Martyn Lloyd Jones: Salt and Light

Martyn Lloyd-Jones‘ sermon on Matthew 5:14:

The first thing our Lord said of us was, ‘Ye are the salt of the earth’; and it is only after this that He says, ‘Ye are the light of the world’. Why does He put it in that order instead of the reverse? . . . Scripture, in dealing with the Christian, always emphasizes first what he is, before it begins to speak of what he does. . . . Far too often we Christians tend to reverse the order. We have spoken in a very enlightened manner, but we have not always lived as the salt of the earth. Whether we like it or not, our lives should always be the first thing to speak; and if our lips speak more than our lives it will avail very little. So often the tragedy has been that people proclaim the gospel in words, but their whole life and demeanor has been a denial of it. The world does not pay much attention to them. Let us never forget this order deliberately chosen by our Lord: ‘the salt of the earth’ before ‘the light of the world’. We >are< something before we begin to >act< as something. The two things should always go together, but the order and sequence should be the one that He sets down here. (Studies in the Sermon on the Mount Volume 1 [Eerdmans, 1959-60], p. 164-65)