New Testament

Light also is a positive image: the world is in darkness and Jesus’s followers are to be a light in that darkness. A “light in the darkness” is part of the messianic age, the suffering servant was to be a “light in the darkness.” Zechariah alludes to this in Luke 1:79, his son John will shine a light for those living in the darkness. They are in the dark because they live “in the shadow of death.” The Gospel of John describes Jesus as the “true light that gives light to everyone” (John 1:9) which overcomes the darkness (1:4-5).

Jesus offers two metaphors for the way his disciples were to be light in the world, a city and a lamp. First, a city on a hill cannot be hidden. it can be seen from a distance and any light from that city will be seen clearly in the darkness. Jeremias (Parables, 217) understands the saying as a word of comfort for the disciples, the “citizens of the … eschatological city of God … whose light streams through the night needing no human efforts.” Second, when a lamp lit, it was normally placed on a stand or in a niche in the wall so the light can illuminate the whole room. In makes no sense to hide an oil lamp under a basket, the point of a lamp is to shine light in the darkness.

The point of the two illustrations is that it is impossible for the Christ-follower to hide their light, and even if they could manage to hide their light, it makes no sense to do so since their entire purpose is “being a light.”

If the “Salt of the Land” referred to the disciples as a preserving agent within Judaism (as opposed to the Pharisees), then “Light of the World” refers to the function of Israel as the light to the Gentiles. Jesus uses κόσμος rather than γῆ, so the whole world (Jew and Gentile) is in view rather than just the Land of Israel.

Pennington points out that Scot McKnight is unique in his assertion the two words refer to different things. He argues they are in parallelism and therefore have the same reference. Pennington, Sermon on the Mount, 164, note 74. Late he says “both the salt and light metaphors are communicating the same idea, that Jesus’s disciples are not the heralds of the new and lasting covenant being effected by Jesus” (p. 165). While it is true Jesus’s disciples are heralds of the new covenant, is that what this passage is actually saying? He argues that salt and light overlap in the area of covenant, salt used with bread to conclude a covenant agreement, and light as associated with the messianic age of the new covenant.

Israel was supposed be so devoted to God, living out a wise lifestyle, that the nations would see them and be attracted to God. They were the “light of the world” in the Old Testament, but they failed to be devoted to the Law and failed to live out a wise life and rarely attracted Gentiles to the God of Israel. There are some examples of Gentiles honoring the God of Israel (Nebuchadnezzar, for example, perhaps Nehemiah, Esther and Mordecai), but for the most part Israel did not act as the “light to the world.” Ultimately, the “light to the whole world” is the messiah, especially in Isaiah 9:2, a passage quoted by Matthew 4:16 (cf., Isaiah 42:6, 9).

Finally, the followers of Jesus are to let their light shine in the world so that people will see this and glorify the Father. This too was supposed to be a function of Israel in the Old Covenant (Deut 4:5-8). If Israel is obedient to the Law, then the nations will see this and consider Israel to be a great and wise nation.

The followers of Jesus are to be the preserving agent in their culture; they are still the only light in this dark world, the only want that light can be seen is if it is active in the world in some real and tangible way. Good works is “a translation of the Jewish מַעֲשִׂים טֹובִים, the thought is of those demands of God that are not legally prescribed by the Torah, such as especially works of charity and alms giving” (Luz, Matthew 1-7, 208).

There are many examples of Christians who live out their faith in a way which benefits the whole culture and demonstrate to the culture the light of Jesus Christ. Some Christians live out a Christ-like lifestyle in a way which makes life better, healthy, etc. so that people are attracted to the Light.

But there are far too many Christians who are not unlike the Pharisees in the first century, so committed to a narrow way of thinking they are no longer benefiting their culture and they are more like a dim lamp underneath a basket!

Like the third beatitude, the “earth” (γῆ) in Matthew 5:13 refers to the land of Israel. If I am right about salt as a preserving agent, then Jesus is telling his circle of disciples they are the ones who will preserve Israel (and not the Pharisees).

The worthless salt is “thrown out and trampled (καταπατέω) under people’s feet.” Although this is the type of thing one might do with worthless salt, there may be a hint of coming judgment on people who do not hear Jesus’s message. Later in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warns against giving sacred things to dogs and casting “pearls before swine” (Matt 7:6). This is a troubling verse for many reasons, but on the surface it appears to warn disciples they will be attacked (trampled and torn to pieces) when they preach the Gospel to some types of people. In Luke’s version of the parable of the sower, some seed falls on the path and is trampled (Luke 8:5) In Matthew 13:4 the seed on the path is eaten by birds and Jesus interprets this as the “evil one” snatching away the word of God.

