The Beatitudes Turn Reality on Its Head

So we are continuing through the Sermon on the Mount. We’re obviously not going to make it all the way through in this service, but your kids just might over in Student Ministries. We’ve begun teaching through the Sermon on the Mount over there. We’re a few weeks behind. Last week here, Kyle taught the first 12 verses, what we call the Beatitudes, the verses where Jesus is preaching and he says, “Blessed are… blessed are…” Jesus begins this whole sermon, a sermon through these three chapters, with the assumption that his disciples are different than the world around them, that they are otherworldly.

He refers to God as their Father, and he opens the sermon by saying, “Let me tell you what true blessing is.” In true blessing, every single one of these statements of “you are truly blessed when,” or “true happiness is found when,” flies in the face, it’s the counter-positive, it’s the opposite of what the world would think is blessed. “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” The world would say they would be pitied, maybe helped. Jesus says, “Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” “Blessed are those who mourn.” The world might pat them on the back or say, “Tough luck,” and Jesus says those are the ones who are going to truly be comforted. “Blessed are the meek.” The meek are going to inherit the earth, not the powerful, and so on and so forth.

Jesus actually declares this is how things truly are in the kingdom, and they’re not the way that they look when you’re looking through the eyes of the world. Those of faith, those who’ve been saved from this world into God’s heavenly kingdom, they’re now living for a new king. And even if they lose everything in this world and gain in the next, they are truly blessed.

So for the Beatitudes to make sense, for this whole worldview that Jesus is laying out to make sense, you have to look beyond this world. Life in this world is a precursor for, a preview of, a foundation for a life that’s far greater, far more substantial. And while you live in this world, you aren’t living for the kingdoms of this world but the kingdom of heaven. The Beatitudes, and truly the whole sermon, emphasizes what is pleasing to their heavenly King.

That’s why it can end with something that is so counterintuitive. The last beatitude should startle you. Maybe you’re comfortable because you’ve read it so many times, but listen to what Jesus says. He says, “Blessed are you,” truly blessed, truly happy are you, “when you are persecuted,” when you’re persecuted for righteousness’ sake. Because when you are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, the kingdom of heaven is yours, because all who are living for that kingdom will be persecuted for righteousness’ sake here.

Then Jesus says, “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.” What should you do when somebody reviles you and persecutes you for Jesus? You should do something that could never come from within you. It could only come from within you when your affections, when the one you are seeking to please, who you’re seeking to serve, is a King of a far greater kingdom: “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

So Jesus started the sermon with the Beatitudes, turning the disciples’ view of reality on their head, declaring what truly is. Then immediately after making this most dramatic of all claims, Jesus says the passage that we are going to be in tonight, Matthew 5:13:

You are the salt of the earth. But if salt has become tasteless, how will it be made salty again? It’s no longer good for anything except to be thrown out to be trampled underfoot by men. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light shine before men in a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.

So what’s going on here? I have a summary statement that will guide our message for tonight: Jesus declares that his disciples are different, distinctive, and discernible in the world for the glory of their heavenly Father. Jesus declares that his disciples are different, distinctive, and discernible as they live in this world for the glory of their heavenly Father. Let’s look at that point by point.

You Are the Salt of the Earth

The first statement that Jesus makes is, “You are the salt of the earth.” And if salt has become tasteless, how will it be made salty again? In essence, Jesus is saying, “Don’t be saltless salt.”

Jesus makes a statement first. There’s a very emphatic “you” here. The pronoun is stated, and it’s put out first. Jesus says, “You, you who I’m speaking to, you disciples, you are something.” And he’s not just speaking to people in general. This isn’t just a message that the whole world can open this book and say, “Okay, I’m salt.” No, there’s a very particular people, those who’ve been saved, Jesus’s disciples, his true disciples who are distinct from the world. He says, “You are the salt of the earth.”

He doesn’t say you should be salt, or try to be salt, or try to be salty. He just describes things how they are. He says, “You are salt.” He actually doesn’t say, “You are salt.” He says, “You are the salt.” There aren’t other salts. There aren’t others of this kind in the world. That’s why I say different. There’s nothing like salt. Salt is distinctive, and where salt is, you know it’s there because it tastes salty. Jesus says, “You are the salt of the world.” God has made his children, Jesus’s disciples, salt.

