The Counter-Cultural Kingdom | Matthew 5:13-16
Brian Hedges | November 23, 2025
Well, good morning! Turn in your Bibles to Matthew 5. We’re going to be reading Matthew 5:13-16. We have been studying together, for about the last eight weeks, the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Today will actually be the last segment of this part of our series before we transition into the season of Advent, and then we’ll return to the Sermon on the Mount in January.
You and I now live in a cultural moment that has dramatically shifted from what many Christians in the West have known. The assumptions, privileges, and cultural alignments that once supported the church and Christian faith are rapidly changing. The church in North America increasingly finds itself in a situation that’s actually much closer to that of the early church, where we are now a minority movement on the margins of a pluralistic society. And we actually live in perhaps the most pluralistic society in the world today, where there’s more diversity of religious options, more religions practiced in the United States than any other part of the world.
That cultural shift could be discouraging to many people when we think about, maybe, what used to be compared to what now is. But it’s actually in that very situation—a minority movement within a pluralist society—that the first disciples found themselves when Jesus gathered them around himself and said to them, “You are the salt of the earth…you are the light of the world.”
It’s those words that we’re going to consider together this morning in Matthew 5. We’ve been looking at this beginning section of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus has described for us and defined for us the citizens of the kingdom of heaven. We’ve seen in the beatitudes that these kingdom citizens are characterized by a different set of values, by an entirely different vision of being in the world. This is the upside-down kingdom of God, where the poor, the broken, the mourning, the humble, they are the ones who are the citizens of the kingdom. It is an inside-out kingdom, where the concern is with the formation of one’s character, not just with external righteousness, but an internal righteousness that comes into our hearts and lives as we increasingly live under the saving reign of God in Christ. And we’ve seen that it is this already-not yet kingdom, where we are already citizens of the kingdom of God, we are already heirs of the kingdom, and yet we are still waiting for the consummation of the promises of God. We’re still waiting for the fullness of comfort and satisfaction and for the day when we will see God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.
It’s to these very same people, to whom Jesus has already preached the beatitudes, that he now speaks about their influence and their role as his church and as his people in the world, and he does so with these familiar metaphors of salt and light and a city on a hill. Let’s read that passage, Matthew 5:13-16, remembering these are the words of Jesus. Jesus says,
“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.
“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”
This is God’s Word.
So, if the beatitudes reveal the character of a kingdom citizen, the images that Jesus uses here (often called the similitudes), these metaphors of salt and light and a city on a hill, describe the influence of kingdom citizens in the world. We might say that Jesus is here describing the countercultural kingdom; that is, his people, the citizens of the kingdom who live distinct lives in the world around them and thus are an influence for good.
I think the three metaphors that we’re going to consider this morning show us that. Those metaphors are salt, light, and the city on a hill.
1. Salt: The Distinctiveness of Kingdom Citizens
2. Light: The Identity of Kingdom Citizens
3. City: The Community of Kingdom Citizens
I want to look at those three things together this morning.
1. Salt: The Distinctiveness of Kingdom Citizens
Jesus says, “You are the salt of the earth.”
Now, most of the time when you and I think about salt, we think about salt as a seasoning for our food. And in the ancient world, salt was used for that purpose as well. But the primary purpose for salt in the ancient world was as a preservative against the decay of food, the decay of meat.
Don Carson in his commentary says,
“Salt was used in the ancient world to flavor foods and even, in small doses, as a fertilizer. Above all, salt was used as a preservative. Rubbed into meat, a little salt would slow decay.”
Salt works only because it is distinct, and kingdom citizens, like salt, preserve from decay by being different in the world. There is a countercultural nature to the people of God.
So the first application for us this morning is just to ask this question: Are we living distinct, kingdom-oriented lives?
You might ask, “Well, what does that mean? What does it mean to live a distinct, kingdom-oriented life, to be separate from the world?” Is that seen in the way we dress? Is it that we are completely separate and we’re not involved in the structures of the world? What does it mean?
I would say that the obvious answer is to go back to the beatitudes. Jesus has just described what it means to be a citizen of the kingdom. It is to be a person who is characterized by humility, who is poor in spirit, someone who mourns for sin and suffering and all of the things that are in the world that do not align with the reign of God. It is to be a meek and gentle person, not given to retaliation and revenge, but a person, as Jesus will say later in the sermon, who turns the other cheek.
It is to be a person who is hungry and thirsty for justice and righteousness in the world and whose heart is disposed to compassion and mercy towards those in need. It is to be single-minded and pure at heart, with our hearts set on God and his kingdom and on the vision of God. It is to be a peacemaker in the world, someone who seeks to do good to those around us and to bring God’s shalom, God’s peace and flourishing, into the world. And it’s to be someone who is willing to suffer for righteousness’ sake, even for the sake of Jesus.
