So when you, listening to Jesus as he preaches from the mount, there s not a big question about what it is that he s talking about. People in the first century knew a lot about salt. It is a valuable commodity. But the value of salt is determined basically by one characteristic. Salt s saltiness is determined by its purity.
Salt is pure.
And so Jesus tells the disciples, and by extension, us, that we are to remain pure. We are not to become corrupted by any other influences. We are the salt of the earth. But salt has one other characteristic, a characteristic that it shares with all other elements of God s creation, and a characteristic highlighted by the next two metaphorical descriptions of the disciples. Salt is the way it is because that is what it is.