Mark 9:33-50

“For everyone will be seasoned with fire, and every sacrifice will be seasoned with salt. Salt is good, but if the salt loses its flavor, how will you season it? Have salt in yourselves and have peace with one another.” (Mark 9:49–50, NKJV)

I enjoy making sourdough bread. There is nothing quite like the taste of fresh bread, still warm from the oven, with butter and jam. In preparing the dough and letting it rise, there is an interesting relationship between the leaven of the culture and the salt. The leaven makes the dough rise, but salt helps restrain the process from happening too quickly or too much. That would make the bread collapse.

It is interesting that Jesus called His disciples “the salt of the earth” (Matthew 5:13). Among other qualities of salt, we are to have a restraining influence on others who would otherwise “puff up”.

Even while Jesus was predicting His betrayal and death, the disciples were striving with each other about who was first. Ego was at work in the heart puffing them up. They were the salt of the earth, but they first needed discipline themselves. So, Jesus told them that if they wanted to be first, then they must be last and the servant of all. He also gave them a stern warning about anyone who would cause a little one who believes in Him to stumble. Finally, He told them that it would be better to lose a member of the body (hand, foot or eye) than to go to hell where “their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.”

“For everyone will be seasoned with fire, and every sacrifice will be seasoned with salt.”

We don’t usually think of fire as being a seasoning, but meat or vegetables that are seared or roasted in the fire develop a desirable flavor. Likewise, God will put us through the fire. This is not to destroy us, but to discipline and refine us. It gives us the flavor and aroma of Christ. And if we would offer ourselves as living sacrifices and servants of God, then we must expect to be seasoned with salt. God will allow the restraining or humbling influence of the Word, the Holy Spirit, and other people to check our ego and keep us from being puffed up. Rather than striving to be first, we will be content to be like Jesus and servants of all. If we have this salt in ourselves, then we will be at peace with one another. And we will taste so much better!