt offer them before the LORD, and the priests shall cast salt upon them, and they shall offer them up for a burnt offering unto the LORD. Ezekiel 43:23-24

In the New Testament, we discover that in the spiritual sense the Lord Jesus Christ has established with us a covenant of salt accompanied by fire. This is brought to our attention at the closing of Mark 9 where Christ highlights the importance of our spiritual purity. It’s the popular passage where he says that his disciples should cut off their hand, foot, or eye if they cause us to offend for the sake of the quality of our eternal life. Of course, he didn’t mean we should literally self-mutilate (that would have been in line with pagan practices), but that we should use the grace/power God gives us to put noticeable restraints on our fleshly or worldly desires so as to keep moving onward and upward in out new life. Christian purity and self-sacrifice are a package deal. Doing anything short of that is to have a future in literal hell fire.

Then to wrap-up this teaching about sacrifice, the Lord Jesus comes to the “covenant of salt” clause of our relationship with him in Mark 9:49-50:

For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt. Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his saltness, wherewith will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another.

Jesus here is referring to what he told Moses in the OT scriptures above and explains how those sacrifices are symbolic of life with him as Lord. Every one who comes to him by God’s grace will be spiritually purified and preserved from corruption in the previously mentioned hell fire. Like the priests of the OT cast salt on the offerings, the Lord Jesus our High Priest, casts the spiritual salt of purification on those of us who are the New Testament sacrifices. We present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is our reasonable service.

Along with his purifying salt, God’s New Testament saints encounter a different kind of fire which, like the salt, purifies us. This is the baptism of the Holy Ghost (Matthew 3:11). He also purifies us through fiery trials (1 Peter 4:12-14). It also refers to our future judgment when we stand before the judgment seat of Christ to receive the things done in our body, according to what we have done, whether it be good or bad (2 Corinthians 5:10). On that day Christ our Lord will use his holy fire to “try every man’s work of what sort it is” so as to reveal the good works to reward those who did them and to burn the bad works of those who will suffer loss even as “he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire” (1 Corinthians 3:13-15).

Being spiritually salted with fire for our purification will end up affecting us individually as believers, but will also affect how we interact with fellow believers. Having salt in ourselves will bring about peace with one another, prompting us to avoid strife caused by seeking pre-eminence or discord fueled by self-centered ambitions. Additionally, God’s salt in us affects the unsaved world around us. Colossians 4:6 teaches believers to “Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.” So how we interact with peers can send godly ripples through our community in ways we may not have anticipated. May the Lord continue to enhance our covenant of salt along with fire that we may mature spiritually and glorify his holy name.