Smell Like Jesus
Here's the scripture referenced in the message:
2 Corinthians 2:14-16
2 Corinthians 1:15
2 Corinthians 1:16-20
2 Corinthians 1:23-2:1
2 Corinthians 2:4
2 Corinthians 2:5-8
2 Corinthians 2:11
2 Corinthians 2:14-17
TRANSCRIPT:
I want to [sighs] begin where we're going to end today um with the cup,
the cup of communion, the cup of the new covenant.
Now, the there's something beautiful and powerful about the scent of of wine.
to some a sweet smell, to others, a sour smell that really echoes the reality
that we're going to witness today. That the aroma of Christ, the fragrance of Christ,
is the sweet aroma of life to those who have received his gift.
But it's a it's a sour aroma to those who reject
the invitation of Christ into death. Now I bring that up because we're going to be talking about the power of
the aroma of Christ today. And but shifting I figure you want to have a little fun new life. Let's play a game.
Okay. So we're going to play a game called Name That Smell. Can you get into this with me? All right, new life. Let's play name that smell.
All right, here we go, Greg. Here you go.
All right, there's your little mask for us. Um, does Angel really sleep with this? She does. The power of dark.
Okay, here's smell number one for you. Mhm. Oh, yeah. What's that?
That's Well, do you like it? Let's start there.
Uh, yes, I like it. Citrus lemon. Lemon it is. Yeah. Now, uh, Gladen Cortoterero, you you've got little, uh,
scent sticks there. You can you can you can smell that as well. In fact, that's there for you to even take along with
you this week to remind you of that smell that Christ has invited us into. Okay. Smell number two.
All right.
Here we go. Greg, do you like that smell? Not really. Do you know what it is?
No. Um, [snorts] some kind of cracker or chip or something.
Oh, you're not close at all, Greg. There's some minty in there. Yeah. No. What? What? I What is it? That's black licorice.
Oh, yeah. That's why it's [laughter] gross.
If you eat licorice, it ought to be cherry. [laughter] Okay. Smell. Smell number three. Mhm. All right.
All right, let's smell this smell.
Oh, yeah. [laughter] That's the only thing worse than black licorice is coffee. That is just gross.
Oh, that's amazing.
Yeah, that's the that's the smell of morning right there. No. All right, number last here. Here we go.
Kids, you can get me play this with mom and dad at home. Okay, you guys see this?
[laughter]
I like the reaction. Yeah. I'm not sure. Okay. Ready?
Um, [laughter] yeah. It's like the sardine kipper set kind of thing. Yes, sardines. It is. It is. You could take off the mask.
Well done, Greg. Well done, boy. Black licorice. That was a major fail.
Well, but I mean, three negative smells out of [laughter] the four. I like all those smells.
I was waiting for brownie or something. [laughter] Oh, we bring that up because there's something incredibly powerful
about our scent uh our sense of scent, our sense of smell. In fact, a
researchers tell us that the sense of smell is more powerfully connected to memories and emotion than even the sense of sight. And and you get this, right?
Like like you can you can think of that thing and be immediately transported or smell that smell and being immediately
stransported there. I think of uh my adopted grandma Betty. I say her name and I can smell I she's been passed for
30 years. I can smell the lilacs that I always smelled around my grandma Betty.
How about uh so this week we were uh at a swim meet for one of my nieces and immediately you walk in the pool and
that chlorine hits you and with that scent of chlorine for me as a former swimmer, oh sorts of memories flood
back. How about this one? You could you could bind and gag me, throw that sleep mask over my eyes and take me to Siberia
[snorts] right here for the rest of my life and I will always have in my mind the powerful and amazing scent of Tucson
of the Sonoran and Desert following a monsoon rain. An amazing smell. Sense of
smell. And we say all of that because we are supposed to carry the most powerful
spiritual sin in the world, the scent of Jesus Christ.
In Paul's letter to the church at Corenth today as we continue this sermon series, strength and weakness. We're
going to see the strength in weakness of the aroma of Jesus Christ. Now, there's a very complex passage with a lot of
themes in it. So I want to stay with me here as we turn to the word of God. One is Paul wrote this entire letter as a defense of his apostleship.
There are those in Corenth who are saying you're not an apostle. We ought to follow these people. And in so doing,
Paul is unable to visit Corinth. He had planned a visit to Corenth and he doesn't make it. And that gives all
kinds of accusations. You break your word. you don't even stay true. You're not an apostle. So, he's giving a defense, but he gives a defense and he
uses the aroma of Christ as his defense.
