From the Pulpit...

Repentant believers are like salt. Jesus refers to those who follow Him. They are the salt. The metaphor focuses on flavoring: followers of Christ flavor the world and help it to be a better place even though we are not a majority of the world’s population. Christians are the ones that show the world what it is to be a godly, repentant person. Their flavor is different. Their aroma, to change metaphors, is different than that of the world (like, but not precisely the same sense as in 2 Cor. 2:16).

Another “miniature parable” or metaphor for the repentant believer is that repentant believers are like light. Light refers to holiness or god-likeness in character = godliness. God is light (1 John 1:5). We are to be like Him! The world needs this light, otherwise it exists in pure darkness.

The Law and the Prophets refers to the Mosaic Law and the Prophets of the Bible’s Old Testament. This is a shorthand way of describing the entirety of the Old Testament revelation, that is, the Hebrew Bible from Genesis to Malachi. What this would do to the audience is drive them to despair that the works they could do would never be good enough. There is where the poverty in spirit and hungering for righteousness become relevant. Works-based righteousness was insufficient to meet this impossibly high standard. The poor-in-spirit would recognize they needed something else, and that something is a righteousness from another Source, that would constitute them right before God. The Law always had that function, by the way: to point out sin, to condemn. It could not make anyone righteous. Law just does not do that.