Good morning.
This week, as I was working on this message and preparing to share, Hannah came to me one night and said, “Daddy, I want to have a tickle fight. I want to tickle Russell with you.”
I was in the middle of getting this ready, and I said, “Hannah, I really need to get ready for Sunday. I can’t tickle Russell right now.”
She said, “Daddy, why don’t you just read in the Bible?” So, wisdom from the mouth of babes.
Please turn to John 12. John 12:1.
Jesus, therefore, six days before the Passover, came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead.
So they made Him a supper there, and Martha was serving; but Lazarus was one of those reclining at the table with Him.
Mary, therefore, took a pound of very costly perfume of pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
Let’s pray.
Father, I pray that You would reveal to us today what this fragrance is, what it contains, and what it means to us. Lord, speak through Your very broken vessel. In Your name, amen.
When I first read this passage a couple of years ago, something struck my heart. There is something special about this picture. What was in this picture? It sparked my curiosity.
So I started looking into aroma and what aroma meant in Scripture, what fragrance meant in Scripture. What I am going to share today is what I believe the Lord has shown me about this fragrance, what it means in Scripture, what is contained in this picture, and how we can apply it to our lives today.
My sharing today is going to focus on the fragrance of Christ and what that fragrance is. Hopefully, it will shed some light on all that is in this scene in John.
I believe this scene reveals three major aspects of the fragrance of Christ. All three of these aspects are discussed in various pictures throughout Scripture, relating to both the Old Testament and the New Testament.
The first picture, probably the most important aspect of this picture, is the aspect of sacrifice.
In studying fragrance, I looked at the rule of first mention. I wanted to find out where fragrance was first mentioned in Scripture, and it was in a very surprising place. It was in the story of Noah and his ark—and it was not about what the animals smelled like or what the ark smelled like.
Turn to Genesis 8. Genesis 8:20.
Then Noah built an altar to the Lord, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.
And the Lord smelled the soothing aroma; and the Lord said to Himself, “I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done.”
Notice from this passage that it was the soothing aroma of the sacrifice that soothed the Lord’s heart. It was not the cost of the sacrifice. Remember, there were only seven of every clean animal at this point; now there were six after the sacrifice.
It was not the words that Noah spoke that soothed His heart. We do not even know if Noah said anything at the sacrifice. It was the fragrance, the savor, of the sacrifice that soothed the Lord’s heart.
It was not the fact that man had changed any. Man was still evil from his youth, but it was the sacrifice. Throughout the books of Exodus through Deuteronomy, the sweet savor of sacrifice is mentioned almost forty times. Each time there is a burnt offering, it mentions that the savor of the sacrifice is sweet to the Lord.
It is very evident in the Old Testament law that the aroma of sacrifice means a lot to the Lord.
The verse that Maury read this morning over the table has always troubled me: that it pleased the Lord to crush Him. I thought, “That sounds awfully cruel of the Father, to be pleased at crushing the Son.”
But studying this really shed new light on that. It was not the crushing that pleased Him; it was the sacrifice and the aroma of the sacrifice that pleased the Father.
In Leviticus, continuing with sacrifices, Leviticus 26 describes the rewards for obeying the Father and following the law, and the penalties for disobeying the Father.
Turn to Leviticus 26:31. This passage is right in the middle of the section about the penalty for disobedience.
“I will lay waste your cities as well, and I will make your sanctuaries desolate, and I will not smell your soothing aromas.
I will make the land desolate, so that your enemies who settle in it shall be appalled over it.
You, however, I will scatter among the nations, and I will draw out a sword after you, as your land becomes desolate and your cities become waste.”
As the Lord is going through all the penalties of disobedience, right smack in the middle of that is the fact that the Lord will not smell our soothing aromas anymore. He will not accept our sacrifices anymore if we are disobeying Him.
One could only conclude from this that sacrificing to the Lord is a privilege and an honor. That is a privilege to us, to be able to do that.
That privilege is ranked right up there with occupying the land. If we disobey the Lord, we lose the land. It is right there with being defeated by your enemies and being scattered among the nations. All these things were horrible penalties for the children of Israel.
So this act of sacrifice is an essential privilege for the spiritual life. It is something that needs to be done.
Another aspect of sacrifice is that, for the sacrifice to produce an aroma, what is being sacrificed must be consumed. It must be destroyed and completely spent by the act of sacrifice.
When they offered a burnt offering, there was nothing left but ashes. There was not a meal afterward. The offering was all burnt, all consumed. The smell from that must have been tremendous.
