SALT OF THE EARTH

In the days before artificial refrigeration, sailors who took meat on long voyages used salt as a preservative. The process of corruption was already at work before the meat was salted. Salting did not abolish the corruption, but it held it in check for the duration of the voyage so that the sailors could continue to eat the meat long after it would have become inedible. Our presence on the earth as Christ’s disciples operates like the salt in the meat. The process of sin’s corruption is already at work. This is manifested in every area of human life—moral, religious, social, political. We cannot abolish the corruption that is already present. But we can hold it in check long enough for God’s purposes of grace and mercy to be fully worked out. Then, when our influence is no longer felt, corruption will come to its climax, and the result will be total degradation. This illustration from the power of salt to restrain corruption explains Paul’s teaching in 2 Thessalonians 2:3–12. Paul warns that human wickedness will come to its climax in the person of a world ruler supernaturally empowered and directed by Satan himself. Paul calls this ruler “the man of sin [or lawlessness]” and “the son of perdition” (verse 3). In 1 John 2:18 he is called “Antichrist,” and in Revelation 13:4 he is called “the beast.” This ruler will actually claim to be God and demand universal worship. Emergence of this satanic ruler is inevitable. Paul says with certainty, “Then the lawless one will be revealed” (2 Thessalonians 2:8). Paul also declares in the same verse that the true Christ Himself will be the one to administer finally judgment upon this false Christ—“whom the Lord will consume with the breath [or spirit] of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming.” Unfortunately some preachers have used this teaching about Antichrist to instill in Christians attitudes of passivity and fatalism. “Antichrist is coming,” they have said. “Things are getting worse and worse. There is nothing we can do about it.” As a result, Christians have all too often sat back with hands folded in pious dismay and watched the ravages of Satan proceed unchecked all around them. The attitudes of passivity and fatalism are as tragic as they are unscriptural. It is true that Antichrist must eventually emerge. But it is far from true that there is nothing to be done about him in the meanwhile.As the salt of the earth, we who are Christ’s disciples therefore have two primary responsibilities. First, by our presence we commend the earth to God’s continuing grace and mercy. Second, by the power of the Holy Spirit within us we hold in check the forces of corruption and lawlessness until God’s appointed time.