What is he talking about? What does it mean to be salt? Well, we actually have a glimpse here. He says, “You are the salt of the world. But if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?” There are so many pages in commentaries talking about all the uses of salt. I think there’s like 20-some. I listed them out while I was trying to figure out what’s going on here. What does he mean, “You’re salt?” He sort of says it. He goes, if salt has lost its taste, in this analogy that Jesus is making, salt has a taste. And if salt loses its taste, what good is it? It’s not salty.

What do we do with salt as a spice? We put it in food. Salt makes a horrible meal, right? If you were just to eat salt, it makes a horrible meal. The purpose of salt, though, salt makes a horrible meal, but it makes a meal good. The salt brings a flavor, brings a saltiness to whatever it’s put on. And Jesus is saying, “You are the salt in the earth.” He places his disciples in the earth, and they will stand out as distinctive. If there’s salt in your food, you know it’s there. And if the salt is missing, you wish it was there. How do you know the salt was there? You taste it.

That’s what I mean when I say the disciples are different. You put salt on things that don’t taste salty so that it’s better. The disciples in the world are different than the world. They’re distinctive. They aren’t quite like anything else. There’s nothing quite like salt. You can’t. There’s no other spice, no other flavor that’s like salt, and it’s discernible when it’s there. You know it’s there. In the same way, God takes his disciples, those who he’s saved to be his people, and puts them in the world to be different, distinctive, discernible. It’s not supposed to be like the world, yet you better stand out, and people will know that you’re there.

But then Jesus says something a little bit weird. He says, “But if salt has lost its taste, how shall it be restored?” If Jesus says you are salt, and he puts you out in the world to be distinctive, we’re going to see later what the point is, to bring glory to God the Father through the good works. But he puts you out in the world to be different, distinctive, discernible in the world, and those who say, “Yeah, I’m Jesus’s. I’m his disciple,” when you taste them, they don’t taste salty. That’s what Jesus is talking about. He says, “If salt has lost its taste, how shall it be restored?”

Well, the reality is, how does salt lose its taste? What is salt? Sodium chloride, right? Salt is just a compound, a couple ions, two things put together, sodium and chloride. It makes crystals, maybe a little more complex. Salt in this day would have primarily been coming from the Dead Sea. The salt water evaporates, and you get salt crystals. Here’s something that happened in that day: you would go, you take salt traders, you go down to the Dead Sea, and you’d scrape those salt crystals. Salt crystals are white, and they’d be on top of actual gypsum rock. So you get some rock in your bag of salt.

You say, “I’m going to buy a bag of salt.” You taste it, and you’re like, “Yep, it’s salty.” That’s how you’d know. You taste it. You’d say, “Does this look like salt?” Then you might take it home, and if that bag got moist, the salt ionizes in the water, and then the water soaks through, and now the salt’s on the ground. Eventually the bag becomes a bag full of fake salt. It looks like salt. It’s gypsum rock.

So if somebody sells you a bag of old salt, and you taste it and it’s like, “This doesn’t taste like salt. This bag says it’s salt, but it doesn’t taste like salt,” should you put it on your food? No. It’s worthless. It’s not worth anything. If you get that bag of salt, you take it home, you taste it, you say, “Oh, I got a bad bag of salt. It’s a fraud. It’s a fake.” Maybe the guy who sold it to me knew it wasn’t good, but regardless, this salt isn’t salty. What’s it good for?

Jesus says what it’s good for. It’s only good to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. Salt that’s not salty can’t serve its purpose. Jesus says, “How can it be restored?” And the reality is it can’t. If you get a bag of salt that says it’s salt, and it’s nothing but rock, that bag is worthless. It’s not what it claimed to be. It’s a fake. Throw it out.

There are people in this life, Jesus had a lot of followers, who said, “I want to follow Jesus,” and they were following him for all the wrong reasons. They said, “I’m a follower of Jesus because I want the kingdom. It’s coming. I want to be free of Roman rule.” Some of them maybe liked the idea of being forgiven of sins, or maybe the food that Jesus made with the miracles, or liked to be healed of sickness, or just wanted to be with the popular guy. They said, “I’m a Jesus follower,” and the reality was when you looked at their life, they didn’t taste like what a Jesus follower is. They didn’t taste salty.

