Luke 14:34

Salt therefore is good: but even if the salt have lost its savor, wherewith shall it be seasoned? It is fit neither for the land nor for the dunghill; men cast it out. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

For a more detailed study of the salt metaphor, see my Commentary on Matthew, Matthew 5:13. The use of the metaphor here is different from that in Matthew. Christ used many of his illustrations on various occasions and for the purpose of making different points. Spence declared that:

Here "salt" stands for the spirit of self-sacrifice, self-renunciation. When in a man, or in a nation, or in a church, that salt is savourless, then that spirit is dead; and there is no hope remaining for the man, for the people, or the church.[41]

Likewise Dr. Ash wrote that: "SALT represented disciples who would count the cost and pay the price. Men who would not were as worthless as tasteless salt."[42]

This passage has no bearing whatever upon the doctrine of the final perseverance of the saints, or impossibility of apostasy; but that does not prevent the allegation that it does. Based upon the chemical fact that sodium chloride CANNOT lose its taste, that salt "(cannot) ever lose its peculiar pungency and power to hinder corruption," Bliss concluded that "no true subject of regenerating grace ever has or ever will become utterly void of new life."[43] However, Christ said nothing of sodium chloride, the salt of that day being an utterly different product, which not only COULD but frequently did lose its taste (see my Commentary on Matthew, Matthew 5:13). The illustration as here given by Christ posed no impossibility at all. "If even the salt have lost its savor" was certainly a development that Christ held to be possible, for he went further and declared that "It is fit neither for land nor for the dunghill."

Whereas in Matthew Christians are viewed as "the salt of the earth," here it is the spirit of renunciation and sacrifice within Christians which is the salt.

Strict and demanding as the conditions of true discipleship assuredly are, the rewards are abundantly sufficient to justify any and all sacrifices required in following the Lord Jesus Christ.

[41] Ibid.

[42] Anthony Lee Ash, The Gospel according to Luke (Austin, Texas: Sweet Publishing Company, 1972), p. 63.

[43] George R. Bliss, An American Commentary on the New Testament (Valley Forge, Pennsylvania: The Judson Press,), Vol. II, Luke, p. 239.