A simple line in Mark 9:50 says so much. It’s almost a throw-away and yet when taken in light of the surrounding passage it speaks volumes. “Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with each other.”

In Mark 9-10, the Lord spent a lot of time summarizing God’s standards for behavior, and believe me, they are impossible. So much so that the disciples were amazed and exclaimed, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus replied,” With man this is impossible, but not with God. All things are possible with God (Mark 10:26-27)”

And right in the middle of this two chapter teaching is that simple little line, “have salt in yourselves and be at peace with each other” (Mark 9:50).  What big lessons spring from the little things in Scripture.

Worth His Salt

Salt was used in that era as a preservative to retard the spoiling process. Of course there were no refrigerators back then, and therefore salt was a valuable commodity. In fact Roman soldiers were sometimes paid in salt. (This is where the saying, “worth his salt” originated.) They could easily trade the salt for the things they needed and sometimes they even made a small profit in the bargain.

When searching for “salt” in the Bible, you find 27 references in the Old Testament and 8 in the New. For example, salt was one of the ingredients in the sacred incense, for use in the Holy of Holies (Exodus 30:34-35).

Covenant of Salt

In Leviticus 2:13 the Lord commanded the Israelites to use the “salt of the covenant” in the grain offering, a voluntary act of worship.  There is also a reference in Numbers 18:19to a “covenant of salt” in connection with the portion of the sacrificial offerings that went to the Levites for their consumption.  This covenant of salt is mentioned for the third time in 2 Chron. 13:5 referring to the Lord’s promise of an everlasting kingdom for David.

Traditionally the covenant of salt symbolized  endurance, preservation, and freedom from corruption.  Although the Bible never explains this in so many words, the three Old Testament references to this covenant seem to say the Lord was preserving forever something He has ordained and wants it to remain free of corruption.

The Priests and Levites were set apart for Him, given no land, and supported (preserved) through the offerings Israel made to the Lord.  When certain of them became corrupt, He banned them from His presence forever, and in the Millennium will allow only the family of Zadok, who remained faithful, to perform the most important Temple duties in His presence (Ezekiel 44:10-16).

Similarly, the Davidic line was established to preserve the throne of Israel for the coming Messiah.  But when the kings of Judah became corrupt, the Lord cursed the royal line of David suspending the office of king until the Messiah Himself comes to sit on David’s throne (Jeremiah 22:28-30,Ezekiel 21:25-27, Luke 1:32).  Sidestepping this curse required nothing less than a virgin birth to qualify the Messiah to become Israel’s King.  These examples tell us only God can make a Covenant of Salt and only God can keep it.

As I’ve written before, things that are external and physical in the Old Testament often become internal and spiritual in the New.  So if New Testament believers are supposed to have salt in ourselves, it must symbolize a spiritual preservative that gives us endurance and is free of corruption. And please note that the admonition is not to salt ourselves, but to have salt in ourselves.  In other words, it’s not something we do, it’s something that’s done for us.

The Salt Of The Earth

Romans 8:29- 30 says those who believe have been conformed to the likeness of his Son, and because of that we’ve been justified by God. The Greek word translated “justified” is dikaioo. It means to render righteous.  Because of our faith God has declared us to be righteous.  When He looks upon us,  He sees a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17) created to be like Him in true righteousness and holiness (Ephes 4:24). When we sin He attributes our behavior to the old sin nature that still dwells within us (Romans 7:18-20) and since He’s going to destroy our sin nature and retain only the part of us that conforms to the likeness of His Son, that’s the part He chooses to see.

“For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.  For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality “ (1 Cor. 15:52-53).

On that day we will become in fact that which we already are by faith, receiving new bodies that will never decay.  Until then our faith preserves our life in His presence.  And because our faith is based on what the Lord has done, and not something we do, it endures forever and cannot be corrupted like the Kings and Priests of old were corrupted.  By one sacrifice He has perfected forever we who are sanctified (Hebr. 10:14)

But there’s more. Because of our faith, God put His spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come (2 Cor. 1:21-22).  As a result, our presence on Earth has helped preserve the fallen world around us by retarding the spoiling process.  Jesus even called us the salt of the Earth (Matt. 5:13).  But it won’t be this way forever.  One day soon, we’ll be removed from the Earth to Heaven, the place of our citizenship (Phil. 3:20), and the salt of the Earth will no longer be here.