I cannot imagine that any of us who have ever smelled a ram being incinerated would ever forget that smell. We would probably forever associate it with the sacrifice that was going on.
That is true in the spiritual realm also. If we have experienced something of the sacrifice of the Lord, and if we sense that smell again, it will remind us of the Lord. We will yearn for the Lord, and it will draw us to Him, to that experience.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had that sacrifice, if we had that fragrance?
Another aspect of fragrance in the picture in John is the aspect of death and burial.
Later in the story in John, Judas chastised Mary for wasting her perfume. The Lord said, “Let her alone, in order that she may keep it for the day of My burial.”
It was common practice to embalm people with spices and sweet-smelling fragrances in an attempt to cover up the smell of death.
Also, on the Sunday after Christ was crucified, the women were going to the tomb with spices to embalm His body, to add fragrance to that death. In those times, it was a vain attempt at covering the smell of death.
So it is in the spiritual world. Christ’s death and His embalming mark our dead man. The man He has put to death has been crucified with Christ.
An aspect of the fragrance of death is that one cannot apply the fragrance of death to himself. One does not embalm himself. It comes from external sources.
If our sinful ways have been put to death with Christ—and we know they have been—then His fragrance, His embalming, marks the spot where sinful man, where the old nature, is buried.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had that fragrance?
Another aspect of fragrance in this picture in John is the fragrance of marriage, the fragrance of the bride. Turn to Song of Solomon. I promised Rusty I would use Song of Solomon.
Song of Solomon 4:9.
“You have made my heart beat faster, my sister, my bride;
You have made my heart beat faster with a single glance of your eyes,
With a single strand of your necklace.
How beautiful is your love, my sister, my bride!
How much better is your love than wine,
And the fragrance of your oils than all kinds of spices!
Your lips, my bride, drip honey;
Honey and milk are under your tongue,
And the fragrance of your garments is like the fragrance of Lebanon.”
What a beautiful picture this is of a bride prepared for her wedding day, wearing beautiful jewelry, dressed in the most beautiful dress she will ever wear, and wearing wonderful perfume.
I remember on the day that Brenda and I were married that Brenda smelled very nice. I do not remember what exact scent she had on, but I know that she smelled very nice.
I cannot imagine that any of you gentlemen, when you were married, had brides who smelled bad. It does not happen. Brides smell good.
This fragrance of a bride is a fragrance that is a gift. When a bride puts on perfume on her wedding day, she is saying, “I think the groom, I think my husband, is going to enjoy this. I think he will like this fragrance. This will be pleasing to him.”
It is not only pleasing to him, but it is pleasing to the bride as well, and it is pleasing to everybody around.
This fragrance of Christ that the bride has is a fragrance that Christ desires to smell. He wants to smell a wonderful fragrance from His bride on the wedding day.
It is a fragrance that the Groom has provided for the bride. It is very special. There is nothing like it in the world. This fragrance is very, very expensive. It cost Him His life to buy that fragrance for her.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had that fragrance?
As I was studying this picture of fragrance, I was struggling with these three aspects of it. It was a very, very beautiful picture, but at one point, that was all it was. It was a very nice picture. It really had no bearing on my life.
That was until I read 2 Corinthians 2:14. Why don’t you turn there?
When I read this, it pierced me through. I have never had a Scripture verse impact me like this one did. At that point, I knew it was something that I had to act upon, something that affected my life daily.
2 Corinthians 2:14-16:
But thanks be to God, who always leads us in His triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place.
For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing;
to the one an aroma from death to death, to the other an aroma from life to life.
And who is adequate for these things?
Who is adequate for these things? I know I am not adequate to be a fragrance of Christ.
All those aspects of His fragrance—the sacrifice, His death, His marriage—all those come from Him. There is nothing in us that provides that fragrance. There is no other source for His fragrance but Christ.
So what exactly is this fragrance of Christ? What does it contain?
I believe it contains the fact of His death as a covering for our sins. This fragrance contains the completeness of His sacrifice that soothes the Father, that soothes the wrath of the Father against sinful man.
It also contains the anointing for His bride that is pleasing to the Bridegroom, pleasing to the Father, and pleasing to His church.
In short, the fragrance of Christ is the essence of everything that He has done for us. It is the essence of His life lived in us.
You may wonder, what is so significant about fragrance? Why is fragrance so special?
I firmly believe that the physical world is a picture of the spiritual world. There are many similarities between what we see in nature and what Scripture describes as the spiritual world.
In the physical world, the human body treats smell very differently from the other senses. Sight, sound, and touch all have to go through very complicated interpretation in our brains before they come to some kind of understanding.
