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The Independence Podcast helps everyday people discover that true freedom isn’t found in self-reliance but in total dependence on Jesus Christ. Each episode blends honest conversation, biblical truth, and practical application to help listeners move beyond emotional devotion toward consistent, daily surrender. Whether you’re new in your faith or longing to grow deeper, you’ll find encouragement to trust God fully, live from His grace, and follow Christ with courage in a world that celebrates independence but neglects dependence on the One who truly sets us free.
Bryan Dunham (00:00)
Welcome my friends to episode 20 of the Independence Podcast where we discuss how true freedom comes with dependence. As David said in the Psalms, I run in the path of your commands for you have set my heart free. In the nature of our relationship to God, there is freedom in submission, freedom in dependence.
And so on this podcast, we talk about and are learning how to live in daily dependence on God. I'm your host, Brian Dunham, and this week we are back to the Bound for Freedom series. Last week's men's retreat was simply awesome at my church. There were so many men that give so freely of their resources, of their time, of their effort, of their talents, just to make sure that the men who register for this can have an encounter.
with God and it's really humbling to be a part of this team. So grateful for this group of guys. You guys know who you are. Some of whom I've known for a while now, many others I'm just getting to know, but really excited about the future for the men's ministry at our church. Okay, so in this episode and in this series of Bound for Freedom, what we've been doing is dissecting what you and I call the Sermon on the Mount. So far it's been verse by verse and this week,
We are coming out of what you and I call the Beatitudes, and now this message that Jesus is giving is about to take a hard turn. The Beatitudes, you know, if the Beatitudes are the identity markers of the kinds of people who are blessed in this upside down kingdom that Jesus calls the Kingdom of Heaven, then what is about to follow is what it looks like practically to live in and to live out the Kingdom of Heaven.
here on earth. Just very quickly, in case you happen to be just picking up this episode without listening to the previous ones in this Bound for Freedom series, a little bit of background, I would encourage you to go back and pick those up from the beginning. But Jesus' main sermon when he is on earth is repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. This word repent, I think oftentimes I have the image of somebody on their hands and knees and they're crying and they're kind of crawling to God and maybe that.
is an appropriate picture for some people, but this word repent, literally in Greek is metanoia. It means change your thinking, change the way that you've been thinking about a particular topic. So Jesus says, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. So he's saying this kingdom of heaven idea is right here. It's here and now. So kingdom of heaven, as Jesus talks about it, is not the good place. It's not the place that you and I
a hope to go when our life here on earth is over. This kingdom of heaven that Jesus talks about is someplace you can have access to here and now. Essentially, the kingdom of heaven or what gets referred to in some of the other gospels as the kingdom of God, primary difference here is Matthew is speaking to a Hebrew audience who would never use
the name of God or even the term God and when they would write God they would write G slash D so he uses the term kingdom of heaven that would be synonymous with the phrase kingdom of God that Luke uses a lot so it's the same thing when you read kingdom of heaven kingdom of God in scripture that is about here and now not just someplace you know by and by after you pull the ejection handle on this life this is about wherever
the reign and rule of God is supreme. That is where the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God is. And this kingdom is not like the kingdoms of this world. Like in this world, if you're living in a country where a military power comes and takes you over, now you have a different authority you're reporting to that that is taken by force. But in this kingdom, you self-select your way into the kingdom of God.
not by force, but by surrender, by choosing to place yourself under the reign and rule of God. Okay, so Jesus was a first century rabbi and each rabbi had a way of teaching. And that way of teaching was how a person should live out the commands of God in relation to each other and to God himself. And that teaching was called the rabbi's yoke.