When someone is like that, they are different. They are distinct from the world. And this is what we are called to be as well. This is what it means to be salt.
But listen, salt only works when it’s rubbed into the meat. So, to quote Carson one more time (and I think this explains the second half of verse 13, “If salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored”), the salt has to be rubbed into the meat and it has to stay salty. So Carson says,
“Strictly speaking, salt cannot lose its saltiness. Sodium chloride is a stable compound. But most salt in the ancient world derived from salt marshes or the like, rather than by evaporation of salt water, and therefore contained many impurities. The actual salt, being more soluble than the impurities, could be leached out, leaving a residue to dilute. It was of little worth.”
So we have to be salty and we have to be rubbed in, alright? Those two things together.
That means that we have to be a part of society while remaining distinct. So there’s this tension that you find in the metaphor of salt, of being in the world while not being of the world. We are to be in the world so that we permeate society, rubbed in to society, sufficiently engaged in society that we can actually make a difference; and yet we are to remain distinctive in our character and in our attitudes and in our values, so that we do not compromise with the world and thus lose our effectiveness.
This has always been how Christianity has done the most good in the world. Christianity has been an influence for good when the people of the church have been woven into the society in which they live while retaining their distinctive values, their distinctive character as the people of God.
I can give you many examples of this. One of the best is found in Rodney Stark’s little book The Rise of Christianity. I’ve quoted that before. It’s really a sociologist’s study of how Christianity became such a revitalizing force in the ancient world. Stark just points out that it was because of the ethic of the Christians that they cared for the poor and the impoverished, they offered hospitality and community for strangers, they provided family for widows and for orphans, for people who were on the margins of society. They showed sacrificial love during plagues and natural disasters—when everybody else would flee the cities, the Christians would stay. And because of that, Christianity grew into this much larger movement. From this embryonic kind of minority movement (the original disciples of Jesus), Christianity grew and spread and flourished, and it was because of that distinctive influence, that counterculture in the world.
So, friends, we should ask ourselves, are we sufficiently engaged in the world to do good; and have we lost our effectiveness by compromise, or are we staying salty? We are called to be salt of the earth, and this means that we are to live in a certain kind of way, a countercultural way, as the people of God. That’s the first metaphor.
2. Light: The Identity of Kingdom Citizens
Here’s the second: light. Jesus says, “You are the light of the world,” so the identity of kingdom citizens.
Now, in some ways we could say that with both salt and light Jesus is saying you are something distinct, you are something different. But I want to focus now on a parallel passage, where the apostle Paul uses this metaphor of light and I think makes this emphasis on the distinct identity of Christians even more strongly.
You see this in Ephesians 5. Paul, remember, is writing here to the church of Ephesus. Ephesus was a very pagan city. It was a city that was characterized by idolatry and sorcery and witchcraft. It was the city where you had the famous temple of Diana or of Artemis. And so these were people who had been characterized by darkness and by evil of all kinds, and yet many of these people had turned to Jesus Christ in repentance and faith, and they had become something new. They had become something very different from what they were before.
It’s in that context that Paul writes these words, Ephesians 5:7-10. He says,
“Therefore do not become partners with them [describing the wickedness of those around them]; for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.”
That’s an amazing statement. Paul’s words show us that it’s not that we were merely in the darkness, we actually were darkness. And now as Christians, we’re not merely in the light, we are light. I mean, that’s what he says! “You were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light.”
That’s significant, because it means that as Christians we have a new identity, and it means that change is possible—radical, supernatural, inside-out change is possible. It’s possible for anyone this morning. If you’re here this morning and your life is more characterized by darkness than light, this change is possible for you, so that it could be said of you that at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.
As I was working on this, I remembered this story that I heard someone once tell about St. Augustine. Augustine is that famous church father who wrote his Confessions, the story of his conversion. And according to one of the stories about Augustine, one day he met one of his former paramours, one of his former lovers, in the street. Augustine before he was a Christian was characterized by his sexual immorality, his sexual appetites, and God saved him out of that. So he met one of these women in the street, and he didn’t even seem to recognize her, and she stopped him and she said, “Augustine, don’t you recognize me? It is I.” And he replied to her, “Yes, but it is not I.” Because he had changed, because he was a new creation in Christ. He once was darkness, but now he was light in the Lord.
Can that be said of you this morning? Can you say that “I am a child of the light,” or are you still in the darkness?
