My five-year-old and I were playing checkers on the tablet last week during skating lessons. She dragged a piece to a square it couldn’t reach. Nothing happened. She had a jump available and didn’t take it. The app forced her to take it. It even forced me to win when I was trying to let her lose gracefully.

Two rounds in, it hit me. She hadn’t learned a thing. She couldn’t explain the game to her three-year-old brother any better than he could explain it to her. She went along for the ride. She never bumped into a rule, so she never learned one.

That’s what we’ve done with Christianity in much of America. We’ve sanded it down so smooth that nobody catches on anything. No friction. No correction. No one hears, “You can’t move there — here’s why.” And the result is a faith so bland it can’t be told apart from the background noise. Jesus has a word for that. He calls it salt that has lost its taste.

But Jesus didn’t come to throw out the rules. He came to fulfill them — to bring them to their intended goal. And then he gave us the only righteousness that actually works. Here’s what I want you to see today: the Law still matters. It still teaches, corrects, stings. But it cannot save you. Only Christ can do that. And because he has, you’re free to be salt in a world that has forgotten what the rules are for.

To understand what Jesus means, we need to hear what Isaiah was shouting six hundred years earlier.

The Fast That Fools No One

“Cry aloud; do not hold back; lift up your voice like a trumpet; declare to my people their transgression” (Isaiah 58:1).

God tells the prophet to shout. Not whisper. Not suggest. Not “share his truth.” Shout. Because the people were doing everything right — on the surface. They fasted. They prayed. They bowed their heads like prairie grass in the August wind. They showed up for worship. And the whole time? “Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure, and oppress all your workers” (v. 3b).

The Hebrew word for “fast” — צוֹם (tsom) — appears seven times in this passage. The people throw it in God’s face like a receipt: “Why have we fasted and you have not seen it?” They expected God to be impressed. They had done the religious thing. They had punished their bodies, skipped their meals, worn the sackcloth. Surely that counts for something.

But here is what God says: “Is such the fast that I choose, a day for a person to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head like a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the LORD?” (v. 5).

Do you hear the edge in that question? God is not asking for information. He is answering it. No. That is not a fast acceptable — רָצוֹן (ratson), the Hebrew word meaning “pleasing, delightful” — to the LORD. Not because the fasting was fake. They really did go hungry. The sackcloth was real. The ashes were real. But like the checkers app, the whole system let them glide through without being changed by it. They performed religion without being corrected by it. The Law was there on paper. It just wasn’t working on them.

John Chrysostom nailed this in the fourth century: “Do not say to me that I fasted for so many days, that I did not eat this or that, that I did not drink wine, that I endured want; but show me if from an angry man you have become gentle, if from a cruel man you have become benevolent. If you are filled with anger, why oppress your flesh? If hatred and avarice are within you, of what benefit is it that you drink water?”

Chrysostom understood what Israel wouldn’t face: you can afflict the body while the heart remains untouched. You can fast from food and feast on resentment. You can bow your head in prayer and keep your boot on your neighbor’s neck.

And if you think that diagnosis expired with the Old Testament, look around. We have done the same thing — just in different clothes. We have built churches — good churches, faithful churches — where a person can attend for years and never hear that they are a sinner who needs a Savior. Where “God loves you just as you are” has quietly replaced “Repent and believe.” Where the Law has been smoothed down until it corrects no one. No friction. No sting. No learning.

And the result? The same as my daughter’s checkers game. We can’t explain the faith to our neighbors because we were never taught the rules ourselves. We went along for the ride. We all prefer the frictionless version. It’s more comfortable. But comfortable Christianity produces Christians who don’t know what they believe or why it matters — and who have nothing distinctive to offer the person next door.

Do you see what God is saying through Isaiah? He’s not angry that they’re fasting. He’s angry that their fasting isn’t changing them. The rules were right there. The Law was given. But it slid right off them like water off a stone. And a faith that doesn’t correct you can’t save you either.

So what does God actually want? And where does this leave us — people who can’t even keep the rules we’ve been given?

Not to Abolish, but to Fulfill

It leaves us exactly where Jesus finds us — empty-handed.

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17).

That word fulfill — πληρῶσαι, plērōsai — does more work than we usually let it. We hear “fulfill” and think “obey,” as if Jesus just came to check every box on the list. But the Greek means something richer. It means to fill full, the way you fill a vessel to the brim. To complete. To bring to its intended goal. Jesus is not merely keeping the Law. He is completing it. Every command, every sacrifice, every fast that Isaiah critiqued — all of it was an arrow aimed at him. He is the target it was always flying toward.

And the Law is not going anywhere. “Until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law” (v. 18). It still teaches. It still corrects. It still stings when you need stinging.

But here is where everything turns.

“Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (v. 20).

The Pharisees were the gold standard. They tithed their mint and cumin. They memorized Torah. They fasted twice a week — not because the Law required it, but because they wanted extra credit. If their righteousness isn’t enough, what hope do we have?

None. Not in ourselves. That’s the point. Jesus isn’t raising the bar so we’ll jump higher. He’s raising the bar so we’ll stop jumping and let him carry us over.