So the Sermon on the Mount is the single longest continuing block of Jesus's teaching in the New Testament. And therefore, I would submit to you that what it contains is a good portion of Jesus's yoke or the primary way
that he interpreted how to live out God's commands and anyone claiming to be an apprentice to Jesus, you and I would say, disciple, is agreeing to live under that yoke and attempt to do and be what the rabbi did and was. Okay, so that's the background. Now, let's jump into Matthew 5 verse 13. You are the salt of the earth, but if salt loses its saltiness,
How will it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under foot. Okay, so let's begin with some simple observations. The phrase the salt of the earth. This is an idiom in the English language and really it means something to us that typically is identified with someone, a person who is humble, who's dependable, who's
morally good, they're hardworking, they're sincere people. You might say, wow, that guy's just the salt of the earth. It's like they're ordinary but deeply good people. Okay, so what about salt losing its saltiness? Well, in our context, can that actually happen? Can salt lose its saltiness? No, not in our world. Sodium chloride is a stable mineral. To you and I, if it's salt,
it's going to be salty. And if it's not salt, it's not going to be salty. But in Jesus' day, the way that he talks about this, salt losing its saltiness, could actually occur and would have made complete sense to their ears. So, right there, there's something that we're going to spend a little bit more time on here in a minute. But let's read the last part of this verse too and just see if there's anything that in our current cultural context that...
that we pick up on. It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under foot. So this entire verse when I was growing up, it was taught to me something like this. We as Christians should be salt, metaphorically. We are a preservative for culture and a society that is bent on traveling the highway to hell.
It's like salt. We are a seasoning that you don't want to put too much in because too much salt will ruin it. So really we're there to kind of flavor the world. Salt makes you thirsty. So other people as they experience you, this should make them thirsty for God. Like this is how this verse was taught to me. And I giggled a little bit when going through that. And these are not bad thoughts. I don't want to...
say that they're, even that they're incorrect, ⁓ there's some truth in them. But sometimes we can take a verse like this that we don't understand in our current context and then in our search to try to determine what it means, we just make, we just stretch. We stretch it out to something that would make sense to you and I and relative to our current cultural context when sometimes that does a disservice to what Jesus is actually intending to communicate. So,
Since this was originally written in Greek, let's jump into some Greek words here and then we'll talk about some Hebrew context because both of those things is going to absolutely deepen and maybe even change how you think about this verse. Okay, so let's talk about losing its saltiness. The Greek word for this phrase, loses its saltiness, is moranthe. Moranthe. What English word does that sound like to your ear?
moron this word and this doesn't happen often in Greek. I've talked about Hebrew before being like an overstuffed suitcase where one word has multiple meanings. That doesn't usually happen in Greek. Greek's a fairly specific language. It's more like a rifle instead of a shotgun but occasionally you have a word that does have a double meaning to it and this is one of those words. Moranthe means
First off, to lose its savor or flavor, lose its taste, but it also means what you and I think of when we think of a moron is to become foolish or to make dull. This is interesting because it can apply to the actual idea of salt as far as losing its taste. And we'll talk about how salt loses its saltiness in their day.
but also refers to a person who's become dull and foolish. And the rest of this verse, when it comes to Greek versus English, means what you and I would think of, but I do want to point out here specifically that in the Greek, at the end of this verse, where it says, I'm no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot, some translations stop at that. Other translations say trampled underfoot by men. Just so you know,
The original Greek does have the phrase by men at the end. So it's important to note that it is men that are throwing out and trampling the salt underfoot. So they're declaring by their actions that this substance, this salt is worthless. So it's not God doing that, in other words, in this verse. So this verse isn't about losing your salvation.
It's about something else. if you are the salt that loses its saltiness, it's thrown out and trampled by men. This is not about you have become ineffective for God and therefore as a result of that you've lost your salvation. That's not what this is about. So let's talk about what it's about. Let's rewind the tape for just a second to talk about some cultural situations that will shed some light on what's going on here. So the first one is salt losing its saltiness. So in the ancient Near East,
Salt was not the refined, pure table salt we use today. It was harvested from places like the Dead Sea and it contained things other than just sodium chloride, stuff like gypsum sand, there were other impurities in there. And when you had this substance that contained sodium chloride and you would store it over time, moisture over that time period,
would slowly dissolve and leach out the actual sodium chloride, leaving behind the same white powdery substance that looked identical to what you would have called salt, but it wasn't salty anymore. So the real salt over time just washed out and left this useless residue that looked just like salt, but had lost its saltiness. When that happened, they would simply throw it out into the street and go get some more.
newer salt that had not lost its saltiness yet.