And as he uses the aroma of Christ, uh there are is a kind of a theme of victory and sacrifice that get merged in
the aroma of Christ. We're going to walk through a passage um the end of the passage in which Paul deals with the aroma and then we're going to back up to
the ingredients of it. But as Paul deals with the aroma, I want you to listen to these two themes. One is this victory theme. The victory theme is of a Roman
general returning to a great city with a throng of captives behind him and a wafting cloud of incense. That's a part
of the procession. And it is a victory parade. It's a procession of victory and he's saying there is a victory of Christ. You can smell it's an aroma.
Then he goes from the aroma of the incense around a Roman general to the aroma of a sacrifice in the temple and
the incense going up to God as a form of sacrifice and worship. So let's turn to
the passage. We'll read and then we'll back up into this. So, we're in 2 Corinthians chapter 2, beginning in verse 14.
But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession
and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we
are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. to one a
fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life who is sufficient for these things. So he
paints this this picture of the aroma of Christ. Now, as he does so, we're going
to back up into the passage. He gives three illustrations of what the aroma of Christ is. Now, I acknowledge this is a
a complex passage and none of us would come up with these three things as the aroma of Christ. If John and Greg were
writing a sermon, we just said, "Okay, the aroma of Christ, what is it?" We wouldn't have come up with these three things. The three things Paul says are
the aroma of Christ in this context are one, entrust your plans to God.
entrust your plans to God. Two, to to make choices in the best interest of others.
Entrust your plans to God, make choices in the best interest of others. And three, forgive.
Now, while John and Greg wouldn't have created those as the three that define the aroma of Christ, and as none of us would have come up with that list, Paul
does. And hallelujah, we're not listening to John and Greg or any of us.
It's God. And he has knit this together for us in this passage that we could receive what is the aroma of Christ. And
it's so important because we are to bear the aroma of Christ in this world. It's a beautiful thing when these three
ingredients come together. They're unexpected. They're nothing that we would put together, but they're what Christ intends. [snorts]
As I was kind of looking into things about wine in preparation for this sermon, uh there's all sorts of
different kind of elements to a wine smell. Often times they seem contradictory. So you might, you know, you might pick up a glass of wine like
this and you know, a true somalier could smell hints of blackberry and a
floral scent and a backend of black pepper, right?
there. Well, those are those don't go together. Well, in the same way, we see the connection of these ingredients come
together in a beautiful way in what is the aroma of Christ. So, the first of these is entrust your plans to God. Now,
Greg started this sermon series last week. If you missed it, encourage you to go back. Fantastic beginning of the sermon series. But we see that this this
whole letter is embedded in a relationship, a very uh conflicted relationship Paul has with the church at
Corenth. And we're going to dive right into that. You're going to see that as the backdrop of a lot of these things Paul's saying. So let's pick up in verse
15 of chapter 1. And we're going to talk about that first ingredient. Verse 15 says this, "But I was sure of this. I
wanted to come to you first so that you might have a second experience of grace.
So Paul says, listen at the you could flip back and look at the begin at the end of first Corinthians in chapter 16 where Paul lays out, hey, here's where I
want my plans to be. And he said, it's that came from a true place. I want to be with you. It's a grace to be with you face to face. There's something
about ministry that has to be done face to face. But things came up and
ultimately I had to choose between my plans and God's plans. Verse 16 continues, I wanted to visit you on my
way to Macedonia and to visit sorry and to come back to you from Macedonia and
have you send me on my way to Judea. Was I vacillating when I wanted to do this? Do I make my plans according to the flesh, ready to say yes, yes, and
no, no at the same time. As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been yes and no. Paul defends himself.
He says, "Listen, I know. I get it. The accusation is this, dude. Paul is flaky, man. He says this. He says he's going to
do do these things. He says he's going to come, but then he doesn't do it. You can't trust him. You can't trust his yes to be yes." And Paul says, "Listen, I
desired to do these things, but ultimately I had to submit what I wanted to do for what God wanted to do."
Now, there's a compounding effect of the pressure of this, and we all experience this. There's not a single person in this room that wants to be the flaky
friend, right? Like, we get that. We all We all get the friend who's like, "Yeah, let's hang out." And it never happens.
or yeah, well, let's do coffee Tuesday.