This was Paul’s point in 2 Thes. 2:7-8. He said the secret power of lawlessness is already at work but someone’s holding it back.  That someone is the Holy Spirit resident in the Church (Ephes. 1:13-14).  After our departure the spoiling process will accelerate and the world we leave behind will be destroyed in judgment.  Then,  just as He will have made a new incorruptible body for us, God will make a new Creation, liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God (Romans 8:19-21).

Act Justly, Love Mercy, Walk Humbly with Your God

And that’s why the rest of Mark 9:50 is also important … “and be at peace with each other.“  Earlier in Mark 9 we can read about an argument among the disciples over which one of them was the greatest (Mark 9:33-37).  Then there was the incident where the disciples made a man stop driving out demons in the Lord’s name because he wasn’t one of them (Mark 9:38-41), and finally the warning not to be the cause of another person’s sin (Mark 9:42-48).   Part of being the salt of the Earth is to be a source of peace in your sphere of influence.  You can’t very well preserve something while you’re tearing it down.  Paul said if it’s possible, as far as it depends on us, we should live at peace with everyone (Romans 12:18).

So there you have it.  A little sentence with a big meaning.  The Bible’s full of them.

I’ve been answering questions from so many people for so long that I sometimes forget not everyone who comes to the site has read all of them.  As a case in point,  I recently answered a question about the flood where I said it was the second in a series of seven times where mankind would violate the terms of an agreement with God and bring judgment upon themselves.  I didn’t think anymore about it until I received several questions from people asking what I was talking about and could I list the other six times.  I realized they hadn’t read the several answers I have posted over the years on the theological system I follow called dispensationalism.

What Is Dispensationalism?
Dispensationalism is a method for interpreting the Bible. The Greek word from which we get dispensation appears only 7 times in the New Testament and is only translated as such in four of those, all by Paul and all in the King James (1 Cor. 9:17, Ephes. 1:10, Ephes. 3:2, Colossians 1:25). Other meanings of this word are stewardship, administration, and economy.

What Do Dispensationalists Believe?
A dispensationalist believes that throughout history God has dealt with humanity in different ways at different times as part of the process of revealing His character and His plan for mankind, and calls these different periods dispensations.  For example, while salvation has always been by faith, the way to salvation through much of the Old Testament was through Israel and required obedience to the Law as well.  That is not the case during the Church Age.  And while eternal security is promised to the Church, it was not promised to Israel. Neither was the Holy Spirit sealed within Old Testament believers as is the case with believers in the Church (Ephes. 1:13-14).  Therefore the way God dealt with Israel in the Old Testament took place during a different dispensation than His dealings with the Church in the New Testament. Get the idea?

This is one of the reasons I’ve given in support of my position that Eternal Security won’t be available to post rapture believers.  The last seven years before the Lord’s return (Daniel’s 70th Week) will be a time when God deals primarily with Israel again, as He did in the Old Testament.  He promised Israel these seven years and has yet to provide them.  Daniel 9:24-27 explains this and tells us a temple will be built in Israel during that time, and that animal sacrifices will once again be offered on its altar.  While these things were required during Old Testament times they would be both unnecessary and undesirable now unless the Church Age first comes to an end, something that will happen with the rapture. This is why so many dispensationalists believe the rapture will happen before Daniel’s 70th Week begins.

Some say that dispensationalism is a relatively modern system of theology first proposed by John Nelson Darby in the mid 1800’s.  But evidence that the early church believed in the principles of dispensationalism can be found in the 2nd Century writings of Justin Martyr and Irenaeus.  Justin Martyr saw four distinct periods (dispensations) and gave them the names of the principle players, Adam to Abraham; Abraham to Moses; Moses to Christ; and Christ to Eternity. Irenaeus also saw four periods, from the Creation to the Flood, from the Flood to the Law, from the Law to the Gospel, and from the Gospel to Eternity.

More recently most scholars have settled on seven dispensations. Each one has begun with an agreement between God and man that man has subsequently broken, causing the agreement to fail and requiring a judgment.  Here are the seven dispensations in chronological order.

1) Innocence … Between the Creation and the Fall of Man in the Garden.  God interacted freely and personally with Adam and Eve during this period. Then they broke the only rule He had given them (Genesis 3:11-13) and were expelled from the Garden. Sin entered the world.