We see this with items in our day, not with salt, but as an example, I've got a little person in my house that loves to leave the caps off of things, especially the toothpaste and highlighters and markers. So I love using highlighters in books. So does she. I like brushing my teeth every day. Thankfully, so does she. But as a for instance, the other day I was going to pick up a highlighter off the floor that
did not have a cap on it. guess what happened to it? The solvent that is located inside that highlighter had dried out and the highlighter had simply become useless. It was completely dried out and good for nothing. So I threw it in the trash. So we understand this concept. Like that same thing happens with soda. open a soda, let it sit overnight. All the carbonation escapes. It's flat. It's just not good anymore. Like these are concepts that we...
deal with every day. Paint is another example. If you leave the lid off the paint, it's going to eventually, again, same thing happens. The solvent that's in there ultimately evaporates and you just have this, you know, glob of stuff that is useless and good for only throwing away. So, what does Jesus mean when he says the salt loses its saltiness? Because he's talking to the disciples.
And because he's talking to the disciples, he's talking to us. And so I guess my question is, what does it mean for us as disciples to lose our saltiness? Well, carrying that analogy out, the salt in Jesus's day still looked like salt. It had all the appearances of salt. It had simply lost its effectiveness, its potency.
And for us to lose our effectiveness or to lose our potency just simply means we lose our impact on the world. Like we have all the appearance of the thing, of the salt or of a Christian. We're doing all the things that Christians typically do, but we've lost the thing that actually makes us distinct. We've lost the thing that makes us the thing.
And this is when we as Christians blend into our culture. We adopt its values. We lean into the cultural idols of power, performance, acceptance, comfort, control. We stop living in daily dependence and daily obedience to God. Can we talk about this word obedience for just a second? I think culturally, we receive this as a negative word, obedience. American culture is built on the back of
independence. I got this. It's that pull myself up, buy my bootstraps idea. It's biting off more than you can chew and chewing it and that equals success. Our country was founded on this idea of throwing off the shackles and we are going to do this our way. It is the air we breathe here. So the last thing
a self-made man has a taste for is obedience. Obey. Because that word implies it's not my choice, it's not my idea, I'm doing what you want me to do, I'm doing what you're telling me to do, so therefore I'm not free. And freedom and independence is what we value here. But Jesus says over and over again, if you love me, obey my commands. And he equates obedience
with loving him. And if you don't love him, you don't obey. And if you obey, you do love him. He says, again, why do you call me Lord, Lord, but not do what I say? Why did Jesus come into the world? What does the Bible tell us about that? Was it to exert his full power as the king of the universe and exert his power over his followers?
to burden you with a weight too great to carry, or to just show His dominance over you by commanding your obedience and then punishing you when you stray. Is that what the Bible tells us about why Jesus came? No. So this is John, you're all probably familiar with the very famous verse, John 3.16. This verse is John 3.17. We should never stop at just 16. You need to keep on reading, brother.
So verse 17, for God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. And then a little bit later in verse 19, and this is the judgment. The light has come into the world and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light.
and does not come to the light lest his works should be exposed." Jesus says very clearly here, he came into the world not to condemn it, but that the world might be saved through him. And so what you're signing up for when you're signing up to be a Christian is not just, you know, a good latte and a Bible study, making some good friendships.
It's about learning how to live as Jesus taught. That word disciple, I think, is completely loaded. I much prefer the word apprentice, and that comes from some spiritual mentors of mine, Dallas Willard, John Ortberg. Like being an apprentice to Jesus, it's learning and practicing a way of life. That's what it means to become a Christian. And so when Jesus talks about obedience, it's about
just simply living the way that he taught in the same way. If you joined a martial arts school, it's one of my favorite analogies. If you signed up for, I don't know, Taekwondo and you walked in the door and you got your gi and you got your little white belt and then they, started teaching you some moves and you came back the next week doing moves completely different than what they told you to do or just going and sitting down in the crowd and saying, I feel pretty good in my gi. I just want to watch you guys try to learn this. and I'm happy with where I'm at.