Although the phrase does not appear in Matthew, in Luke 21:24 Jesus says “Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles” (using the cognate verb πατέω). Revelation 11:2 is a possible allusion to this verse, the Gentiles will trample (πατέω) Jerusalem for 42 months. But Gentiles trampling Jerusalem appears in clear eschatological texts the Hebrew Bible as well. For example, in Daniel 8:13 Daniel asks how long the sanctuary and host will be “trampled underfoot?” Although it is not the same word as Matthew 5:13, the LXX uses a related verb, συμπατέω. Daniel 8 refers to the desecration of the Temple prior to the Maccabean revolt, but Jesus uses the language of Daniel 9:27 to predict the coming fall of Jerusalem (Matt 24:15).

Perhaps Jesus implies a contrast between his (true) disciples and those who are not his disciples. The “not the salt of the earth people” are the Pharisees and other leaders in Jerusalem who are not hearing Jesus nor accepting him as the messiah. After the Sermon on the Mount Jesus demonstrates his authority through a series of miracles (Matthew 8-9), but there are also a series of stories describing resistance to Jesus. The “teachers of the Law” think Jesus is blaspheming when he forgives sin (9:3), the Pharisees complain Jesus is eating with sinners (9:11), the disciples of John the Baptist question Jesus on fasting (9:14) and even John himself wonders if Jesus is really the messiah (11:1-19). Whole villages reject Jesus (11:20-24), the Pharisees condemn Jesus for breaking the Sabbath (12:1-14) and eventually declare his power of demons proves he is an agent of Beelzebul (12:22-37). After refusing to give the Pharisees a sign (Matt 12:38-45), even Jesus rejects his own family in favor of his true followers (12:46-50). By the end of Matthew it is the Pharisees who are judged as blind guides, those who cannot preserve Israel any longer and are in danger of being cast out (Matt 23).

With this overview of Matthew in mind, the saying in Matthew 5:13 may be an encouragement to the disciples to be the preserving agent within Second Temple Judaism and a veiled threat to those who reject Jesus as messiah. That the Pharisees are the ones to be tossed out and trampled is a typical ironic reversal of expectations: those who think they will enter the Kingdom of Heaven will remain outside while others enter the Kingdom before them.

I find this a remarkable warning to contemporary Christianity. There are far too many people who claim to be following Jesus but they are more like the Pharisees. It is very easy for a church or a Christian to become so wrapped up in what people think counts toward religion and piety and completely miss the whole point of following Jesus. This might take the form of religious practices which lose their meaning, or the kind of political activism which mixes a poor understating of the Bible with a radical Americanism. To what extent is Jesus’s warning to those about to be cast out and trampled underfoot a call to the modern Christian church?

“Salt, city, and light can be used for almost anything, and the history of interpretation shows that this indeed is what has happened” (Luz, Matthew 1-7, 205).

The second section of the Sermon makes two remarkable statements about the followers of Jesus. They are the “salt of the Earth” and the “light of the world.” Both metaphors have become common in western culture, although the meaning of “salt of the earth” has changed. For example, the common dictionary definition is “a simple, good person” just as Jesus’s followers were simple fishermen. But this completely misses the point of what Jesus intended in Matthew 5:13.

So what does Jesus mean by these two metaphors? As is common in the teaching of Jesus, he is looking back to the Hebrew Bible and interpreting as a prophet by applying texts and metaphors to himself and his followers.

Since salt is a preserving agent in the ancient world, the followers of Jesus will in some real way act as agents of preservation. Salt has several different uses, from purification (Exod 30:35) to adding flavor to foods (Luke 14:34, “lost its taste”). Scot McKnight suggests the exact nuance of “salt” is less important than the loss of saltiness (McKnight, Sermon on the Mount, 57; Davies and Allison list eleven possibilities, Matthew 1-7, 472-3). Whatever the use of salt Jesus as in mind, salt is worthless if it is not salty! The verb μωραίνω sometimes has the nuance of “foolish” here the aorist passive refers to something which has become tasteless, or possibly “become insipid.”

Can salt actually lose its saltiness? It seems unlikely for the chemistry of salt to change into something else simply through disuse, so scholars often refer to Dead Sea salt, which is only about one-third salt. The other minerals can lose their taste when they dry out. It is possible the reference is mixing salt and other things, so that the salt is no longer effective.

Or, is “salt losing its saltiness” a metaphor for an impossible thing, like hiding a city on the hill? If it is impossible for a city on a hill to be hidden, perhaps the point is that in the unlikely event salt goes bad, it gets tossed out. This may be an eschatological allusion, tramping under foot may be part of judgment.

