“And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into shell, ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’ For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”- Mark 9:43-50
I bring us back to a portion of the text I preached from last week to zero in on a couple of things I didn’t have time to cover in the sermon. Jesus is still speaking to the fact that the disciples had been arguing over who would be the greatest among them. Without ever directly speaking to their sinfulness instead He gives a couple of radical illustrations to support His overall declaration, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” (Mark 9:35)
The first illustration was gathering up in His arms a child saying, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but Him who sent me…Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.” (Mark 9:37 and 42)He is emphasizing that they/we are to be childlike in our trust and humility. The power of humility is that one does not boast in themselves, but trust in the One who has all power, placing others first to do His will. Jesus took the path of humility in His suffering and dying for all His children. This is radical because Jesus speaks to their need for position by using one who held no position and had no standing in the society.
The next radical illustration is the one of disfigurement for the sake of the Kingdom of God…for the sake of life…as He had said “whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.” (Mark 8:35) The Jews considered disfigurement to be the result of serious sin. Jesus once again goes against conventional wisdom to make the point that disfigurement is preferred to hell. In fact, the worst calamity that can fall upon a man according to Jesus is to go to hell. Of course, this is hyperbole but His point to them and to us is to highlight the costliness of sinful habits and how we should be sold out to do whatever it takes to deal with them.
Then there is this wonderful passage, “For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.” For the Jew salt speaks to the sacrifices given. Lev. 2:13 states, “You shall season all your grain offerings with salt. You shall not let the salt of the covenant with your God be missing from your grain offering; with all your offerings you shall offer salt.” Salt also played an important role in the covenant unity between the people. In the common life of the day salt was a sign of sacred covenant relationships and obligations, “Ought you not to know that the LORD God of Israel gave the kingship over Israel forever to David and his sons by a covenant of salt?”(II Chron. 13:5)God salted David as way of preserving this promised relationship. He actually salted him by fire with all the trials that God put him through with those who were closest to him. Day to day then, to eat salt together (that is, take meals together with other like-minded folks) meant to make peace and keep peace with one another hence the connection here between saltiness and peace and the picture of unity; “Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.” “In yourselves” speaks not to individual peace but the peace found and maintained within the bonds of unity among believers.
In other words, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” The question of greatness among one another is a sin worthy of being cut off, or plucked out because no one within the Body is greater than another. It takes us all in unity to “Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”
God Bless y’all today.
In His Grip,
Pastor Mike