When we see something, we have to interpret that vision. We say, “That is Mark’s face that I see. I know Mark. I like Mark.” The same thing is true with touch and sound. They all have to go through very complicated interpretation.
Taste is actually an extremely crude sense. We can only taste a few different things. Most of taste is actually the sense of smell, the sense of fragrance that we breathe in as we are eating food. That is why, if you pinch your nose shut, you cannot taste anything.
The sense of smell, on the other hand, goes directly to our memory and to our emotions. There is a direct nerve connection between the olfactory glands, which sense smell, and the memory center of our brain.
When we smell something, it goes smack right into our brain. There is no interpretation; it is a direct path there. That is why, if you smell something, suddenly you can be transported to a different place and a different time. It is stronger than any other sense.
For example, if I smell freshly baked bread, I am instantly transported to when I was a child in my mother’s kitchen and she was making bread. I can see her standing there. I can see the furniture in the kitchen. I know what color the kitchen was. I can even feel the emotions of being happy and secure as a child.
Likewise, if I smell the scent of alcohol on somebody, it can make me very angry and very uptight because my father, for a time, was an alcoholic. That brings very, very strong memories that are not positive at all.
The fragrance that we convey in our spiritual lives affects people spiritually in the same way. There is no interpretation there. It goes straight to the core of our spiritual being.
One time, I spent some time with a brother that I believe really exuded the fragrance of Christ. He was really covered in the fragrance of Christ.
We had some good fellowship at his house, and I left there feeling as though he, myself, and the Lord had spent time together. Not because of anything we said—I do not think we even opened the Bible that evening. We just fellowshipped. We shared what was going on in our lives.
I walked away from that thing knowing that I had really spent time with the Lord that night. Not because of what he said, not because of what we did, but because of the fragrance, because of what exuded from his spiritual life.
It made me yearn for more of that. It made me yearn to be like that, to have that fragrance as well.
Conversely, I can remember times that I raised a big stink myself and left a big ugly cloud behind me because of something I had done or some way I had acted.
I know that when I have done that, no one has been encouraged. No one has been impressed that, “Hey, that was Christ.” They have been impressed, “Man, he stinks.”
I have left believers discouraged by these stinking encounters. I know that unbelievers who have seen me in that way have not been drawn to Christ. They have said, “Man, I do not want anything to do with him. He smells bad.”
Some believers may even get some satisfaction out of saying, “I believe he will fail. Let’s see if someone makes a mess of things.”
Another important aspect of fragrance, another reason why it is so important, is that it is conveyed without any explicit action. Our fragrance is carried around us just by the wind. We may not do anything or say anything, and people can still sense that there is something going on.
I do not know if you have ever had the experience of being in a meeting and somebody walks by, and you get a sensing that something is not right. There is something going on with my brother or sister. They are out of fellowship, or something is wrong.
I do not know if you have ever barked at somebody, griped, or backbit a coworker. When you do that, you are leaving a fragrance. It is not the fragrance of Christ.
If you lay down your own agenda or your own idea, or if you give up your private time to help a brother or sister, you are also leaving a fragrance. Thankfully, I believe that is the fragrance of Christ.
At work, there was a young lady who tended to wear a lot of very strong perfume. You could always tell where she had been. You knew that she had been there within the last half hour. You could also tell when she was in your part of the building.
Our spiritual fragrance is the same way. It leaves a mark behind. You can tell if somebody does not have the fragrance of Christ.
Another important aspect of fragrance is that it exposes the essence of what we are. When you smell a rose, what you are actually sensing is little bits of rose. If you smell fish, you have fish in your nose. That is what you are smelling. There are little bits of fish that you are breathing in.
Likewise, when we have the fragrance of Christ, it is the actual Christ that people are smelling. It is not us. It is not our work. It is Christ.
So, to have that fragrance of Christ, we must be remade in His image. Sometimes we see images as just a picture or a drawing, but this is all the senses: sight, sound, touch, and smell.
Another aspect of fragrance is that it is a divider. In that passage in Corinthians, it says the fragrance of Christ is life unto life and death unto death.
If we have the fragrance of Christ, we will be of benefit to the body of Christ. People will be encouraged. Believers will be encouraged by our fragrance and by our lives. It reminds people that they too are forgiven. It reminds people of the sacrifice that Christ made, and it reminds them that they are part of the body of Christ.
It also offends the world. It is a fragrance that many in the world do not want to smell, and it will divide us from the world.
Fragrance is important because it has a powerful impact, it is communicated without us knowing it, and it exposes what we are really made of. If we are a fragrance of Christ, we are a constant reminder to the world and to the church of what Christ did.
