Repentance, The Restoring of Salt

Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? 35 It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? 35 It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? I have no idea how salt loses it’s saltiness. Anything is possible I suppose. Seems incomprehensible to me. But neither does it matter, the point is rather clear. Either you are a Christian or you are not. Either you let God rule in your heart or you don’t.
Of course, there are many times when we find ourselves falling short. We are after all sinners. And being baptized doesn’t change that fact. Christians fall into the sins of adultery, just as David did, murder too. We fail in so many areas, that we don’t see. There is stealing, as employers try to cheat employees, and employees try to cheat employers. Sometimes you wake up and realize that you have been sinning unbeknownst to you for quite sometime. For instance, my devotions the other morning really have me convinced that as a pastor I have been sinning by denying the precious little one’s that Jesus loves so much, and says believe in him, the forgiveness of sins in the Lord’s Supper. Of course this has been a practice in the church for quite sometime now, but I can’t shake the sense that this is a sinful tradition born out of a misapplication of scripture. I don’t want to rush in to change things, as I’m afraid that could cause some bigger problems, but I do want to address the situation. It was the last couple paragraphs of Luther’s sermon on the Lord’s Supper in The Large Catechism that have me earnestly reevaluating the whole situation. That Christians sin is not the problem. We have a Lord who forgives sins.
The biggest problem is Christians who life a legalistic life and convince themselves that they do not sin. These lose their saltiness in a way that seems as if it is lost forever, and are severely detrimental to Christianity as a whole. Christianity lives by the gospel. Christians live by the gospel. It is our saltiness. It is never an excuse for sin, it is always a remedy for sin. It works in us a clean conscience, delivers a pure heart, and teaches us to forgive also, not to stand in constant judgment of others. But when one resolves to live by the law, and not by faith in the gospel, in Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection, but merely uses Jesus as an example to follow (usually a wax nose of an example at that) then the salt loses its flavor, then there is no call to repentance, but a mere call to do better. The better is never good enough.
No Christians will find themselves disobeying God, disobeying Christ. They will find that their saltiness loses its flavor from time to time. But as impossible as it seems to restore flavor to salt, nothing is impossible with God. So it is that we Christians need to stay in touch with the source of our saltiness, the word of God, Jesus Christ and his sacraments. It is there and through these things that God is constantly working on us, changing us, and restoring our salt. Through this he works repentance in us, exposing our sin, and forgiving us. And there in the forgiveness of sins, we find our salt.