See you at 3 o'clock. And then you're there at 3 and 3:15 and you're texting them. Oh, sorry, man. Something came up.
We don't want to be flaky. You really don't want to be flaky in a in a pressure-filled relationship. You know, that teacher who has those really high
standards or the boss who's super demanding or even just that friend who's maybe a little bit more on the critical side. And Paul has this type of relationship with the church at Corinth.
is like, "Hey, if it was up to me, I'd want to be there." But ultimately, even though it makes me look bad, I have to
submit these things to God. He concludes in verses 19 and 20, "For the son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed
among you, Sylvanus and Timothy and I, was not yes and no, but in him it is always yes. For all the promises of God find their yes in him.
That is why through him that we utter our amen to God for his glory. In other words, your hope is not in me.
Corinthians, I could I could follow through with every promise, but it's only one person you need to trust, and his name is
Jesus, and he's the one I'm going to submit my plans to, and I entrust you to submit your plans to him as well.
This is not an excuse thing. Um, mom, I didn't clean my room because God had a different plan. [laughter] None of that.
This is a genuine submission to God. To entrust plans to God. Perhaps it shouldn't surprise us.
Maybe Jesus's most intimate prayer.
Certainly one of, not my will, but yours be done.
What is it to be at a place in life where you genuinely set aside your own plans,
your own desires, your own preferences, and you submit them to God. That's
that's what he's calling us to here. A second piece of the aroma of Christ. So,
entrust our plans to God. Number two, make choices in the best interest of
others. Make choices in the best interest of others on a tangible way. I
think we can experience this at some level. If I if you're a parent, I don't know what the rules were in your house.
I know you had some in our house, we had a first bite, no choice policy for our children. So that hey, if we're serving
broccoli and you don't like broccoli, first bite, no choice. Why? You don't have to finish the whole thing. You just
one bite, no choice. Because if we leave you to eat what you want, you're going to live and die on ice cream and cherry
pie for the rest of your life. You'll just mold away. Like you can't you can't just entrust simply
to a childish desire to make decisions in the best interest
of others. Paul goes there in the passage in verse 23 he continues. He
says but I called God to witness against me.
It was to spare you that I refrained from coming again to Corenth. Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work
chapter 2 verse one. For I mad up my mind not to make another painful visit to you.
Now, we don't have a full description of why Paul visiting Corenth was painful. Perhaps it's a relationship or
two with some of those who are accusing him of not being an apostle. Maybe it's the group called the super apostles,
these false teachers, and them looking down on Paul. Maybe it's the fact that Paul corrects what whatever the circumstances are.
Paul says on the one hand, I didn't come because God changed the plans and we have to have plans that are surrendered
in trusting our plans to God. The other the other is I made a decision not to come to you for your own best interest.
I was thinking of you. If you have anyone in your life, in your family or
close circle that is an addict, you'll recognize that loving them gets
challenging for tough love and love. Like where is the line between love and encouragement and support and enabling?
And sometimes you have to make a decision that they hate and they'll hate you for making it in
he moment, but you are genuinely making a choice in the best interest of others.
I think in my own life, like the number of times there's a correction brought into my life, I don't like it in
the moment, but it's beneficial. That's Paul saying, "I made this decision for your
benefit." He circles back to it, verse 4, chapter 2. "For I wrote to you out of much affliction and anguish of heart and
with many tears, not to cause you pain, but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you." It's hard.
The number of times someone has brought correction to me is significant, and I recognize it. It is for my good and it doesn't feel good in the moment.
That's in large things and small things on a small level on a weekly basis in a sermon. Like the way that sermons get
crafted, you have like five pages of notes and you got to reduce them down to one and other people play a part of that. But like it's very common to have
a story that you really like that story and then someone says, "Yeah, I think you ought to drop that story." That's not a very good story. This week, not
1exaggerating, this sermon, I had a story and I preached on Wednesday to John. He
thought, "Yeah, I think I'd take that story out." I'm like, there was another couple of people there. One said, "I I
kind of like that story." So, I had this dilemma going on. Then by Friday, I preached I kept the story in. Friday, we had a whole preaching team. Three
different people. Yeah, I'd cut that story. I take that out.
And there's a dying to self to recogn.
They're saying that it takes a lot of gumption to say that. And they're saying that for my good, for your good in this
case, to make decisions in the best interest of others.
