“He’s the salt of the earth!” That’s a common expression.  We all know what it means.  It means that the person is “grand guy, one in a million.” It is a badge of honor, an accolade reserved for someone we admire tremendously.  And it all got started in Jesus’ words to His disciples. 

I.  ACTUALLY, AS IT APPEARS IN MARK’S GOSPEL, THE SAYING IS A BIT CONFUSING.  Commentators have been tearing their hair out for centuries trying to understand what the verse at the tag end of Jesus’ harsh saying about radical surgery means.  What on earth does “For every one will be salted with fire” mean? 

It may be, as William Barclay says, that Jesus often dropped pithy little sayings along the way which stuck in people’s minds.  Often, while they could remember the saying, they did not remember the cont…