Mark 9:49

(49) Every one shall be salted with fire.—The verse presents considerable difficulties, both as regards the reading and the interpretation. Many of the best MSS. omit the latter clause; one of the best omits the first. It is as if transcribers felt that either clause was more intelligible by itself than the two taken together. Accepting both clauses as, on the whole, sufficiently authenticated, we have to deal with their meaning. (1) The most generally received interpretation of the first clause is that which eliminates from the process of salting the idea of purifying, or preserving from corruption, and sees in it only the symbol of perpetuation. So taken, the words become an emphatic assertion of the endlessness of future punishment—as in Keble’s lines:

“Salted with fire, they seem to showHow spirits lost in endless woe

May undecaying live.”

Against this, however, it may be urged (a) that it arbitrarily limits the “every one” of the sentence to those who are finally condemned and are cast into Gehenna; (b) that it is scarcely conceivable that the same word, “salted,” should be used in such contrasted senses in the same verse; (c) that the uniform symbolism of “salt,” as representing the spiritual element that purifies and preserves from taint (see Matthew 5:13; Luke 14:34; Colossians 4:6; Leviticus 2:13), is against this application of it. We have to ask whether “fire” appears with a like symbolism and with an application as universal as that of this verse. And the answer is found partly in “the baptism with the Holy Ghost and with fire,” of which the Baptist spoke (Matthew 3:11); the “fire already kindled” of our Lord’s teaching (Luke 12:49); the “fire” which “shall try every man’s work of what sort it is” of 1 Corinthians 3:13; the “fire that tries men’s faith” of 1 Peter 1:7. In these passages there can be no shadow of doubt that “fire” represents the righteousness of God manifested as punishing and chastising—the discipline, in other words, of suffering. Of that discipline, our Lord says “every one” shall be a partaker. He shall thus be “salted with fire,” for the tendency of that fire, the aim of the sufferings which it represents, is to purify and cleanse. Even when manifested in its most awful forms, it is still true that they who “walk righteously and speak uprightly” may dwell with “everlasting burnings”—i.e., with the perfect and consuming holiness of God (Isaiah 33:14). (2) The second clause is obviously far simpler. The “sacrifice” throws us back upon the ritual of Leviticus 2:13, which prescribed that salt should be added, as the natural symbol of incorruption, to every sacrifice. Here our Lord speaks of the spiritual sacrifice which each man offers of his body, soul, and spirit (Romans 12:1), and declares that “salt,” the purifying grace of the Eternal Spirit, is needed that it may be acceptable. Punishment, the pain which we feel when brought into contact with the infinite Righteousness represented by fire, may do its work in part; but it requires something more for completeness. The sacrifice must be “salted with salt,” as well as with “fire.” To use another figure, there must be the baptism of the Holy Ghost, as well as that of fire (Matthew 3:11).