“The salt is thrown out, according to the everything-in-the-street law, which was the principle of garbage disposal in the ancient Orient. Understand that the disciple will be excluded from Jesus’ following … will be trodden underfoot; an image of the scorn—even on the part of humans—that is the lot of disciples who have fallen away from their fervor” (M. J. Lagrange, cited by TLNT 2:536).

This metaphor implies the follower of Jesus can become less effective, so that they are “worthless.” Looking ahead to the end of the Sermon, Jesus says many will come to him on the Day of Judgment expecting to enter into the Kingdom of God, claiming to have prophesied and cast out demons in his name, but he will say to them “I never knew you” (Matt 7:21-23). Not everyone who appears to be a follower of Christ is actually a follower, just as not everyone in a church today has a real relationship with Jesus.

This saying is spoken directly to Jesus’s followers, the ones who are sitting at his feet and listening to his teaching. They are the ones who are told they are a preserving agent designed to keep their culture from decaying into foolishness. It is perhaps not insignificant the word Jesus uses is also used by Paul in Romans 1:22, those who claimed to me wise had become fools when they worshiped idols. The follower of Jesus potentially can decay from a wise person (with their house built on the rock) into the foolish person (with their house built on the sand), as Jesus will conclude the sermon in Matthew 7:24-26.

This is not particularly comforting. Jesus says it is possible for his followers to become “worthless” and no longer of any value. On the one hand, this may be part of a common theme throughout Matthew that there are some followers of Jesus who are not “true followers” and will be separated out for judgment at some point (Judas, for example). But on the other hand, this is a warning to all the followers of Jesus to maintain their effectiveness as disciples of Jesus.

In what ways might the church (or an individual Christian) “lose their saltiness”? Is it possible some parts of the western, Christian church has already become ineffective for the Gospel and has become worthless? What are some ways the Church heed this warning?

There are many theological threads in this introduction to the Sermon on the Mount, here I want to settle on just three points which will resonate through the rest of the Sermon.

The Kingdom of God. There is an eschatological promise in the beatitudes; there is coming a time when the people of God will experience a reward for their oppression and perseverance (Allison, The Sermon on the Mount, 42). These promises are all related to the hope for a restored kingdom for Israel in the future.

Here is but one example of dozens of texts in the prophets with similar expectations. The conclusion to the first half of the book of Isaiah begins with a judgment of the nations using Edom as a model of Israel’s enemy. Isaiah 34:2-4 describes an apocalyptic judgment on the nations. The Lord will utterly destroy them, they will wither like leaves on the vine. But in 34:16-16 the Lord gathers his people back to their allotment and “they will possess it forever.” Feeble hands will be made strong, the eyes of the blind will be opened, the deaf will hear, the lame will leap, and the mute will speak (35:5-6). The way to Zion will be opened and the redeemed will travel this “way of holiness” in gladness and joy (35:9-10). The prophets anticipate Israel’s liberation from her enemies but also a time of Edenic peace and prosperity.

Although the kingdom is in many ways still future (from both the perspective of Jesus and the present church), there are some aspects of that kingdom immediately present in the ministry of Jesus. Immediately following the Sermon, Matthew collects a series of stories which indicate the Kingdom of God is in some ways present in Jesus’ ministry. For example, the first story is the healing of a man with leprosy. Jesus makes him clean, the verb (καθαρίζω) is cognate to the noun used in Matthew 5:8, the “pure (καθαρός) in heart.” Although this man is made clean physically, he has “seen God” in Jesus.

In Matthew 11:1-5 disciples of John the Baptist ask Jesus if he is the messiah, and Jesus responds by pointing to the many miracles and healings which bear witness to a messianic outpouring of the Spirit of God. In 11:6 he concludes by pronouncing a blessing on those who do not stumble on account of him.

The kingdom is therefore present in the ministry of Jesus in a very real way. People are experiencing the presence of the king. These are a foretaste of the kingdom expected in by prophets in the Hebrew Bible.

Reversal of Expectation. “The beatitudes “present true human flourishing as entailing suffering as Jesus’s disciples await God’s coming kingdom that Jesus is inaugurating” (Pennington, Sermon on the Mount, 153). In each of the beatitudes there is a reversal of what the outside might think is the way to receive blessing from God. The obvious example is the blessing pronounced on those who suffer for the sake of Jesus.

Suffering is not usually something people rejoice in, so to say, “the way to flourish as a human is to suffer for the sake of Jesus” would have surprised, even shocked the Jewish listener who would see suffering as a sign of judgment for sin. A later Greco-Roman reader would also consider this a strange saying since the pursuit of honor in the Roman world left little room for suffering on account of a crucified criminal!

