A pie is a sugary treat that we love because is it so sweet. No one pictures salt as a primary ingredient of that most wonderful of desserts. It seems irrational to add salt to something we want to taste sweet.
Yet, it is a good dose of salt that brings out the best flavor of the fruit. It seems irrational until we have the final product on our plate, and we dig in with gusto. Then we understand what the process is all about. It is to give us perfection in every way, shape or form.
The use of salt in something that is to become sweet is like the truth before the truth. We only understand the first truth when we hear the second one.
Deuteronomy 18:18 gives us a glimpse of the final truth. This verse tells us God will raise up a prophet, and God will put words in his mouth, and his prophet will speak all that God commands.
This passage is about Jesus. However, before Jesus there was the salt, John the Baptist. To understand how John is the salt before the sugar, let’s look to three passages found in the book of John.
John 1:19-20 reveals the purity of John the Baptist’s heart. He knew he was no more than the salt, that he was not the final ingredient. He would make the message of Jesus even sweeter, but he was quick to say he was not the end product.
And this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?”
He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.”
And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?”
He said, “I am not.”
John could have claimed to be a great prophet from the past, and he would have been accepted as such. Even when the crowd asked him again, we read his redirection in John 1:21-23.
“Are you the Prophet?”
And he answered, “No.”
So they said to him, “Who are you? We need to give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”
He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.”
John 1:25 reveals the crowd’s continued and complete misunderstanding of the truth of John’s mission.
They asked him, “Then why are you baptizing, if you are neither the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”
The people of the world could not see the final product because the pie had not come out of the oven yet. They ignored the passage in Deuteronomy telling of the final product to be found in Jesus. They tasted only the salt, and they could not understand how the bitter taste of salt could make the sweetness of the Christ so much more flavorful when he began his ministry.
They could not see the truth that came before the truth, and because of that, they turned from Jesus, and they never understood the incredible perfection of his gift to all humanity.
John was part of the recipe of Salvation, and Jesus was the culmination. Together they made perfection, and we can enjoy it even today.
God’s truth is still truth, even if we don’t understand every ingredient in his recipe.
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