13 Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. (Matthew 5:13)
Thomas Scott’s Commentary
Verse 13: Salt is the grand preservative from corruption in the material world, and it gives a seasoning to all our viands; but if it loses its saltiness, and becomes insipid, it is the most worthless of all substances, being unfit even for the dunghill, as it is rather conducive to sterility than fruitfulness.
The disciples and ministers of Christ are scattered about as salt in different parts of the world, that their doctrine, conversation, examples, labors, and prayers, may stop the progress of sin and impiety, and be instrumental in seasoning men’s minds with grace and holiness: but if they be unsound in doctrine, unholy in life, or vain and carnal in conversation, they disgrace their profession, are a scandal to their Master, prejudice the minds of men against the truth, or seduce them into error; and so they become the most worthless and wretched of mankind.
Every approach to this renders a Christian or minister unfit to be “the salt of the earth,” and deducts from his value and usefulness. This was peculiarly applicable to the primitive professors and teachers of Christianity; as they were sent forth to season the whole world, as it were, with their holy doctrine, lives, and labors.—‘The word savour has peculiar beauty and strength here, and might literally be rendered “if it be infatuated,” or grown foolish; alluding to the common metaphor in which sense and spirit are expressed by salt; as we call a flat lifeless discourse insipid.’—Doddridge.