Praise God, we do not have to bear the burden of being the fragrance of Christ. It is not something that we have to do. He has provided all the ingredients to be that fragrance.
As all these thoughts were turning around in my mind, I was discussing them with Brenda. She had a very profound question. She said, “How can I know that I have the fragrance of Christ? How can I assure that that is what my fragrance is?”
I started thinking about that, and I initially gave a very knee-jerk, know-it-all answer, which turned out to be wrong. But the question kept nagging at me: How can I know that I have the fragrance of Christ, that that is the fragrance people are picking up from me?
I know I cannot go out to the store and buy it. It is not on sale around Christmas time. How can we know that we are cloaked in the fragrance of Christ?
In praying about that, I see four distinct answers to that question—no pun intended. I have tried most of these answers, but only one of them is right.
The first approach is the slovenly approach, the approach of a slob. It says, “You know, I am covered by the blood of Christ. It does not matter what you think of me.”
Or, better yet, “I have the gift of prophecy. I am supposed to be obnoxious and abrasive.”
There is just a little bit of truth mixed in with this lie. It is true that we are covered by His blood, and what we do does not matter in the ultimate end of our salvation.
But we cannot go blindly stumbling through life, not caring about the impression we make on other people.
This approach to the fragrance of Christ will ultimately lead to disgraceful, humiliating failure. Christ’s name will be defamed by the hypocrisy of this attitude.
We cannot say, on one hand, that we are covered by the blood, and on the other hand act as if it does not matter.
The onlooker’s response to this—both believer and unbeliever—will be, “If Christ smells like that, I do not want to have anything to do with Him.” If it stinks, it stinks.
Ecclesiastes 10:1 sums it up:
Dead flies make a perfumer’s oil stink,
So a little foolishness is weightier than wisdom and honor.
The second approach is the odor-masking approach, or what you could call the “Renuzit Christian.”
Let me explain that real quick. Air-freshener products like Renuzit and Glade do not get rid of the bad odor. They just overwhelm your nose with a different odor.
The bad odor is still there, but your nose cannot pick it up because of the crush of an artificial, fake smell. That is what I call odor masking.
In a spiritual sense, the odor-masking Christian clouds the air with a crush of artificial attempts at the fragrance of Christ.
The person who takes this approach is oh, oh, so spiritual. They use big spiritual-sounding phrases, offer wonderful platitudes, and contrive some amazing prayers. It all sounds and looks so spiritual and so Christlike, but it is fake.
Maintaining that cloud of odor—keeping the Renuzit in the air all the time—is actually a lot of work. Trust me, I have tried it.
Because of this, there is usually a distinct difference between a person’s church life and work life. Why maintain this charade when it is probably offending the people at work? So when you are at work or away from church, you put your can of Renuzit down and go be yourself again.
Initially, in church, this approach appears to work. People are impressed, maybe even attracted to the fragrance. But ultimately, the fragrance wears off, and the Renuzit Christian fails.
The funny thing about air fresheners is that they eventually wear out. The can eventually runs empty. Also, it is a fragrance that eventually becomes very annoying. I would not want my wife wearing Renuzit as a perfume. It would get kind of disgusting after a while.
But the really sad thing about this approach is that it actually covers the fragrance of Christ. If you take a rose and spray Renuzit on it, now you have a Renuzit-smelling rose. It has covered the pleasant smell of the rose.
Personally, I would rather smell the rose than smell Renuzit. If we have the life of Christ in us, we have the fragrance of Christ. Our own efforts to enhance that fragrance or to build up our fragrance only cover the wonderful, gentle aroma that is Christ.
We may see great big stinking holes in our life that we want to cover up, but that is not our job. That is Christ working that will cover those holes. Let Him take care of that.
The third approach, the approach that I was raised on, is the personal-hygiene approach. This was my initial response to Brenda when she asked how to ensure that we have the aroma of Christ.
This approach, as its name states, entails lots and lots of work to make sure that you are clean. You are always worried: “Have I left a spot unconfessed?” You are always making sure you do not get close to anything that may have a bad aroma that would stick to you like a cheap cigar.
You are always very, very careful. “I cannot take anything in. I cannot eat anything that might make me smell bad.” You know, like in the physical world, garlic smells bad before you eat it, and after you eat it, it comes out through your skin smelling bad.
This requires steadfast diligence to make sure that we are not doing anything that might make us smell bad. Basically, it is a Pharisee’s approach to life: “I am going to maintain some personal holiness. I am going to work really hard and keep clean.”
