When Christ is Your Aroma

“But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere.” 2 Corinthians 2:14

Almost everyone has a favorite (and least favorite) scent. Maybe it’s your most-used, nearly burned-out candle lit on the kitchen countertop or freshly baked bread in your oven. Perhaps yours are like mine, tied to a memory of waking to your grandmother making pancakes, bacon, and slowly dripping coffee, or your dad coming home from work with the scent of engine grease and coal dust on his clothes. Somebody may connect our least favorite scents to a bad memory that we can’t shake. That’s a tough place to walk through, and God is big enough to heal that space. If that’s you, I’m sorry that a bad thing happened to you.

So often, scents and smells are evidence of labor and activity.  It takes work to build and maintain a fire, cook a meal, bake bread, grill meat, wash and dry laundry, or clean the house. All of these things likely have an associated scent in your memories.  Scent is evidence of labor, work, and movement.  Fragrances can draw us closer to the source or drive us further away.

The mentions of scent, fragrance, and aroma in the Bible are significant – over two hundred times!  Each time, that fragrance followed an activity.  Some might include:

Sacrifice and Worship

Prayer and Fasting

Breaking and Multiplying

Regeneration and Righteousness

Brokenness and the Gospel

Exodus 29:18 tells us that the burnt offering was a soothing aroma to the LORD. “You shall offer up in smoke the whole ram on the altar; it is a burnt offering to the Lord: it is a soothing aroma, an offering by fire to the Lord.”

Over and over, we read this phrase throughout the Mosaic Law: “pleasing” or “soothing” aroma. God is not pleased with our sin, but He is delighted with our repentance and obedience to Him.  Now that we are no longer under the law and Jesus was the final sacrifice, we are free from sin to live our lives as a pleasing aroma to Him.

Ephesians 5:1 says, “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.”

And even our prayers serve as an aroma, as Jesus taught the disciples when they asked Him how to pray. The Lord’s prayer is familiar to so many, but there is work in committing to the discipline of prayer.  Surrendering to God’s divine nature and will, trusting Him for our daily needs, practicing forgiveness, and warring against our own sinful nature. Prayer is a very active role in the life of the believer, and I’m so glad that we can know that God hears our prayers.

Revelation 5:8 says that our prayers are incense before God in heaven.  

“And He came and took the book out of the right hand of Him who sat on the throne.  When He had taken the book, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each one holding a harp and golden bowls of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.” 

Our prayers are ever before God as a fragrant aroma to Him, and we can be confident in this because of what we read in Proverbs.

“The LORD is far from the wicked, but He hears the prayer of the righteous.” Proverbs 15:29

If you’re like me, you have prayed hard prayers and waited for God to answer them. He always answers: yes, no, or wait and join Me in your sanctification through this struggle. I have often experienced a brokenness in waiting or hearing a “No” from God. And even when I trust Him for His best, I still fight through my flesh to agree with Him sometimes. When we submit our brokenness to God, we often see the blessings through the process.  Jacob experienced brokenness in his hip when he wrestled with God and walked with a limp for the rest of His life. Still, he received the promise that God made to Abraham and was chosen to become the father of Israel.  Jesus broke the fish and bread to multiply a lunchbox meal for an entire multitude of people.  Mary broke her delicate, alabaster box of fine perfume to worship the Savior, filling the house with the scent and anointing Him shortly before He was broken for our sin on the cross. 

Have you ever crushed a piece of fruit or ground fresh coffee beans? Breaking and multiplying anything in our natural world almost always produces an aroma.

Recently, my husband joined me in a week-long fast.  It was day 5 for him, and he returned home from work, exhausted and weak from the fast. He admitted it was a tougher day, and he hadn’t yet decided if he would complete the whole 7 days.  After falling asleep for about an hour, I gently tried to wake him because we were going to be late for a commitment.  As he was waking, he started rattling off a dream he was having, and I was amazed at the story he was telling me because until then, I was the only one I personally knew to have the experience of smelling bread when there was none in sight, signifying to me that Jesus was present.  

He dreamed that he was trying to get somewhere on time and on his way, stumbled upon a commercial kitchen that was totally abandoned and full of fresh food – more specifically, piles and piles of fresh, hot bread and sandwiches.  He couldn’t believe that he had found it, and after he ate, he felt sad because no one else knew about it.  He very sleepily said, “It smelled so good, like nothing I have ever smelled before.”

“Wait. You actually smelled bread while you were sleeping?”

“Yes!  I thought you were baking something.”

With tear-filled eyes, I agreed with him that Jesus was ministering to him in his sleep.

What a gift!  This only makes me want to lean into Him more and become saturated with His presence and the fragrance of Him through His sanctifying work. As we are found in Christ, regenerated, and becoming more like Him through the process of sanctification, I believe we expel the same fragrance to God, the Father. He sees Jesus when He sees those who belong to Him.  We are regenerated into His righteousness, and we are His inheritance! This transformation should inspire and motivate us to live as a pleasing aroma to God. 

“I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe.” Ephesians 1:18

Only God has the power to include our brokenness in His redemptive love story through the gospel.  Jesus has the same power to take a broken human and redeem them, transferring His righteousness to us. God displays the power of the gospel in us, not by transforming us from bad to good, but by resurrecting us from the dead to life! We are spreading the aroma not of death in our world but of living, breathing gospel truth of His love.

Where can you take the scent of Christ with you today? 

How does He want to use a broken piece of your story to draw someone into the gospel, like they were smelling the scent of a hot meal, drawing them into Himself?

“But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are an aroma that brings death; to the other, an aroma that brings life. And who is equal to such a task? Unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit. On the contrary, in Christ we speak before God with sincerity, as those sent from God.” 2 Corinthians 2:14-17

Ardently His,

Jessica

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