What’s God the Father, who looks into the hearts of man and evaluates every action, going to do with that fake believer? At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 7:21, Jesus says:

Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to me on that day, “Lord, Lord, in your name did we not prophesy? And in your name cast out demons? And in your name do many miracles?” And then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.”

Somebody might say, “Jesus, you’re my Lord,” but not everyone who said that’s going to get in. Not everyone who says, “I’m a follower. I’m salt. If Jesus makes a salt, I’m that.” Not everyone who says they’re salt is true salt. Not everyone who says, “Lord, Lord,” is actually going to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Or in Matthew 13:24, Jesus teaches the parable of the weeds. You can just listen; turn there if you want. Matthew 13:24:

He presented another parable to them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went away. But when the wheat sprouted and bore grain, then the tares became evident also. The slaves of the landowner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? Then how does it have tares?’ And he said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go up and gather it up?’ But he said, ‘No, for while you’re gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat. Allow both of them to grow together, and then in the time of the harvest, I will say to the reapers, “Gather up the tares, bind them in bundles, and burn them; and then gather the wheat into my barn.”‘”

There is a discerning process that God the Father and Jesus the judge go through. Are you truly a follower, or are you just a weed growing among the wheat?

Or Jesus in John 15 explains that he’s the true vine and his Father the gardener. Every branch that doesn’t bear fruit is taken away and thrown into the fire. Somebody says, “Hey, I’m part of the tree. I’m an apple tree,” but there’s no apples on here. What’s Jesus going to do? Prune them off. Throw them away. Same thing that you would do with a bag that says it’s salt but it’s not salty. Toss it out. Trample it underfoot, because it doesn’t serve its purpose. It’s not actually what it claims to be.

So the reality is, if you are the salt of the world, and if you are a Christian, that statement applies to you. Jesus isn’t saying, “Try to be salty. Try to be different.” Jesus says, “If you are a Christian, if you are my follower, you are different.” You’re like salt in a bland soup. You can’t be in there and people not know. You change the room when you walk in, and people say, “Why did it change? It’s his fault.” And sometimes that will get you persecuted for righteousness’ sake and on Jesus’s account. Rejoice and be glad.

You see, there’s a temptation if you’re living for this world and you say, “I’m a little different than this world. If I look this different, the world’s going to say, ‘Hey, you don’t belong here. Why don’t you act more like us?'” And you might be tempted to say, “I don’t want to be so salty. I don’t want to be so different.” The reality is, if you were made to be different, and if you act like you’re not, what does that say about who you truly are? Jesus made you, when you became his, Jesus made you like him, which is otherworldly. Jesus says, “You are the salt of the earth.” There’s nothing like a Christian in the world. When a Christian is in the world, the world will know it because you’re different, and they’ll know it’s you.

You Are the Light of the World

On the flip side, or on the same point, Jesus goes on in Matthew. He says, “You are the light of the world.” Another “you are” statement says:

You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but they put it on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.

So just like the first statement would have been, “Don’t be tasteless salt,” don’t hide your light. Jesus makes another “you are” statement here. Just like he said, “You are the salt of the earth,” he goes, “You are the light of the world.”

Just like salt in a meal, light in a dark room is different. Light is fundamentally different than darkness. If light is in a dark room, you can’t help but notice it. It stands out. It’s distinctive. It’s noticeably different, and it’s discernible. You will see it. Have you ever, in a dark room, been super annoyed that they put all those blue lights on all the electronics, and you lay there and you just can’t sleep? “That dumb light. I just want it dark.” And this one little light that you almost couldn’t tell lights up the whole room from the corner. That’s the way a Christian should be.

And that’s the one time when you cover the light, when I get five layers of Scotch tape and black it out because I don’t want to see the light. That’s not the way lights usually work. Lights are usually in the room to be seen. And just like salt doesn’t exist for itself to say, “Hey, look at me, I’m salty,” but to actually serve, to make the meal more salty, God salts the world with us. He says, “I’m going to actually put testimony to my glory, testimony to my image, out in the world to point to me, not the salt.”