If you take this approach, brothers and sisters, you had better study up on the law. You have got a lot of work to do.
The worst part about this approach, what is really discouraging about it, is that the best you can hope for is a neutral odor. If you take this approach, you will never have the fragrance of Christ.
The absence of a bad fragrance is not the presence of a good fragrance.
If we take this approach and have a neutral odor, that neutral odor speaks nothing of the sacrifice of Christ. All it speaks of is our own hard work.
This approach lends itself to a life of very intense, joyless labor as we struggle to keep clean.
I think the most critical problem with this approach is that it can be done without Christ. There is no need to have Christ in order to have personal hygiene in spiritual life.
Any Hindu, Muslim, or Buddhist can maintain a clean life as well as we can as Christians, but they do it without Christ. Without Christ, there can be no fragrance of Christ.
I am not suggesting that we abandon all attempts at living a holy life. I am not saying that we should sin.
But what I am saying is that our attempts at holiness need to be done in reaction to what the Lord has done, not as an attempt to provide His fragrance or to provide His life.
I think the scriptural response to this approach is the story of when Christ healed the leper in Mark. He disregarded His own cleanliness and touched the leper and healed him. He made Himself unclean to heal the man.
The fourth approach to fragrance, the one I believe is the correct approach, is to actually exude the fragrance of Christ.
This is the approach that I have the least experience with. It is the approach that is hard to pin down. It defies all formulas.
That approach is simply to be in Christ. If we are in Christ, we will exude His fragrance.
Relating this back to the story in John about Mary anointing Jesus, there are three major aspects of having the fragrance of Christ, of being in Him.
The first is to accept and enjoy His covering for our sins. Accept the fact that the old man is buried.
Sometimes we act as if Christ is offended by the fact that He has had to cover us. Let me read to you from the translation of Jack, because I think it illustrates what we sometimes do in regard to His covering.
“If we confess our sins, and obsess over our sins, and fret over our sins for weeks, and tell everyone we meet about our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
I hope your Scripture does not say that. It simply says:
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
If we fall—and we all fall—and sin, confess it. Ask the Lord to deal with that problem, and get on with following Him.
Do not writhe in your own stench. It does nothing to spread the fragrance of Christ.
We need to enjoy His covering. We need to be confident in our salvation, and we will exude the fragrance of Christ.
The second part of that picture is being the bride of Christ. If we are acting as the bride of Christ and walking as a bride, we will be wearing the fragrance that He has given the bride.
That is a fragrance that is pleasing to everyone around.
The third aspect is the aspect of His sacrifice. In Romans, we are exhorted to be a living sacrifice.
I have always wondered what it means to be a living sacrifice. I believe that being a living sacrifice means exuding the fragrance of a sacrifice.
Ephesians 5:2 says:
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.
To be a living sacrifice is to be a fragrant aroma, which means to walk in love. It means to prefer others, to not count offenses, and to believe the best. You do all these things that are mentioned in 1 Corinthians 13 as what love is.
That is what it means to be a living sacrifice. If we are walking in love, just as Christ walked in love, we will have His sacrifice, His fragrance.
The first two aspects of exuding the fragrance are objective facts. We are covered. Our sins are covered by His death. We are the bride of Christ. There is no question about that.
But this third aspect requires active participation on our part. To exude this fragrance of Christ, we must actively follow His leading as living sacrifices.
In the passage from John, when Mary anointed Christ, she spent her most precious possession. That jar of perfume probably cost her her life savings. She spent it on Christ to glorify Him.
In the same way, we must die daily to our own desires, our own ambitions, and our own preconceived notions about how things need to be.
When we do that, we will have the fragrance of Christ.
This fourth approach is what Christ would have us be: to be living in Him, to be a sacrifice, to be His bride, to be covered by His blood, to be encompassed in Christ.
Then we will exude His fragrance. We will have His aroma.
We are not up to this task. Who is worthy for this task? Praise God, all that we need comes from Christ. It is His fragrance, after all.
It is wonderful that just by living the life He has called us to live, we can be His fragrance. We can carry His fragrance to the church and to the rest of the world.
This fragrance that we carry is a soothing aroma. It delights the Father, it enchants the Son, and it encourages the church.
May we be faithful to His calling. Let’s pray.
Father, I pray that You would make us a fragrance of Christ. Help us not to get in the way of being a fragrance, but let us be that through Your Son, so that we can be a benefit to the church, soothe the Father, and be an enchantment to the Son.
Father, I pray that anything that was said today that was not of You would be stricken and removed. I praise You in Your name. Amen.