Scripture Study for

This post-exilic Isaiah passage reflects a time when the full restoration of God’s people in the land had yet to materialize.  Agricultural and economic conditions led to a general failure to thrive. The people have complained that, although they have fasted and prayed, God has not responded (58:3). Thus, God’s retort: This is the fast I want—to take care of one another, to remove oppression and injustice from among you. Only when God’s people have  attended to these traditional, well-known covenantal expectations  will they experience full restoration, when God answers and quickly  heals their “wound.” This is God’s desire and final intention. 

Paul has been arguing that God’s wisdom, God’s way of acting in the world, makes no sense from the perspective of “human wisdom”  (1:18–31). Thus it was that when Paul came proclaiming God’s plan  of salvation through the cross of Christ (“the mystery of God”),  he did not rely on persuasive arguments or “sublimity of words.”  Rather, he simply proclaimed what God had done, relying on God— through the Spirit and power—to persuade that Paul spoke the truth.  Ultimately for Paul, the Christian message cannot be demonstrated using human logic; its truth can only be shown and believed through the power of God. 

Jesus exhorts his disciples that they are charged not just to follow and learn from him, but to manifest the glory of God through their lives. Salt is only useful when it seasons food. Likewise, discipleship is not just for the good of the individual but for others as well;  disciples must therefore make sure that they are faithful followers of  Christ. Light provides illumination, and is thus a prominent biblical metaphor for the attractive power of God’s teaching and actions for others (for example, Isaiah 2:2–5; 42:6). Just as salt must be salty or it stops being salt, and light that does not illuminate cannot really be light, so Christians in whom others cannot see the glory of God are not really (good) disciples.