Living the Gospel - Greg Laurie Devotion - August 29, 2023
Tuesday, August 29, 2023
Living the Gospel
“You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor? Can you make it salty again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless.” (Matthew 5:13 NLT)
Nothing is worse than a hypocritical Christian.
Now, we’ve all had moments of hypocrisy. We have not always practiced what we preach. That is called humanity. Every Christian will fall short.
But there’s a difference between believers who struggle but are seeking to live godly lives and those who claim to be believers yet blatantly disregard what the Bible says.
If someone who claims to be a Christian is living a lifestyle contrary to what the gospel teaches and what the Bible says, they would do other Christians a big favor if they just didn’t talk about Jesus.
The world needs authenticity today. And before we can effectively tell others about Christ, we must first live it.
Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor? Can you make it salty again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless” (Matthew 5:13 NLT).
We don’t think of salt as a valuable commodity today, because it is relatively inexpensive. But in the first century, salt was a bigger deal. It was a form of currency, and it was a preservative that kept meat from spoiling in the absence of refrigeration like we have today.
So, when Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth,” people immediately would have understood the comparison. Jesus was saying they were a preserving factor in the culture.
And that is what we are today. Christians are the ones who stand up for what is right. Christians speak out against what is wrong. And Christians are the ones who are always at the forefront of efforts around the world to help hurting people.
That is what Christians do. That is what Christians are. We are the salt of the earth.
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