The light doesn’t exist for itself. Christmas lights are the only time that happens, where they exist just for their own sake: “Look at the pretty lights.” But in general, lights are lamps, and they exist to light the room, bring light to a room. That’s the point. Jesus’s statement that you are the light, don’t hide it, shows the purpose for which Jesus left us here in the world: to be different, to give testimony to actually the source of our light.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones comments on this:

Any desire which we may find in ourselves to hide the fact that we are Christian, to cover up our lamp, “Don’t see it. I don’t want you to know I’m here,” whether it’s hiding that we’re salt or hiding that we’re light, because that is who you are if you are a Christian, any desire that we may find to hide the fact that we’re a Christian is not only to be regarded as ridiculous and contradictory; it is, if we indulge in it and persist in it, something that may lead to a final casting out.

You are not saved, you’re not admitted to the kingdom of God, because you do good works. We’re going to see the connection to salt and light and good works shortly. You are not admitted into the kingdom because you do good works. Why does Jesus let us into his presence? Why does Jesus transfer us from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of his beloved Son? Not because of good works. He does it on the basis of faith and by grace. So if you have faith, then by God’s grace that faith will be manifested in works. If you say, “I have faith,” you will have works.

So you say, “I have faith in God,” and God says, “If you have faith in me, you will be salt. You will be light.” You say, “Oh no, I don’t have that kind of faith. I just have the kind of faith that I believe a few true things about you.” That kind of faith doesn’t save. That’s the kind of faith that you might be content to hide. “Oh yeah, I believe in God. I believe in Jesus. I don’t want to go to hell.” That’s the kind of faith that you could say, “That gains me something. If I’m right, maybe at the end of my life I die and I go to heaven. It doesn’t cost me much in this world, so it’s okay if I hide. I’ll just look the same as the world. I believe the right things. I go to church every once in a while. I go to church maybe all the time, but my faith doesn’t actually flesh itself out in a changed life.”

That kind of faith doesn’t save. Like James says, “Show me your faith by your works.” Faith without works is dead. So one who claims to have faith, but their works aren’t evident, they’re not different, they’re not salt, they’re not light, you can’t actually tell that they’re Christians because their faith is all in their head and it doesn’t manifest in works, that kind of faith cannot save, will not save, and it may lead to a final casting out.

As a Christian, you will stand out. As a Christian, you must stand out. And if you don’t stand out, you don’t have much biblical confidence to say, “I am a Christian.” Why? Well, Ephesians 5:8 says:

At one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light.

You were like that dark room with no light in it. But now, because of what Christ has done through the gospel, adopting you as God’s son, you were dead, now you’re alive. Through the gospel, God has taken you from darkness to light in the Lord. It says, “Now you are light in the Lord, so walk as children of light.” You can’t be light and still walk as children of darkness.

We talked about that this morning in the Toward a Biblical Theology of Fun message. You were just like the rest of mankind, following the prince of the power of the air, though you were walking in your darkness, in your death. But God, in his great mercy, made you alive together with Christ. That life will be manifested by you walking different.

If you are Christian, listen to Paul’s description in Colossians of what has happened. In the realm of light and darkness, Colossians 1:13-14:

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

You were in the domain of darkness, and you were transferred to the kingdom of his beloved Son, out of darkness into light. Being a Christian isn’t something you earn. It isn’t something you do. It’s something that God does to you. He changes you. He saves you. He transfers your citizenship, and he changes the very nature of who you are. This is why the Bible talks about your being born again. You’re a new creature. You were darkness; now you’re light. Walk as children of the light.

If you were darkness and now you’re light, you’ve been made a lamp to shine. A city on a hill filled with lights can’t be hidden. You have a dark countryside. You’re like, “Where’s the light? Oh, there it is.” Imagine you’re driving on those dark, dark roads. You know there’s a city coming up because you can see the light. In the world, when people are going through, there’s darkness. There’s darkness. There’s a world filled with people still in the kingdom of darkness. Dark, dark, dark. There’s something different there: light. You can’t hide the city on a hill.

And God didn’t make you a lamp for you to hide under a basket so nobody could see. He made you a lamp and left you in the world so that you could shine and fill the room with light, give light to all who are in the house. It’s that light through which God draws some to himself and gets glory as we honor him with our lives in this world.

Shine for Your Father’s Glory

That’s the conclusion: shine for your Father’s glory in the world. Right after he said, “Don’t be saltless salt,” “Don’t hide your light,” he actually didn’t give any commands there. Those are my commands. The statements are just statements of who you are. You are salt. If salt has lost its saltiness, it can’t be restored. It’ll get tossed out. You are light. Light can’t be hidden. Why? You’re not going to hide it.

