Being Salt and Light in the World

Chapter five - When Morality Would Be in Free Fall - from Dr. David Jeremiah's book I Never Thought I'd See The Day: Culture at the Crossroads shares some insight on what it means for Christians to be salt and light in the world.

Excerpt:

[Following] God's moral standards is the only way to be strength and light in the world. It is different in that we don't try to follow the law to attain righteousness in God's sight, as Israel did. Instead, through our faith in Christ we are credited with His righteousness because He kept the law perfectly in our place. We now receive the law of God written on our minds and in our hearts. As Paul wrote, we do not nullify the law as Christians; rather, we uphold it (Romans 3:31). We do not keep the law to become the people of God but to manifest our relationship with God and to be salt and light in the world.

What does it mean to be salt and light in the world? Salt is strong because it overcomes bacteria that would cause food to rot and decompose. It is unique in that it adds flavor to food and creates thirst in those who consume it. We are to do the same. As we keep God's law and manifest His character, we preserve the character of His creation; we prevent the deterioration and degeneration of human society and we add a unique flavor to it. We hope to create a thirst for God in those whose lives we touch.

The role of light is obvious - to bring truth into spiritually dark places. And what truth are we to bring? To "love the LORD your God with all your hear, with all your soul, and with all your mind," and to "love our neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 22:37, 39). Think how different the world would be if those two summary laws, on which "hang all the Law and the Prophets" (v.40), were kept by all the human race! And think how much more powerful and effective the Church of Jesus Christ would be if Christians were not bending God's rules to satisfy themselves.

Christians who decide to adjust their moral stance to align more favorably with that of the world would do well to remember Jesus' words at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount:

Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heave; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. for I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds to righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:17-20).

The Pharisees' moral standard was external. They carefully tithed in great detail, even down to giving a percentage of their herbs, while at the same time neglecting "the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith" (Matthew 23:23). They kept the letter of the law but ignored the spirit of it. They kept their hands clean but failed to cleanse their hearts (Matthew 23:27). They were guilty of the same thing for which their forefathers were condemned: honoring god with their lips while their hearts were far from Him (Isaiah 29:13).

The warning to today's church is this: Going through the motions of morality is not the morality God desires. Clean hands do not make a clean heart. but the opposite is true: Moral hearts will make moral hands. If we commit to keeping the spirit of the law, the letter of the law will, by default, be kept as well. and that is precisely the message Jesus delivered on that mountainside in Galilee.

Source: I Never Thought I'd See The Day: Culture at the Crossroads by David Jeremiah. Faithwords, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. October 2011, pp. 139-141