Remember, You Are the Salt of the Earth!

What would have been going on in the mind of the Son of God, Jesus Christ when He called his disciples together and admonished them that they were the seasoning that makes the meal special? Matthew 5:13; “Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt has lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.” The mental picture that existed in the time of the Son of

God is perhaps the same picture we have today in modern Christianity; where the rich are getting ever richer and the poor are ever getting poorer too; laws that are created to benefit some and fleece many that have no voice to seek for justice. Jesus had seen all these and in that book of Matthew had instructed his disciples, that though they might be in the world, they should never be part of its shady dealings, assuring them that there was definitely an honest means to acquiring riches and wealth.

Before the birth of the Son of God into His human nature, certainly the seasoning of the earth had disappeared. Leviticus 19:11; “Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another.” 

Similarly is the case of Zacchaeus in Luke 19:1-10. Zacchaeus, a chief tax collector who amassed wealth by defrauding the poor; the day he received Jesus Christ, he immediately decided to share his wealth into two and give one part of it to the poor. Thereafter, he offered to apply the Mosaic Law on restitution, by restoring fourfold of whatever he fraudulently received from people as stated in Exodus 22:1. Jesus did not tell him that his step on restitution was unnecessary or wrong, instead, he praised it as worthy of emulation. Luke 19:9; "And Jesus said unto him, This day is salvation come to this house, forasmuch as he also is a son of Abraham."

The kind of fraud exhibited by the rich against the poor whether in the time of the prophets of old or presently, also has its negative effects on the employer-employee relationships. In Leviticus 19:13, God warns against extorting your workers: "Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbour, neither rob him: the wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until the morning." 

There are employers who sit on their staff salaries for weeks and months and even years and expose them to untold hardship, and yet they expect their staff to be faithful in their work. This is also wrong when retired people who contributed all their working years to a fund cannot access their money or receive their pension after retirement. God detests fraud, whether it is perpetrated by an individual, organisation or government because the saltiness of the earth would cease to exist.

Eberekpe Ogho