First bite, no choice, Greg. [laughter] Yeah, that's not in my best interest. [laughter]
Number three. Number three, perhaps the most meaningful and important piece is to forgive. To forgive. Now, what we're
going to see that's fascinating in this text is this is not just theoretical for Paul. There's a real grievance.
There's a real offense here. And Paul still, even though he's the offended party, he steps in and say, "Oh, oh,
forgive. Forgive." Let's pick up the text in verse 5 of chapter 2. Now, if anyone has caused pain, he has caused it
not to me, but in some measure, not to put it too severely, to all of you. Now, we're not entirely sure what exactly
this offense is. We don't have the details of it.
Potentially, it's somebody slandering or gossiping against Paul. And now the
church is actually it's one of the few good things the church of Corinth does.
They actually bring correction to that in individual for his slander. And but then but then it becomes pretty strong.
And Paul's like, "Hold on, hold on.
Don't don't think that this this overly strong that the that that a strong that a reaction that is now over the top is
for my benefit because we're all the ones who are hurt. So be careful. He continues
verse 6, for such a one this punishment by the majority is enough. So you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him
or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him. Hey, make sure make sure
that when you bring correction that you also you're doing so out of heart of love. Here's the wild thing.
It it's pretty clear the church has done the right thing. This individual has sinned and the church has brought
discipline to that sin. They've met unrighteousness with righteousness. But even so, there's a threat of the enemy twisting that toward his purposes.
Listen to the verse 11. So that we would not be outwitted by Satan. For we are not ignorant of his designs.
There's a reality here. The enemy is more than happy to have us walk in a lazy fair attitude to not respond to
kind of live and let live and not respond to sin. and that and this would accomplish his purposes. But the enemy is also happy for us to respond to sin
in such a way that we get self-righteous, we get proud, we get critical, we get bitter and to use that for his purposes. And Paul
says, "Forgive, forgive." Like we of all people in the year 2026 should understand the significance and
the power of this. We live in an unforgiving culture,
an unfriending culture, a blocking culture, a cancel culture. It's everywhere. And Paul says, "Listen, if
you want to have the aroma of Christ about you, you have to walk in the compassionate, gracious, merciful
forgiveness of Jesus Christ to those around you." we wouldn't have come up with this list.
You go back through it and it shouldn't surprise us at all to have plans entrusted to God. Not my will but yours be done.
Jesus prays to make decisions in the best interest of others.
Jesus's whole life, his death was spent on the best interest of
others. Everything he's about is thinking of others and forgiveness at the very core of who he is and what he has done.
He bore our sins to forgive us. This is the aroma of Christ. when I
go back full circle to the passage we started with.
But thanks be to God who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession
and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we
are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. to one a
fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? For we
are not like so many peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God in the sight of God,
we speak in Christ.
We speak Christ's word to have his aroma in our lives. And there is a dynamic
25:4325 minutes, 43 secondswhere that is beautiful to one person and a stench to another.
e says this aroma is from death to death to some and from life to life to others.
You and I, we live in a time in which the encouragement is to be scent free
to not to not have a scent at all. to live such neutral lives that we don't rock the boat in any direction. That's not where the passage is calling us.
It's calling us to have the aroma of Christ to acknowledge that those there are those who loved Jesus and followed
Jesus and there are those who nailed Jesus to a cross.
There's a story in the life of Christ just before he was nailed to that cross.
He's in Bethany and a good friend Mary brings an alabaster jar of perfume. It
was it was a vessel worth more than a year's wages, extremely expensive. And
she brings it and she breaks it to anoint Jesus. And with tears with her
hair, she's wiping his feet, bowing down at Jesus. And it was a beautiful aroma.
And I don't just mean the perfume.
Her heart, her heart of sacrifice, her heart of worship was a beautiful thing.
And it was a beautiful aroma to God. And it was a beautiful aroma in the room
27:2527 minutes, 25 secondsexcept to one disciple who saw it and thought, "What a waste.
What are you doing? We could have used that money to provide for the poor. We could have we could have fed children.
Like we could have done good things with that money. What a waste.
Of course, that disciple was Judas.ma from life to life for
some and a stench from death to death to others.
So too, the aroma of Christ in our life can be offensive to some. And Paul's
calling us into that place because it's vitally important.
Today after the service around 12:30 today, Pastor John is leading a workshop on apologetics, on evangelism, on
having an answer for the tough questions of life that come our way from the world. Hear me in this. John will
address this in the workshop. Hear me in this. Is it good to have thoughtful answers to the questions of the world?
