The Aroma of Christ

2 Cor. 2:14-17
Gregory Perry | Sunday, March 31, 2019
Copyright © 2019, Gregory Perry

You may have heard of William Wilberforce. William Wilberforce was a member of the late eighteenth-century, nineteenth century British parliament. He was a devout, Bible-believing Christian who also fought vigorously against slavery. And he had a friend named William Pitt, who was the prime minister, who was, at best, a nominal Christian, which means he was a Christian in name only. One of Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ favorite stories to tell was about one time when William Wilberforce brought his friend William Pitt to hear the preaching of the eminent evangelical preacher, Richard Cecil. And Lloyd-Jones tells the story of their different responses to Cecil’s preaching of the gospel. So this is in Lloyd-Jones’ words. He says, “Richard Cecil preached and expounded the glories of the kingdom of God and the relationship of the child of God to the Father, and Wilberforce was in ecstasy, rejoicing, reveling in this glorious truth, and he was wondering what was happening to Pitt.” At the end of the service, they walked out, and we can imagine what Wilberforce was wondering: “What an amazing sermon. I wonder what the Lord is doing in William Pitt’s life. I hope he is listening.” And so Wilberforce was longing to hear the report and he did not have long to wait. Lloyd-Jones says, “Just as they got outside the vestibule, Pitt turned to Wilberforce—who had been so ravished by the exposition of the truth of God—and said, ‘I didn’t understand a word of what that man was talking about, what was it?’”[1]

In preaching the gospel, Richard Cecil set forth the aroma of Christ. And this aroma was the fragrance of life to William Wilberforce. And yet that same word was the smell of death to William Pitt.

This happens every time the gospel is preached, and it will happen again this morning as I hold forth the word of life. What I speak will be the fragrance of life to those who are born of God, and so they will cherish it, they will appreciate it, they will apply the word. But this same word that I speak will be the smell of death to those who remain dead in their transgressions and sins. They will revile it, mock it, and reject it.

In our text this morning from 2 Corinthians 2, the apostle Paul is using a metaphor to what is called the Roman triumph to make his point. The Roman triumph was the name for the procession, the celebration, that would take place in the streets of Rome after a major military victory over a foreign foe. In the procession, the conquering general would be at the end of the procession and before him priests would swing their censers with sweet-smelling incense  burning in them and the savor would permeate the street. The aroma would be a welcoming fragrance for the returning victorious soldiers. But for the wretched, defeated captives, many of whom were being led to their own execution, that same aroma would be the smell of death.

From our text, we will look at three simple points about the gospel of salvation. We will first see the aroma of Christ; then, the smell of death; and, finally, the fragrance of life.

The Aroma of Christ

Let us first look at the aroma of Christ, especially from verses 14 and 15: “But thanks be God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.”

When the apostle Paul speaks about being the aroma of Christ, he is especially talking about preaching the gospel.  That is made clear when he tells of his call from God to spread everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of Christ. In spreading the knowledge of God, we lead people to eternal life, for eternal life is the knowledge of God, as Christ makes clear in John 17:3. You ask, “What is eternal life?” Jesus says, “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” And salvation begins with knowing the gospel. Before you can trust in Christ alone for your salvation, you need to know who he is. You cannot have true saving faith without first having knowledge. That is why we spread the knowledge of God, that those whom God chooses would be saved,

Notice that we are to share the gospel liberally. The text says that we are to spread the fragrance of the knowledge of Christ everywhere. Yes, the gospel discriminates. It differentiates between the sheep and the goats, the wheat and the weeds. But at the time, this gospel is to be preached indiscriminately. The gospel is for sinners, yes, for sinners of all kinds. Therefore, this good news is for all people. No one is beyond the reach of the gospel. After all, there is no difference. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

John 3:16, the important verse for the gospel, says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes . . .” It doesn’t matter what your background is—what race or creed or what your morality background is—whatever your background is, “whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

We must not refrain from speaking the gospel to someone because we presume ahead of time that they will not come to saving faith. You see, we may think, “Well, they are just not good candidates. Maybe they are too intelligent or too stupid or too sinful or too righteous.” We can have all kinds of reasons, but that is all unbelief, and it is an excuse to not spread the gospel. The apostle Paul described himself as the chief of sinners, and he even persecuted the church. Yet God chose to save him.

The truth is that none of us were very good candidates to be saved either. The only thing that qualifies any of us to be saved is that we are sinners. And we should all, like Paul, see ourselves, not others, see ourselves as the chief of sinners who are gloriously saved by his grace.

We should also ask ourselves: What is it that we are spreading? We are to spread the aroma of Christ. Is that what we spread? Or are we busy spreading our own aroma, or the aroma of our country or the aroma of our family—whatever it is. But every Christian is called by Christ to be his ambassador. We are called to be his representatives and charged to convey his message. It is what we read in 2 Corinthians 5:20, “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.” God is speaking through us. As Christ’s ambassadors, we are not to add to or subtract from God’s word. We are not to adjust it or distort the message that he has sent us to deliver. We are not to modify the message, or maybe smooth out its rough edges, or to make it more palatable to the masses, or, as the catchphrase for today is, to contextualize it so that it may more seamlessly fit into our cultural milieu. One commentator put it this way. He said, “As those who dispense the life-giving remedy for sin, preachers must avoid diluting or adulterating the medicine of life which is the word of God.”