Now he gets to the command. This is the only command of the whole passage. The command is shine. That’s the imperative. The imperative here is, “Shine.” That’s the only command Jesus gives us in this section. He says, “Shine for your Father’s glory in the world.” Let’s read it, Matthew 5:16:

In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

Like I said, this is the only command: let your light shine. Did you notice that there’s another time in the Gospels when Jesus says somebody is the light of the world? Do you guys remember where that is? John 8:12. Jesus actually says:

I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but have the light of life.

Jesus is the light. We follow him. You will not walk in darkness. In fact, you’re going to be transformed into his likeness. And the light that the world sees when he says, “You are light, you are the light of the world,” just like Jesus, different, the same nature being formed into his image, it’s not your light that comes from you. It’s Jesus’s light that shines through you, and it’s there for a purpose, to illuminate your good works that he actually prepared beforehand, all for the glory of God the Father.

Let’s dig into this a little bit more. This verb, “shine,” this is the only time that this verb is used in the Bible to describe a person who’s not Jesus. It’s when we shine. It’s the radiance of our Father, the radiance of our God, into whose likeness we’re being transformed, that shines out of us. It’s the same verb that’s used to describe the appearance of Jesus when he was transfigured in Matthew 17:2. It’s the verb that describes the light in the cell when the angel of the Lord appears to Peter.

Turn to 2 Corinthians 4:6. That same word shows up twice here:

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” shone into our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

When did God say, “Let light shine out of darkness”? Day one. “Light be,” and light was. He did it with a word. That same God shone into our hearts. So God’s doing the shining to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. When you are saved, when God takes you from darkness and makes you light because you can see him for who he is, and he takes that veil off and he transforms, it’s the same creative power as he had when he said, “Light be,” and it was on day one. He says, “Light,” into that heart, and light shines.

Why does light shine into our heart? So that you can be the light of the world and shine forth for the Father’s glory. We are to let our light shine because we are shining with the light of Christ, into whose image we’re being transformed. I don’t have time to park here. You can look back at 2 Corinthians 3:18. It’s pretty cool. We could do a whole thing on that. I wish I could go there. I can’t. But this light analogy, dig into it in 2 Corinthians 3 and 4 in light of Jesus’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount.

The reality is, the distinctiveness of our lives, our saltiness, our lightness, it should be seen most clearly in our good work. Ephesians 2:10, you guys know this:

We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

When our Father predestined us to be holy and blameless before the foundation of the world, when he predestined us for adoption in love, that’s Ephesians 1, he had in his divine providence good works prepared. Think of that. Before he ever made anything, before he even said, “Let light be,” and it was, he says, “That one, that enemy, I’m going to predestine them to be my child in love, and I’m going to prepare good works, and I’m going to work them. They’re going to be my workmanship. I’m going to craft them into just the perfect being.”

He actually uses trials. That’s why we can be joyful in trials, can rejoice when we face trials, because the testing of your faith produces endurance. Let endurance have its final result, that you may be perfect and complete. God’s forming you into just what he wants you to be. He uses trials. He uses blessings. He uses all kinds of things to accomplish that. But he’s not doing it randomly. Before he made anything, he said, “I have a good work for you. I need to make him my child. I need to transform them. I’m going to have them do that good work.”

In this passage, Jesus is simply saying, “You need to let your light shine,” because one of the purposes of those good works is that they’re going to be seen. Not all good works are going to be seen, but if you’re light and salt, they’ll see you whether you want to or not. Jesus said, “Don’t hide your saltiness. Don’t hide your lightness.” Light in a room, you know it’s there. Salt in a meal, you know it’s there. And one of the purposes of those good works is that your light shines on it, and the world can give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

Good Works the World Can See

Remember the immediate context here. What good works does Jesus have in mind for the world to see? Do you remember what the immediate context was right before he jumped into this statement, “You are salt”? It was, “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.”

