The Text
Mark 9:49–50 (CSB)
49 For everyone will be salted with fire.
50 Salt is good, but if the salt should lose its flavor, how can you season it? Have salt among yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”
The Devotion
Again, we can talk about salt in terms of farming or cooking. But I want to emphasize what Christ is highlighting here:
What is our source?
Is it our good works?
Is it our devotion?
Is it anything we do?
Is it our job? Our family? Our marriage? Our singleness?
Is it what we can do with our hands or mind?
What is our source of life?
In order to live, the source has to be God.
God is not here to supplement our lives living by our way. God has called us out of our own way into death and destruction and into him for actual life.
1 John 5:1 (CSB) Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father also loves the one born of him.
The Triune God must be in you. And if he is in you, then he will be at work in you.
Salt works from the outside in order to get into the soil or into the food we eat.
Legalism thinks that if we do a bunch of good stuff, then some how that would seep into our hearts and causes us to be good in the sight of God.
Licentious (Anti-nominalism or in other words, “the law doesn’t matter”) thinks that God is us, God loves us enough to leave us alone.
Both are going straight to hell.
God in you and God in me will change us from the inside out.
God changes our hearts, we now get to obey God.
God renews our minds, we take our thoughts captive to Christ.
God gives us His Spirit, we are now children of God.
God gave His Son, we now have everlasting life.
The Discussion
1. What does your life look like when the source is not God but something not God or even something that God has give us?
2. How are we not our personality nor the things we own nor the things we do?
3. Imagine what would your life be like if you lived as though your source for life was God alone? What would that look like?
The Prayer from the Psalms
Psalm 1 (CSB)
1 How happy is the one who does not walk in the advice of the wicked or stand in the pathway with sinners or sit in the company of mockers!
2 Instead, his delight is in the LORD’s instruction, and he meditates on it day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted beside flowing streams that bears its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.
4 The wicked are not like this; instead, they are like chaff that the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand up in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6 For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to ruin.
Like a child, I have fallen and all of my strength has left me.
As my precious Father, put me back up on my feet and hold my hands so I can learn to run to you.
Give me your strength and might.
Give me your word and your promises.
Oh, how you give to me. You give me your love and you see to it that I make it back to you.
By only You will I be able to grow, mature and stand with you in your presence.
I distinctly remember my life before Your life.
I remember disease, destruction, slavery, and death.
My little heart and feeble mind wants to give up and turn my face back towards death.
Then I would leave Life. I would step out of the fullness of joy. I would then settle for lesser pleasures. I would not have You.
God, I am still weak like a little child. Give me your strength and love. Turn my heart towards you. Run towards me and pick me up once more.
The Resources
Calvin’s Commentaries.
by John Calvin.
Baker. 2009.
Olive Tree
Mark: An Expositional Commentary
by R.C. Sproul.
Reformation Trust Publisher. 2011.
Goodreads
New Testament Commentary: Exposition of the Gospel According to Mark
by William Hendriksen.
Baker. 1981.
Goodreads
The Gospel according to Mark: The English Text With Introduction, Exposition, and Notes (The New International Commentary on the New Testament)
by William L. Lane.
Eerdman’s. 1974.
Goodreads
Mark (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, NT Volume 2)
Edited by Thomas C. Odin & Christopher A. Hall
IVP Academic. 2005.
Goodreads
Mark (The Story of God Bible Commentary Series)
by Timothy G. Gombis.
Zondervan Academic. March 9th 2021.
Goodreads