You see, Christianity, when we believe it; the gospel, when we receive it; Christ, when we follow him, gives us a new identity. He makes us new creations in Christ. He makes us light in the Lord, children of light.
It is by virtue of this new identity that light is effective. Light doesn’t so much try to shine, light simply does what light does. And if we belong to Christ, our lives and our words, our convictions, our character will shine in contrast to the surrounding darkness.
What is the character of light? Well, Paul describes it in this passage. He says, “The fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true.” That’s Ephesians 5:9. And so we should ask ourselves, “Is my life marked by this fruit of the light, goodness and righteousness and truth?” Are we shining as the people of Christ?
How is it that light shines? Well, Jesus describes the function of a lamp. He says the lamp is not to be placed under a basket, but it’s to be placed on a stand, and then it gives light to all the house. And then he says, “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”
And those good works comprise everything in our lives that is a witness to Christ. So it would include both our words and our deeds. Gospel words, good deeds—both of those would be ways of shining.
I think the question for us is this: Is my lamp hidden under a basket, or am I shining into the world with gospel words and deeds, bringing glory to the Father who is in heaven? This is what we’re called to be; not just salt, but we are called to be light.
Shortly after one of our children was born, we discovered that he had jaundice. So he had this yellowish tint to his skin and we, of course, took him to the pediatrician. What they prescribed was what’s called a bilirubin blanket. And it was a form of light therapy. We’d plug this thing into the wall and he would lay on this blanket with all these lights, and the light would break down the bilirubin count in his blood. And after a week or so of the light therapy, he was just fine.
I’ve always thought that’s a wonderful metaphor for what Christians are called to be in the world. We are called to be light therapy in a world which is broken and enshrouded in darkness. And when we shine into the world with gospel conversations and with acts of mercy and justice and kindness, every act and every deed and every word that is spoken in the name of Jesus is a beam of light shining into the darkness to bring healing to a jaundiced world.
You are the salt of the earth; that’s your distinctiveness. You are the light of the world; that’s your identity. And then there’s one more metaphor: you are a city set on a hill.
3. City: The Community of Kingdom Citizens
Now, this one Jesus sort of combines with the light metaphor. You see it in verse 14: “A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.” But I want to draw it out because I think it reminds us of one other distinctive feature of this passage of Scripture, and that’s the community aspect.
R.T. France, in his little commentary on Matthew, says, “The image is of a brightly lit city on a hilltop, representing the corporate effect of the combined lights of individual disciples.” And we have to remember that in the ancient world there was no electric light, so all you had was, you know, the little light that was in an oil lamp or maybe light by candle or by torch or something like that. And one single light flickers in the darkness—that’s something. But when you had the combined lights of all of the city shining in the distance on a dark night, that would have been a spectacular sight. And when Jesus says a city set on a hill cannot be hidden, it’s showing us something about the visible nature of this community of disciples.
I think that communal aspect is also just seen in the actual words Jesus uses when he says, “You are—” the pronouns: “You are the light of the world, you are the salt of the earth.” It’s plural. So, if Jesus were in the south, he would have said, “Y’all are,” right? “Y’all are the salt of the earth, y’all are the light of the world.” It’s a plural, it’s not a singular.
So it’s speaking to us as the community, as the people of God. In other words, our calling to be salt and light is not merely an individual thing, it is a community thing. It means that we are to be a part of something larger than ourselves, a part of a community of disciples, a part of this new city of God.
So we should ask ourselves, am I living as a citizen of the new city of God?
I think one of the things this teaches us (and this is certainly the dominant teaching in the New Testament) is that the missional strategy of God in the world is the church itself. The church is in the world in order to both glorify God and to be a light to the world around it.
How is it that we do that? We do that as we are shaped by the gospel, as we become a gospel culture, a gospel-shaped community in the world. There’s something about that that changes the way we live and then becomes a force for good in the world around us.
How do you build a gospel culture in the church? I was reading a book a couple of months ago that I found really helpful in this regard. The book was Scot McKnight’s book called The King Jesus Gospel. Scot McKnight is a slightly different stream than most of us. He’s from more of the Anabaptist stream, so I wouldn’t necessarily endorse everything that Scot McKnight says. But there’s a chapter in this book that I found very helpful, called “Creating a Gospel Culture,” and he talks about the various things that we can do to create a gospel culture.