Our saltiness and light is seen most clearly, most distinctly, most differently, when we’re reviled, persecuted, and our response is to rejoice and be glad. That’s not the only time, though. Basically, anytime you do something, you do a work that couldn’t possibly have come from you, a work that you are only doing because you’re a new creature, because you’ve been transformed from the inside out. It just so happens that Jesus, for the rest of the chapter, goes through and lays out what kinds of works he might have in mind for the world to see by the light that shines forth, Jesus’s reflected light shining through you, so that they see these good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

Think about Matthew 5:21, that his disciples, God’s children, are going to avoid heart-level anger. They’re not just worried about, “Oh, if I don’t murder, I’m fine.” “I don’t want to be angry with my brother from my heart.” They reject lust, a heart-level thing that nobody can see but them and God, not just avoid adultery. They take drastic measures to avoid sin. In 5:31, they refuse to divorce no matter how normal it is in the culture. They keep their word, not only when they make an oath, but at all times they keep it from their heart. They persevere in persecution. In 5:38, turning the other cheek.

Look at 5:43. Let’s read this together to get a glimpse of how the Father is glorified when the world sees good works in us:

You have heard it said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.

That’s supernatural. Why do you do it? Why do you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you? So that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven, so that you can imitate your dad. Kids are like their dad. What does our Father do? Well, it says, not only did he reconcile us, not only did he give us all kinds of grace even while we were his enemies. While we were enemies, he reconciled us, justified us, he died for us, gave his Son for us. But here, just common grace: our Father in heaven, we’re not living for this world, we’re living for heaven. Our Father in heaven makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good. He sends rain on the just and the unjust.

Every time it rains, every time the sun rises, remember, “Oh, my dad loves his enemies. My Father loves his enemies. He adopted me as his child. I will love my enemies. I’ll pray for those who persecute me from the heart.” That’s what looking like salt and light will be. If you do that, you’re going to stand out. Loving those who love you, being nice to those who give you something, the world can do that. Loving your enemies, that’s only going to come from you living a life for a world beyond this and for a King who’s your Father, who loved you while you were his enemy, sent his Son to the cross to bear your sin in his body on a tree.

So if you have faith in Jesus, there’s no other way to become God’s child than this. If you have faith in Jesus, he takes your sin, sin that should be judged in hell, places it on Jesus, takes Jesus’s righteousness, places it on you, takes your darkness, does away with it, and takes Jesus’s light and makes you light to shine in this world for God’s glory.

Every single one of these things that Jesus calls us to, every one of these good works that will bring the Father glory, it’s not merely a work and it’s not done to earn God’s favor. It’s supernatural, flowing from a life change, from a changed relationship with God. These types of works are evidence that you are completely new. If you are in Christ, you are new. You are salt. You are light.

So the point isn’t, “Hey, I want to show the world my good works. I need to make sure that they see all my stuff. I need to make sure that they see me giving money to the poor.” Jesus actually warns against that right after the section. In 6:1 he says, “Beware of practicing your righteousness before others in order to be seen by them.” What’s your motive? Do you practice your righteousness just so that others see? No, for then you’ll have no reward from your Father who’s in heaven.

You don’t have to be supernatural to want people to see your good works and say, “Oh, that’s cool.” Aren’t there all kinds of TikTok videos about that? “Hey, I helped this poor guy,” and you get a million views, and you’re like, “Aren’t I nice?” And you made a thousand bucks off of the hundred bucks you gave the poor guy. You don’t have to be supernatural to want the world to say, “Oh, you’re so nice.” You have to be supernaturally changed to say, “I’m going to love my enemies and pray for those who persecute me, and no one’s going to see but my Father.”

But we know better. We read Matthew 5:13. We know that we’re salt, we’re light. If we are doing those things not to be seen by them, but if we are doing those good works, we can’t help but be seen. The world will see. You can’t hide the light. You can’t hide the light you are. You can’t hide the salt that you are. God has made you different, distinctive, discernible. God has changed you from the heart. God has changed you from the very nature of who you are. He has transferred you from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light, and he has prepared good works for you to do for his glory. So let’s walk in them. This isn’t optional. This is who we are by God’s grace.

Closing Prayer

Let’s pray. God, thank you for making us different. Thank you for making us stand out in this world. God, you will get glory from that, and I pray that we would live who we are, that we would shine, that we would stand out, not for the sake of standing out, not so that somebody would see our good works and glorify us, but that they might see our good works and give glory to you in heaven.

God, this is all from you, all for you. May we never put any hope, any stock before you, that these good works justify us before you. But God, may we live in these good works that you’ve saved us to do, that you’ve prepared beforehand, and that you’ve worked us just right to accomplish. In Jesus’s name we pray, amen.