A beautiful fragrance

For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.  2 Corinthians 2:15

We Christians are often encouraged to “tell people about Jesus”. And quite right too. It’s called “personal evangelism”, and it is both our duty and our privilege.

As I look back over my time as a minister I know I have myself preached various sermons about this. Sometimes, I suspect, I have used the technique of what I now think of as “guilting” people with finger-wagging questions like “When was the last time you told somebody about Jesus?” or artificial challenges like “Aim to speak this week to three people about Jesus!”

Why do I call that “guilting” people? – because you could almost see them squirm.

Today, older and, I hope, a little wiser, I feel distinctly uncomfortable with this approach. Why? Because “telling people about Jesus”, vital though it is, is no simple matter! - especially in our modern, secular, materialistic world.

Actually, my discomfort with this method goes right back to my early, teenage days as a new convert (so by the time I became a preacher I really should have known better!).

One evening a little group of us from the church decided to go out into the local estate and tell people about Jesus. And to this day I can vividly remember our leader going up to a lad about our own age - though much more street-wise than us - and announcing, without so much as a by-your-leave, “I’ve come to tell you about the Lord Jesus Christ”.

From the look on the boy’s face we might have been little green men from Mars. If I were to put that look into words I would suggest that what he was thinking was “Who on earth are these nutters? And what’s this strange language they’re speaking?” (You won’t be surprised to know that the conversation ended pretty sharpish.)

It was a clear case of ten out of ten for zeal and nought out of ten for sensitivity and common sense. Rather than recommending Christ to that boy I fear we might have inoculated him for life against a virus called “religion”.

The principle, of course, is simple: if we want to speak to people about Jesus we need to earn the right. The apostle Peter puts it perfectly: “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that is in you. But do it with gentleness and respect…” (1 Peter 3:15). Which implies (a) that generally we leave the other person to take the initiative (“give an answer…”) and (b) that we observe normal courtesies and good manners (“do it with gentleness and respect”).

Where does 2 Corinthians 2:15, the verse at the top, come into this? What’s it got to do with telling people about Jesus?

Just this… Paul tells us that if we are Christians we can be compared (amazing though this may seem!) with an aroma, a fragrance of Christ. And this, surely, is the first step in “personal evangelism”, the first step in earning the right to “tell people about Jesus”.

Think of it like this…

We’ve probably all heard Christians who describe their conversion in some such terms as these: “There was this woman at work that I just sensed was somehow different. She didn’t preach at me or anything like that, but I knew she had something I didn’t have – and in time I realised that it was something I wanted too…”

So a relationship gradually developed, and in time an opportunity - a natural, unforced opportunity - arose for that woman to explain what it was that made her different: she believed in Jesus, she was a church-goer, a believer in prayer, a reader of the Bible. And the person telling the story slowly began to see what it was that made that woman somehow attractive, peaceful, calm, reassuring. And the rest was history…

I think it’s something like that that Paul means when he talks about “spreading the aroma of the knowledge of Christ”. At first it has nothing to do with words: they can come later. No: it’s to do with character, personality, integrity, winsomeness (to dig up a beautiful old word). It’s all there in Galatians 5:22-23, the “fruit of the Spirit”. In a nutshell, it’s to do with… sheer Christlikeness.

Smell is a powerful sense, isn’t it? I walk into our local city-centre Boots and know immediately that I’m in the “Fragrances” department – it’s like being hit in the face, albeit not unpleasantly. Or there is the delicate scent of a particular flower, or the pungency of frying bacon, or freshly ground coffee (though why is its taste never as delicious as the aroma?).

Smell seems a very vague, thin, indistinct, indefinite thing, doesn’t it? You can’t grab hold of it with your hand. But it is powerful! It reaches parts of us that words and sights cannot penetrate to.

And so it is with the fragrance of Jesus.

Which means that the really important challenge is not “How many people have I talked to about Jesus this week?”, but “Am I, through the power of the Holy Spirit, becoming more like him, and so giving off that beautiful fragrance, the fragrance that, in time, cannot be ignored?”

May the fragrance of Jesus fill my life,/ Lovely fragrance of Jesus./ Fill my thoughts, my words, my deeds,/ As all I give in adoration. Amen.

Graham Kendrick (altered)

Father, I find it hard to believe that I could be like a beautiful fragrance to you and to other people. But thank you that, by your grace, it is so. Please help me to know when the moment comes for words, so that I can experience the joy of telling people about Jesus. Amen.