Yes.
However, at least as important as our answers, at least as important as our
words is the tone and aroma with which it's given.
Paul's saying it's not an issue of who's right. It's an issue of the aroma of Christ.
That is our calling. And don't miss this. Christians are not to be fragrance-free.
We're having an aroma, a strong aroma.
So, a week from tomorrow, our team heads to India and Nepal. And one of the things Greg always tells our team as
we're preparing uh some to hit the ground running for the first time is that India is an assault on the senses
like you arrive you know if you're flying into Chennai or whatever and the number of people
and just the smell you curry hits you like you're not in Tucson anymore.
This is the Christian life is supposed to be an assault on the senses. We're supposed to bear to carry the aroma of Christ in us. Now,
you could even ask a question like, "Wait a second. What I'm missing? Why is this offensive? Where's the strength and weakness here? Don't miss this. Don't
miss the picture. Let's go back to that picture of the triumphal entry. Who is the general Jesus Christ?
Are we the crowds cheering him on?
No, we're the captives behind him. the enslaved captives of his glorious victory.
To be a follower of Christ is to lay down myself. It's to choose others. It's to choose God's way. It's to release.
And that is an offense to the world.
But is the is the aroma of salvation to those who are being saved. It's the essence of his glory.
There's a movie called The Matrix. uh '9s classic the movie Agent Smith is trying to take
out destroy humankind. He hates humanity, trying to destroy humanity.
There's this scene in the movie where Morpheus, who's kind of the leader, the human leader of the rebellion, Agent Smith has him chained up captive.
Morpheus is smelling. Agent Smith pulls some sweat off of him and he says this.
I hate this place, this zoo, this prison, this reality, whatever you want to call it. I can't stand it any longer.
It's the smell, if there's such a thing.
I feel saturated by it. I can taste your stink. And every time I do, I fear that somehow I've been infected by it.
Christians smell.
We have an aroma and to some it will be offensive. Let's return to h how do we carry the aroma of Christ in this world?
We've already talked about the three ways. Number one, entrust your plans to God.
To be a Christian is to entrust your plans to God to release your own plans, your own ways. And this is like every
age and stage. So, kids in the room, you guys got tons of opportunities in front of you. Your friends are saying, "Come play this league with me. Come to this
party. Come to this hangout. Come join this club." And I want to say, "What does it look like for you as a follower of Jesus Christ, as a as a kid, to say, "Well, hold on. Let me ask God first.
What are his plans for me?" How about those who are looking toward their future in college, near the end of high school, or beyond
that, maybe in college, and you're getting this question all the time. God bless you. What are you going to do next? What does it look like to place those plans in the hands of Jesus?
And not make choices based on salary at the end of that, the prestige on the end of that, what the what your friends are
doing, but what God is inviting you into.
singles. What does it look like if if you're hoping for someone to enter your
life romantically to place those plans in the hands of Jesus?
Parents, what does it look like to place your children in the hands of Jesus?
Entrust him to them. Those who are the final leg of the race, you seniors who are retired, what does it look like to
entrust your retirement to Jesus? to know that that is that not a place for you but a place to continue to follow
Jesus until the end. Entrust your plans to Jesus. Number two, make choices in the best interests of others.
What does it look like to think about others first? to choose love, to
sacrificially put others in front of you, neighbors, friends, even enemies,
to place them in front of you, even as Greg emphasized is true in this passage.
Even when they don't appreciate it, even when you don't get credit for it, that is the aroma of Christ.
Entrust your plans to God. Make decisions in the best interest of others. The third takeaway, forgive.
Maybe this is the capstone of the whole thing. The number of times in the New Testament that we are told to forgive as
Jesus forgave, it's pretty strong.
Spoken in different ways. We pray it in the Lord's Prayer.
Forgive us our debts as we forgive our
debtors. Forgive as Jesus forgave. Peter struggles with the teaching of
forgiveness. Jesus I mean how many times how many times a day do I have to
forgive a brother? And Jesus gives the answer of 70* 7. That's not a 490 times
a day lesson. That's an infinite number a day. The perfect seven time 7 time 10.
Peter thought it's a lot of forgiveness.
In Galatians, we're told to bear one another's burdens and forgive as Christ forgave us. We're called
to release, to let go, to forgive.
