When God created the human body, He gave us the senses of hearing, seeing, feeling, tasting and smelling. While they all work together to enhance our experience on this earth, which sense could you do without the easiest? Personally, I would have to place the ability to smell at the top of that list, as only half of the potential smells are pleasant ones. My favorite smells are freshly-ground coffee, baking bread, puppy breath and the smell after a spring rain. Yet in some cases, the loss of the ability to smell actually could be beneficial. It sure would make life easier if your job was at a sewer treatment plant or in the stockyards.
Paul wrote to the Corinthians of the juxtaposition between the stench of death and the sweet-smelling perfume of life in Christ:
14 Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place. 15 For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. 16 To the one we are the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other the aroma of life leading to life. And who is sufficient for these things? 17 For we are not, as so many, peddling the word of God; but as of sincerity, but as from God, we speak in the sight of God in Christ.
2 Corinthians 2:14-17
To spread the knowledge of Christ is a sweet perfume to a world of stench. Yet just as pigs do not realize how badly they smell, the world does not begin to comprehend the level of its odor. Having just returned from a week-long camping trip into the wilderness of Montana and Wyoming, I can understand that analogy in a different way. When we got into the truck, no matter how badly the other guys smelled, we didn’t really notice it, as we all had a similar stench. Yet when three of the guys went into town and got a shower, their soap-and-shampoo scent made the rest of us reek! The knowledge of God is such a sweet-smelling aroma that it accentuates the dirt and grime of the world.
When men built God’s tabernacle, which according to Hebrews 8:5 was a copy of the tabernacle in heaven, one of the parts was a golden altar of incense, which sat in front of the curtain of the Holy of Holies. The altar of incense was about three feet high, and 1.5 feet square. According to the commands of God, the priests were to burn incense upon that altar every morning and evening, and then it remained burning throughout the day. The sweet-smelling aroma was symbolic of our prayers to God, as that is how He views our communication with Him. King David gave us many examples in his psalms of those prayers, reminiscent of Paul’s admonishment in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 to “pray without ceasing.”
Let my prayer be set before You as incense,
The lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.
Psalm 141:2
3 Then another angel, having a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. 4 And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, ascended before God from the angel’s hand.
Revelation 8:3-4
How do you smell? Have you been washed clean in the Word of God, redeemed by the blood of the Lamb? Do you continuously talk to your Creator, knowing that He loves you and went to the farthest extremes to demonstrate His love for you? Any prayer we have for the Lord smells sweet to Him, for He created us to have a close relationship with Him. Just as He walked with Adam in the Garden of Eden, He desires to walk with us, surrounded by the sweet perfume of the most beautiful flowers. Yet if you are surrounded by the stench of the world, you might not recognize that the world’s stench clings just as strongly to you. Let Him wash you in His Word, that you might be a sweet-smelling aroma unto Him!
Dead flies putrefy the perfumer’s ointment,
And cause it to give off a foul odor;
So does a little folly to one respected for wisdom and honor.
Ecclesiastes 10:1
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