Like you wouldn't be a student. You wouldn't be a student of that martial art. You're just a spectator. And so I think a lot of us don't understand that when we sign up for Christianity, we are signing up to learn a practice. We are signing up to come on board and try to figure out how we live our life as Jesus taught. And oftentimes we come underneath the instruction of someone who has walked this life for a while and knows a bit more about us and can show us
Okay, here's some basic moves. Here's some things you gotta learn. over time, we progress in the belts, so to speak. We become more knowledgeable. We have more life experience with it. But that's what it means to be a Christian. And so, when Jesus says His mission is not to condemn the world, but to save the world, like, why are we supposed to live as Jesus taught?
not just for you, not just for your own personal enjoyment. Like we have this Jesus and me culture that is like, it's just, this is just for me. It's not Jesus and me. It is Jesus and we, this is not just for you. It is so that you can participate in his mission in this world, which is what? It's that idea of saving the world. And again, this isn't just saving the world to go to someplace outside of this world when everybody's dead. That word save.
is actually the Greek word sozo. means more often than it gets translated as save or salvation, it means heal. It means make whole. So participating in the mission of Jesus and the way you do that is by living the way that he taught or that word obedience is to bring health, healing and wholeness into your little corner of the world, into your life, into your family, into your community. And that's what Jesus is talking about. And that's what
you and I are signing up for when we become a Christian. when Jesus teaches, sorry, I'm going to continue on this line just a little bit longer. When Jesus teaches, he rarely, if ever, is talking about heaven as you and I would define it, as someplace other than this world that we go on to after our bodies expire. Jesus is almost always talking about healing and wholeness here and now, how to live in relation to our
fellow human beings and God that can advance his mission of healing and wholeness in this world. And we get to participate in that work. And that work is greater than any purpose we can concoct with our own plans. But it requires obedience every day. And obedience only comes through daily dependence. Each day I've got to say, God, I'm surrendering myself today, just for today.
Because you know why it's just for today? You can't promise tomorrow. It's not yours to give. You may not make it to tomorrow. That's just the truth. All I can give God is today. And so just give all you know of yourself to all you know of Him today.
and when you do that, you'll actually grow in effectiveness as a witness for Jesus. Your saltiness, if you want to think about it that way, grows because others see the transformation that the daily obedience produces. They see that the fruit of that daily abiding, the fruit that gets produced in your life, they see how that's different. And it's that evidence that they're going to believe. It's not what you say.
It's lived transformation that makes others sit up and notice. And that is what it means to be salt.
But when daily dependence on God is not valued, when obedience slowly gets redefined, minimized, relaxed, normalized on the sliding scale of our comparison culture, when it becomes, well, I'm not doing that, but I'm not as bad as that guy. know, faith may still exist for us in that scenario, but its power and transformation in our lives becomes dormant.
And therefore, so does our kingdom usefulness. Or as Jesus said, the salt has lost its saltiness. And when that happens, what does the verse say? It is thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. Earlier I mentioned that phrase by men. It's men that throw it out and trample it because they regard it as useless. Well, what does this mean?
I'll give you personal example. If you've listened to this podcast, you know a bit about my story. I was raised in church at an early age. I felt God calling me into ministry. All I knew was I didn't want to do that. So I pursued my own goals for my life, but still went to church, still read my Bible, even led small groups. I taught occasionally on Sunday mornings. I had a relationship with the Lord, but God was a bolt onto my life. He was not my life. He was not the absolute authority over my decision-making.
I made those decisions for myself and I pursued the things I wanted to pursue like material wealth, which was the number one factor in my identity as a man and in my security. Outside of that, like outside of like the Christian sheen that was on my life by being at church and by doing small groups and by reading my Bible and by praying each day.
