Board index ‹ Specific Bible verses, texts, and passages ‹ Mark

[Sea Salt]

“Salt is good, but if salt becomes insipid, with what will you restore its flavor? Keep salt in yourselves and you will have peace with one another.”

[jimwalton]

To "share salt with someone" is an idiom meaning to share fellowship with them, to declare oneself a friend and a brother, to be in covenant with that person. Earlier in the chapter (vv. 33-37) there was a conflict where the disciples were arguing with each other about who was the greatest. Then there was a conflict with the exorcists (vv. 38-41). Then Jesus taught about a conflict of scandal in the community (vv. 42ff.). He pleads for peace (v. 50), and he does that by using the idiom (Have salt in yourselves).

For them to have salt among themselves would mean that they would find their community in the group of fellow believers, not in the circle of those who would cause them to sin (v. 42). Without peace in the community, hostility against them from outsiders would probably cause many to fall away from the faith.