A Christ-like Fragrance

Some people like to wear a lot of cologne or perfume. And if they hug you, you will still smell like them hours later. But what is fragrant to one person may not be fragrant to another.

For instance, nothing smells better than when you walk into a kitchen where someone is making spaghetti sauce with garlic. And nothing smells worse than the breath of someone who just ate garlic.

That is true of the gospel as well. The apostle Paul described it this way: “Our lives are a Christ-like fragrance rising up to God. But this fragrance is perceived differently by those who are being saved and by those who are perishing. To those who are perishing, we are a dreadful smell of death and doom. But to those who are being saved, we are a life-giving perfume” (2 Corinthians 2:15–16 NLT).

Some churches have become a little too preoccupied with being the cook, and they’ve forgotten how important it is to confront people with the claims of Jesus Christ. Sometimes we have the delivery system in place, but we don’t have the message to deliver. And sometimes in our attempts to cross over, we fail to bring the cross over.

But if we miss that, we have missed everything, because the gospel is the only hope for our nation and our world. It is the only hope for nonbelievers.

When we share the message of the gospel, it will be a fragrant perfume to some. But to others it will be offensive and repulsive. Some people will respond favorably. And others will respond unfavorably.

But we still need to share the message. We still need to use every means possible to get the gospel out to as many people as we can.

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