I still had that material wealth piece. I freely flirted with women who were not my spouse. I drank excessively. And while I spoke about God and my faith in Jesus from time to time, and many knew I was a regular church attender, I mean, how could I truly claim the transforming power of Jesus in the gospel when my life looked no different? In many ways, it looked worse than those who had no relationship with God and no desire for one. Why would...
my discussion about how Jesus can change a person's life, bear any weight at all with them when they looked at my life and saw no evidence of that in reality. Well.
This is the problem. This is the main problem with Christianity today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus as Lord with their lips, but there is no evidence in their life of that being true.
So while on the outward appearance, I looked like a Christian, I looked like salt, I talked like salt, but anyone who experienced me in those days would say that thing that he says he believes, it has no effectiveness, not based off of his life. And they threw it out, just completely discounted. When a disciple loses their saltiness,
people simply stop taking their witness seriously. The world effectively throws out the testimony and treats it with contempt. They trample on it. Not because Christianity is false, but because hypocrisy destroys credibility. And when Christians lose their saltiness, the world doesn't persecute them. It simply stops taking them seriously. The way around this for us as a group and for us as individuals is John 15.
abide in God every day. Jesus says, abide in me and I in you. The one who bides in me will bear much fruit, apart from me you can do nothing. It doesn't say apart from me, it'll be difficult for you to produce fruit. It doesn't say, apart from me, you're really gonna struggle. The easier way is with me. He says, apart from me, you can do.
Nothing, at all. Almost every internal problem you are dealing with is an abiding problem. It's a connection to God problem.
Many years ago, I mentioned I drank excessively. I was an alcoholic. I'm a recovered, recovering, recovered alcoholic. I didn't have an alcohol problem all those years though. Didn't have an alcohol problem. Alcohol was my solution. That was my solution to fix the real problems within me, which were despair and a lack of peace. And alcohol was my solution, although I knew it was temporary to those feelings.
So I never had an alcohol problem. The real problem I had was an abiding problem. I wasn't in daily dependence on God. And so you know what? You don't have an anger problem. Anger is your solution to the true problem. What you really have is an abiding problem. You don't have a porn problem. You have an abiding problem. You don't have an unforgiveness, gossip, anxiety problem. You have an abiding problem.
So let's bring this down to where you and I actually live. Being salt means being God's agent in the world, bringing life from the kingdom of heaven into the places where God has planted you, your workplace, your family, your neighborhood, your friendships. The saltiness is the visible evidence that Jesus is actually transforming your life. It's not perfection, but it is about direction. It's not about speed.
but it is about intent and effort. It's when people see patience where they used to be anger, integrity where there used to be compromise, faith where there used to be fear, and this transformation does not come from trying harder. It comes from daily dependence. It comes from abiding. Because every day you wake up, you have the same decision to make. Am I gonna run my life today or am I gonna surrender it?
Jesus is not asking for religious activity. He's asking for surrender and that surrender shows up in obedience. Not because he wants to control you, but because he's inviting you into the kind of life that actually is life, that heals the world around you. A life that delivers a level of satisfaction and purpose that's not even to be compared with what you can come up with on your own. And when that dependence disappears,
The witness disappears. And when the witness disappears, The salt has lost its saltiness. But here's the good news. Salt doesn't become salty by trying harder to be salt. It simply stays connected to the source of the thing that makes it distinct. And it's the same way for you and I. So tomorrow, when your feet hit the floor,
Prayer doesn't have to be complicated. Just start with God. Today I give all that I know of myself to all that I know of you. Lead me, use me, include me. And when you live that way, one surrender day at a time, your life will start to carry the flavor of the kingdom of heaven and people will notice. That's what it means to be the salt of the earth.
this episode helped you to think differently about following Jesus, share it with someone who might need to hear it and follow the show. You can find me on all socials and on the website, questionsgodasks.com, or you can download a free chapter of my first book by that same name. And remember, true freedom isn't found in independence, it is found in daily dependence on God. Grace and peace, my friends.