2) Conscience … Between the Fall and the Flood, God allowed man’s conscience to govern his behavior without Divine interference. Because of the sin nature passed down from mankind’s first parents, the result was that “the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and  every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5).  God pronounced judgment upon the world and destroyed all but 8 members of the human race in the Great Flood.

3) Human Government … from the Flood to Abraham.  After the flood God told Noah to go forth and replenish the Earth (Genesis 9:7).  Noah’s descendants disobeyed God’s commandment, setting about instead to build a great city and tower from which to study the stars (Genesis 11:4). God confused man’s language, causing them to stop building the tower, and  scattered them through out the world (Genesis 11:8-9).

4) Promise … from Abraham to Moses.  God promised Abraham a homeland for his descendants (Genesis 17:8) and a son for him and Sarah (Genesis 17:15-16).  But they grew tired of waiting and produced a son on their own, who they named Ishmael (Genesis 16:1-2.15).  When God’s promised son Isaac was born, Ishmael was sent away (Genesis 21:8-13) causing enmity between the Jews (descendants of Isaac) and Arabs (descendants of Ishmael) that continues to this day.  After Mohammed, a descendant of Ishmael’s, founded Islam this enmity took on religious significance and became even more intense.

5) Law … from Moses to Jesus. God gave Moses the 10 Commandments and promised the Jews  a life of peace and plenty in a Kingdom of their own if they obeyed (Exodus 19:5, Exodus 20:1-17).  After repeated periods of disobedience which included rejecting their Messiah King, God withdrew His offer of the Kingdom and expelled them from their land (Matt. 21:43, Luke 19:41-44).

6) Grace … from Pentecost to the Rapture, the Church Age. No longer requiring righteousness through works, God granted a righteousness by grace through faith in the completed work of Christ to all who accept, whether Jew or Gentile (Romans 3:21-24). Most will not accept and will be punished through eternity.

Note: It’s important to realize that Grace didn’t replace Law, it just interrupted it.  Law has another 7 years to run, called Daniel’s 70th Week (Daniel 9:24-27), which fills the time between the Rapture and the 2nd Coming.  During this time all the nations to which Israel has been scattered will be completely destroyed and Israel will be disciplined in preparation for  receiving the Kingdom (Jeremiah 30:4-11).

7)The Kingdom … the 1000 Year Reign of Christ that begins with the 2ndComing.  This time Israel will accept the Kingdom offer (Zechariah 12:10, Zechariah 14:8-9). Satan will be bound(Rev. 20:2), all unbelievers will be expelled from the planet (Matt. 25:41-46), and God will once again dwell in the midst of His people (Ezek 43:6-7).  You’d think man could finally live in a manner pleasing to God. But he can’t.  With the exception of Israel, the world will rebel against God and His people.  God will send fire to consume them all (Rev. 20:7-10).

What Is God’s Purpose In This?
I think the overarching purpose of these seven dispensations is to demonstrate that there are no conditions under which natural man can behave in a manner acceptable to God.  Only the Church is able to do so and then only after being perfected in the rapture.  This why Paul wrote that after the end of the Millennium when it comes time for Jesus to present the kingdom to the Father, He will first destroy all dominion, authority and power (1 Cor. 15:24).  This means as we enter eternity neither mankind nor the angels will ever have the desire or ability to disobey God again.  That’s why there isn’t an eighth dispensation called Eternity.

Two of the major changes that dispensationalism as we know it today brought upon the post reformation world were the return to a literal interpretation of Scripture, especially where it deals with prophecy, and the realization that there’s a distinct difference between Israel and the Church in the End Times.  It’s the best tool I know of for determining the context of a passage and understanding who its intended recipients are.  (Reform theology does not adhere to a literal interpretation of Scripture, treats end times prophecy as allegorical, and blurs the distinction between Israel and the Church to the point where some claim the Church has replaced Israel in God’s plan making Israel an unnecessary part of our times.)

Most dispensationalists believe in a pre-tribulation rapture followed by Daniel’s 70th week  with its accompanying judgments and a literal Kingdom of God that will begin with the 2nd Coming and last for 1,000 years.  During this time Israel will be God’s Kingdom on Earth while the Church will be God’s Kingdom in Heaven.

So this is what dispensationalists believe.  It’s what I believe and is the theological foundation for all the articles and answers to be found on this site. This is why I said the Great Flood was the second in a series of seven times where mankind would violate the terms of an agreement with God and bring judgment upon themselves.