Redefining Happiness. The form of a beatitude implies the one who does part one of the saying will be happy because part two of the saying will make them happy. But as Scot McKnight observes, these sayings are not descriptions of happiness in the modern sense of the word. Just google “how to be happy” as see all the pages listing “fifteen ways” to be happy: smile, meditate, spend time outside (on the warm day) or with friends, practice gratitude, etc. Although these are all very good things to consider, they are not at all what these eight beatitudes describe as happiness. Modern happiness tends to be focused on my personal happiness, feeling good about myself.

These eight beatitudes are all other focused, being a peacemaker is not about your personal happiness but rather reconciling others; one cannot “show mercy” without acting on behalf of others.

In addition, these beatitudes redefine happiness as future oriented. Even if this exact moment seems oppressive and difficult, the person truly seeking the will of God always has confidence the struggle is worth it because God is working in history to re-establish his order on the chaos of creation. If we focus our happiness on ourselves and this particular moment, then we will probably not be total happy.

This beatitude is one of the more surprising reversals of conventional expectations in the beatitudes. Most people consider being persecuted for any reason to be a “blessing.” But in first Second Temple Judaism, there was virtue in being persecuted for the essential boundary markers of Judaism.

The stories in the first part of Daniel are examples of Jewish people who face persecution and death because of their commitment to the Jewish God. In each episode Daniel and his companions refuse to obey a particular command of the king and in each case their life is threatened. In chapter 3 and 6 the men are more or less executed for their stand and are only preserved by divine action.

Fourth Maccabees is another example of a Second Temple Jewish text which praises those who lie out their commitment to their Jewish heritage. Seven brothers are willing to die rather than defile themselves with unclean foot or to bow to the king. David deSilva suggested the book addressed a Jewish community which may face persecution as they have in the past, in order to encourage them to maintain their faithfulness to the Law in the face the dominant culture (deSilva, Introducing the Apocrypha, 357).

2 Baruch 52:5-6 has a similar saying, “And concerning the righteous ones, what will they do now? Enjoy yourselves in the suffering which you suffer now.” Suffering is preparation of the soul for reward, “and make ready your souls for the reward which is preserved for you” (52:7).

Jesus is not talking about enduring generic bad times, but persecution “for the sake of righteousness.” As with Matthew 5:6, righteousness does not necessarily refer to spiritual discipline or personal holiness and piety, but rather concrete actions of justice such as care for the poor and helpless. Those who “inherit the kingdom” in Matthew 25:31-46 are the ones who cared for the hungry and thirsty, those who were naked or in prison. It is very easy to make this beatitude a blessing on those who are persecuted for performing some public act of piety such as praying in public.

Who would persecute someone for doing acts of justice for the poor and helpless? In the immediate context, the Pharisees will challenge Jesus for his ongoing actions towards the underclass in Galilee. He touches a leper to heal him (Matt 8:1-4), even though the leper was “unclean” and forbidden to worship at the temple. He heals the servant a centurion’s servant (8:5-13). Even if the centurion was a God-Fearing gentile, he would not be permitted to enter the court of the men and worship at the Temple. Jesus eats with “tax collectors, prostitutes and other sinners” (Matt 8:9-13) and the Pharisees question Jesus’s non-observance of fasting traditions (Matt 8:14-17). One of the indications you are a true disciple of Jesus disciple of Jesus is that you are suffering in the same ways as Jesus.

Matthew 5:11-12 seems to be an extension on the eighth beatitude which makes this theme of “suffering like Jesus” more clear. The form of the beatitude changes to include the immediate audience, “blessed are you (μακάριοί ἐστε) when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.” In addition, France points out the two blessings in verses 11-12 are “forward looking” to a time when the disciples will face the same kinds of attacks Jesus endured. Jesus was reviled (ὀνειδίζω) in Mark 15:32; Paul alludes to Psalm 68:10 when he says Christ endured “reproaches” Romans 15:3. In addition to persecution, people will say “all sorts of evil things” about the disciples, the same kinds of false accusations Jesus faced.

This final saying in the beatitudes is perhaps the most challenge for western Christians since for the most part Christianity is not suppressed. But for the majority world, Christians really do suffer for their faith. There are many examples of Christians in North Africa or the Far East who have been impoverished and imprisoned because of their faith in Jesus, many are killed because they refuse to recant their faith in Jesus. This is “suffering like Jesus. It is very difficult to consider the Starbucks red cup controversy as a real attack on Christians.