Commentators on Mark 9:42-50 routinely note the difficulty of explaining its last two verses: “For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.” This difficulty arises largely from the fact that the images of salt and fire lend themselves to multiple lines of interpretation—so, e.g., purification in the case of salt and fire, and preservation in the case of salt. Certainty in this case will probably continue to elude us; however, the position taken in this paper will be that fire is what ‘salts’ the believer and that fire refers to the adversity at issue throughout Mark’s ninth chapter. The followers of Christ cannot ‘resalt’ themselves (v. 50), but they can be salted with fire by persecution and the adversity entailed by discipleship. The structure of the argument to be presented, therefore, will take four parts. Section one will outline the difficulties presented by vv. 49-50. Section two will consider the strongest proposals as to how these verses are to be understood. Section three will examine the wider context of vv. 49-50 that is constituted by Mark 9.1-48. Section four will propose and defend the claim that vv. 49-50 refer to the salting effect of fire, as also suggested by Matthew 5.10-13.