And that is exactly what he does.

You Are

The exceeding righteousness is not yours to manufacture. It is Christ’s to give.

He who fulfilled every letter of the Law — he who is the Law’s intended goal — credits his perfect obedience to sinners who have none of their own. Paul states it as plainly as language allows: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

This is the great exchange. He takes your sin. You receive his righteousness. Not gradually. Not partially. Not on a trial basis. Completely. Martin Luther called this the iustitia aliena — the “alien righteousness.” It is not native to you. It is not something you grew or earned or discovered inside yourself. It is placed on you like a robe, draped over your shoulders by someone else’s hands. And it fits perfectly, because it was always meant for you.

Now hear what Jesus says to these disciples — these poor in spirit, mourning, meek, persecuted nobodies who just heard the Beatitudes: “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:13-14).

Notice the verb. Are. Not “become.” Not “try to be.” Not “earn the title of.” Jesus declares what they already are. This is not a command. It is a christening.

This is baptismal language. In your baptism, you were marked with the cross of Christ and forever named. You were given an identity that no failure can revoke and no achievement can improve. Paul puts it this way: “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Galatians 3:27). You put on Christ the way you put on a garment. His righteousness covers you. You are salt. You are light. Not because of what you do, but because of whose you are.

And how does this alien righteousness keep reaching you? Not through moral effort. Through Word and Sacrament. At the Lord’s Table, you receive his body and blood — the body that fulfilled every law, the blood that covers every transgression. In the preached Word, you hear “your sins are forgiven” — not as advice for self-improvement, but as absolution spoken over you by the authority of Christ himself. These are not rituals we perform to impress God. These are the means by which God delivers what Christ won.

The Augsburg Confession puts it with blunt clarity: “We cannot obtain forgiveness of sin and righteousness before God through our merit, work, or satisfactions, but… we receive forgiveness of sin and become righteous before God out of grace, for Christ’s sake, through faith” (Article IV). That is the exceeding righteousness. Not yours. His. Given to you.

Here is the mystery we hold together: The Law remains. It teaches, corrects, guides. Repentance is real — we confess actual sins, not vague feelings of inadequacy. But the righteousness that saves is Christ’s alone. And from this — from being forgiven sinners who know both the weight of the Law and the freedom of the Gospel — real growth happens. The kind of growth you can explain to your neighbor. The checkers app couldn’t teach my daughter because it never let her fail. God’s Law lets you fail — and then Christ picks you up. That is how you learn the game.

Salt in the Valley

So what does salt that hasn’t lost its taste actually look like? In Climax, of all places?

Start here: you are not salt because you try hard enough. You are salt because Christ has made you salt. And salt does what salt does.

It preserves. In a culture that has largely abandoned the vocabulary of sin and grace, the church keeps those words alive. We name what is wrong — not to condemn, but to heal. A doctor who won’t name the disease can’t prescribe the cure. When we say “this is sin,” we are not being judgmental. We are being honest. And honesty is the first act of love.

It seasons. The church adds something to the life of a community that nothing else can — the declaration that your worth is not measured by your harvest, your acreage, or your productivity. You are loved because Christ has loved you. Period. In a town where value tracks with output, that’s flavor. That’s something different. That’s the tang that makes people stop and ask where it comes from.

It stings. Salt in a wound hurts. The Law is supposed to sting. When you hear “you shall not bear false witness” and remember what you said about your neighbor last Tuesday at the café — that sting is the Law doing its work. Don’t run from it. It means the medicine is reaching the wound.

And none of this is heroic. The farmer who deals honestly at the elevator. The parent who teaches right from wrong and then, when the child fails, says “I forgive you — let’s try again.” The neighbor who shows up with a casserole, not because anyone asked, but because that’s what neighbors do. The church member who says, “I was wrong. Forgive me.” This is salt doing what salt does. Ordinary faithfulness in ordinary places. God serves your neighbor through your hands, your work, your presence — and most of the time, it doesn’t look like anything special. It looks like Tuesday.

God’s strong Word cleaved the darkness at creation. It is still speaking. It speaks in the baptismal font, at the communion rail, from the pulpit. And it sends you — salted, lit, forgiven — back into the valley to do the ordinary work of the kingdom.

You don’t have to save the world. You just have to stay salty. Christ will do the rest.

Back to the Board

After the tablet, I got out an actual checkerboard. Cardboard. Folding. Pieces that slide around if you breathe too hard. My daughter made a wrong move. I said, “You can’t do that — here’s why.” She groaned. She tried again. She lost. She wanted to play again.

That is how you learn.

The church is not a checkers app. It is not a frictionless system designed to let everyone glide through uncorrected and unchanged. It is a community where the rules are taught, where failure is named, where the Law does its stinging, necessary work. And where — every single time, without exception, no matter how badly you’ve played — you hear these words: “Your sins are forgiven. Go in peace.”

Christ fulfilled the Law so you don’t have to earn your way in. But he didn’t throw it away. He handed it back to you — not as a burden, but as a gift. The rules of the game. The shape of the life you’ve been given.

You are salt. Stay salty.