Bible study for foodies like me. Last night our small group studied 2 Corinthians 2:14-17 
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? 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 talked about great meals or food memories that smelled great – that just the mention of the aroma, and we are hungry. Some of the memories were a neighbor‘s Bar-B-Q, bakeries on Sunday mornings, Thanksgiving Dinner and bread-baking (my memory – now that I’m low-carb it is a distant memory). Paul makes it clear that we as Christians are the “aroma of Christ” and His righteousness to God. But, to those who are perishing we are the smell of death.
This morning I came upon Thomas Chalmers‘ exposition on the imputation of Christ’s righteousness where he speaks of, “the merit of His well-beloved Son is to Him a sweet-smelling savor.” (HT: Michael Haykin)
“Had we fulfilled the law of God, heaven would have been ours, and it would have been given to us because of our righteousness. We have broken that law, and yet heaven may be ours, not because of our righteousness, but still because of a righteousness; and the honor of God is deeply involved in the question, What and whose righteousness this is? It is not the righteousness of man, but the righteousness of Christ reckoned unto man. The whole distinction between a covenant that is now exploded, and the covenant that is now in force, hinges upon this alternative. If we make a confidence of the former plea, we shall perish; and if of the latter, we shall have everlasting life.
”The merit of His well-beloved Son is to Him the incense of a sweet-smelling savor, so that the guiltiest creature who takes shelter there, has posted himself on the very avenue, along which there ever rolls the tide of divine complacency. We should invest ourselves then with this merit, and wrap ourselves firmly in it, as in a covering. We should put on Christ, who is offered to us without money and without price. We should present ourselves before God, with His invitation as our alone warrant, and the truth of His promises, which are yea and amen in Christ Jesus, as our alone confidence. His place in the new covenant is to declare our forgiveness, through the blood of a satisfying atonement. Our place in the covenant, is to give credit to that declaration.“
Thomas Chalmers, from his introduction to Abraham Booth’s The Reign of Grace from its Rise to its Consummation (1768)
I am so thankful that Christ has covered me with the smells of July 4th Bar-B-Q’s, baking bread, and Thanksgiving Dinner and not the reek of rotting death.
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