Smell is a powerful sense. Flowers, coffee, freshly baked bread, light rain, recently mown grass, each one has a distinctive scent that evokes positive emotions. Smells also connect memories. In the speed of a sniff an odor can hurtle your mind back to a place you haven’t been decades.
Businesses know the impact smell has and they’ve explored ways to harness it. In the 1950s the film industry tried infusing odors into the theater that corresponded to the movie’s storyline to pull the viewer deeper into the experience. Today there is a field known as “scent branding.” In one example a business pumps a unique scent into its lobby in hopes of associating a customer’s memory with their product.
A person’s smell is attributable either to their external environment or what they’ve ingested. The environment of a painter or barista will permeate their clothes and possibly even attach to the skin. Excessive fried food consumption or regularly taking garlic pills will also impact one’s smell from the inside out.
The point is this—what you saturate yourself in (externally and internally) will affect your scent. The apostle Paul leveraged this analogy in his letter to the local church.
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. (2 Cor. 2:14–17)
God uses believers to spread “the fragrance of the knowledge” of Christ everywhere. What a descriptive analogy! Excluding the saleswoman at the perfume counter, people don’t make a habit of asking others to smell them. You cannot distance yourself from your scent and you can’t permanently prevent others from taking it in. It makes sense then that the Bible says you are “the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.”
You are the embodiment, the “bouquet,” of Christ to the unbelieving and believing world. When you fulfill your commission to speak of Christ to the wicked it may be received like a noxious stench. But to those that have been called by God your words are an appealing fragrance.
If you are responsible for spreading the fragrance of the knowledge of Christ, how strong of an aroma are you? Would those that hate God pick up on your scent or would it go largely undetected? Would another Christian, even at a distance, turn his head in your direction because of the familiar fragrance of the knowledge of Christ that you carry?
Spreading the aroma of Christ is not only a matter of increased knowledge. It is also a measure of humility.
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. (Eph. 5:1–2)
Self-sacrifice smells sweet to others and is pleasing to God. When you emulate Jesus by putting the needs of others above your own you are spreading the knowledge of Christ. It’s not the goal of unselfish behavior to be exercised in public, but it cannot be permanently hidden any more than a person’s scent can be permanently masked. When you saturate yourself internally and externally with Christ you will carry His aroma to all with whom you have contact.
What memory does the fragrance of your life evoke? Is it reminiscent of the spread of the gospel? Is it associated with walking in love and selflessness? Are you a fragrant offering to God or about as effective as an odorless perfume? Saturate yourself externally and internally with the knowledge of Christ. Pray that the aroma you leave is a fragrance from life to life.