Many are the things that we already do. We build our worship around the story of the gospel, as we are called by God into worship, as we confess our sins, as we are assured of God’s grace, as we hear the word of God proclaimed, as we come to the Lord’s table, as we witness baptism. All those things are elements of a gospel church, but one of the things that McKnight said that I thought was very helpful is that we have to learn to so immerse ourselves in the story of Jesus that it counters the false stories, the false narratives of the world around us. And he gives a list of what those false stories are, and he really borrows that from another book called Hidden Worldviews.
Here’s a list. I just want you to see the list; I’m not going to really expound the list, but just see if any of these register as potential false stories in your own heart, in your own life.
There’s the false story of individualism. That’s the story that I am at the center of the universe. This is the predominant worldview of the culture around us; expressive individualism, where people are focused on their own personal fulfillment.
There’s consumerism, the story that I am my own and that I am what I own.
There’s nationalism, the story that my nation is God’s nation.
There’s moral relativism, the story that we can’t know what is universally good.
Scientific naturalism, the story that all that matters is matter itself.
The New Age story, the story that we are God’s.
Postmodern tribalism, the story that all that matters is what my little group, my tribe thinks.
Then salvation by therapy, the story that I can come to full human potential through inner exploration.
Those are the dominant worldviews that surround us. That’s the air that we breathe. That’s the water in which we swim. And for many of us, those are actual worldviews that we still hold to some degree in our own hearts and lives.
In contrast to those worldviews, in contrast to those stories, we need to immerse ourselves in the story of King Jesus—Jesus, who was God manifested in the flesh, who became incarnate and lived among us, who lived the perfect life we should have lived, in every moment of his life exhibiting love for God and for human beings; Jesus, who came to die in our place as a substitute, bearing the wrath of God, the judgment of God for our sins, and then rose from the dead and is ascended to the Father’s right hand and is coming again in glory. The story of Jesus, the story of the gospel, is the story that makes the most sense of the world. It’s the true story, and it is the story that we must immerse ourselves in if we are to be a gospel culture and thus fulfill the missional call that God has placed in our lives.
That’s how we live as light in the world. It’s by living in the light of Christ and letting this story of the gospel shape us and motivate us.
Jesus says, “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” There’s the deepest motivation of all. It’s not for us to build our own kingdom, it’s not for us to grow our church, it’s not for us to increase our influence in terms of power and control; it is to bring glory to our Father who is in heaven, to show that he is great and that he is worthy. And everything we do should be for his glory, to magnify and to praise him.
So, we see these three metaphors: we are salt of the earth, we are light of the world, we are a city set on a hill.
As we consider all of those things this morning, let’s remember this one great truth here at the end, that Jesus supremely is the light of the world, and our light is a reflected light.
The Gospel of John especially emphasizes this. John 1, speaking of Jesus, who is the word—“In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God. By him all things were created, and nothing that is made was made apart from him.” And then John 1:4-5 says, “In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Here’s Jesus, the light of the world, the one who came into the world and, rather than being vanquished by the darkness, he conquered that darkness. He brought light in every aspect of his life: in his ministry, in his teaching, in his healing of the sick and demon-oppressed, in his forgiveness and mercy shown to the guilty and the shamed. He gave light to them all; and then supremely, when Jesus went to the cross, when Jesus died for our sins as our substitute, our representative on the cross, what was he doing? He is the light who comes to overcome the darkness of our sin, the darkness of divine judgment, the darkness of death itself.
Well, there was a moment when it seemed like the light was extinguished, when Jesus died. But then, three days later, he rose again, and we see that the light overcame the darkness, not the other way around.
I want to end with this verse from John 8:12. It’s a wonderful reminder to us of who Jesus is and what we will be if we follow him. Jesus says, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”
Friends, that’s our hope. That is our confidence. That is the power behind our mission. It is in Christ, who is the light of the world. Our light, and us being light, only comes as we follow him. But if you walk in him, you will not walk in darkness; you will have the light of life.
Let’s pray together.
Gracious Father, we thank you this morning for your word. We thank you for the truth of the gospel. We thank you especially for the good news of Jesus Christ, who is the light of the world and who came to bring light into our darkness. Thank you, Lord, that we who at one time were darkness are now light in Christ. We are children of the light, and we ask you now to give us grace that we might walk as children of the light in our lives this week.
We pray as we come to the table this morning that the table would be a reminder to us in a very tangible way of this good news of the gospel, of what Jesus Christ has done for us in his suffering, his death, and his resurrection from the dead, to deliver us from darkness and to make us citizens of this kingdom of light. So Lord, draw near to us now as we continue in worship. By your Spirit, would you apply your word to our hearts and lives? Would you help us experience your presence this morning? And would you fill us up so that we are able to go into the world and share that light with others? We pray this in Jesus’ name and for his sake, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