We also need to realize that it is not even good enough just to be in a church where the minister faithfully spreads the aroma of Christ. We will talk about how important that is, but the word here is: you must also spread the aroma. You see, when Paul wrote 2 Corinthians, he was writing to the saints in Corinth, saying they must be the aroma of Christ. He was not just saying the minister of the church but you as the people of God must spread the aroma of Christ. Every Christian is called in Christ’s Great Commission to go and make disciples of all nations. We are to be active in sharing the faith and in spreading everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of God.

That being said, we should also give great thanks for God’s sovereignly guiding us here to a church that faithfully preaches the true gospel and the whole counsel of God. After all, many today, like many did in the time of Paul, peddle the word of God for profit. False ministers are not a new thing, and even the majority of ministers being false is not a new phenomenon. False ministers have always made for a vast majority of minsters in the Bible and throughout church history. Recall just one obvious example in 1 Kings 22, where the prophet Micaiah declares the truth to King Ahab, while there were four hundred lying charlatans waiting to tell the king exactly what he wanted to hear. They were ready to flatter the king.

That is the way it is always is. There will always be a minority who will speak the truth while the majority, even in the name of Christ, will speak lies. In 2 Timothy 4:3 Paul says this: “For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers” – take your pick – “to say what their itching ears want to hear.”

Peddling the word means hawking it to your own advantage. To peddle the word for profit means that you distort the word of God. That is what you must do to gain the advantage.

And notice that our text says – and you can miss this, if you are not reading carefully – the text says that we are to God the aroma of Christ. We think about being the aroma of Christ to everyone else, which is true. That is what the text is saying—to the perishing and to those who are being saved. But the text says here that we are to God the aroma of Christ, and this highlights that we are to please God and not please men. You see, we are to be an aroma pleasing to him.

God’s true minister speaks to please the one who sent him. He doesn’t seek to please the ones he is sent to speak to. He is not trying to win a popularity contest. He is not trying to be nominated the next America’s pastor, to take the place of Billy Graham, and be invited frequently to the White House. The apostle Paul said this in Galatians 1:10, “Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.” The minister who lives to please men is a stench to God, not an aroma of Christ, pleasing to him.

Verse 17 tells us, “On the contrary, in Christ we speak before God with sincerity, like men sent from God.” Notice that ministers are to speak “in Christ.” This means they are to speak out of union and communion with Christ. Before they speak, they are to meet with God and receive from him what to speak to God’s people. As Pastor Mathew frequently says, “The man of God has the word of God for the people of God.”

And ministers are also to speak, it says, before God. This phrase “before God” means that as we speak, we are to be governed by the fear of God. We need to be cognizant of the fact that God is here, even now, and he hears what we speak, and he holds us accountable to speak his word. He governs what we say and even how we say it. You see, there are a lot of churches where even what they say is not necessarily not that unsound, but it is said in a big joke fest and it is all light and hearty. This is not the way of God’s word, as Jesus said in John 12:49. He said, “For I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it.” And how did he speak? If you know the Bible, you know that Jesus Christ was marked by the authority by which he spoke. God sent him to speak his word with authority.

We are also told that true ministers who are spreading the aroma of Christ must do so with sincerity. They are to have no ulterior motives. They are not going to the pulpit trying to make a name for themselves. They are not like Absalom, trying to make a monument for themselves. Instead, they have the same spirit of John the Baptist, who said about the Lord Jesus Christ, “He must increase; I must decrease.”

The one rightly motivated in preaching the gospel does so for this purpose. He does so for the purpose of winning souls to Christ for the building up of God’s kingdom and the glory of God’s most holy name. (GWP) The apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:22, “I have become all things to all men [for this purpose] so that by all means I might save some.” That is his goal, and that is the goal of preaching the gospel, that souls would be saved through the message.

And, finally, the text says that true ministers are men sent from God to speak his word. Romans 10:14–15 says, “How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent?” You see, God sends the preachers to bring the word so people can come to saving faith.

The Puritan poet John Milton said it this way: “It might be pleasanter not to be a troubler of other men’s peace.” He was describing preachers. They are troublers of other men’s peace. That is what Ahab said about Elijah: he was a troubler of Israel. Milton said, “It might be pleasanter not to be a troubler of other men’s peace. But when God commands to take the trumpet and blow a jarring blast, it lies not in man’s will what he shall say or what he shall conceal.” You see, he is there, sent by God, to speak what God has told him to speak.

Knowing that true ministers are ambassadors sent with God’s message, we should also ask ourselves this: Is that how we receive the word of God? Do we receive the preached word as a message delivered from God himself? This is exactly what Paul commended the Thessalonians for in 1 Thessalonians 2:13. He said, “And we also thank God continually because when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe.”

The Smell of Death

Let us look now at the second point, which is the smell of death. We see this in verse 16. Starting in verse 15, we read, “For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death.” When we preach the gospel, the aroma of Christ will be the smell of death to those who are perishing. There is no getting around this reality. The smell of death is especially a putrid smell. One person described the smell of death this way. It is “a powerful, pungent, disgusting odor that I can only describe as a garbage can left to ferment in high heat for an extended period of time.
Christ did not come into this world in order to judge men but to save them because mankind already stood condemned in their sins. And we read in John 3:36, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.” You see, God’s wrath is already on us because of our sin. Christ has come to save us from our sins.

But every person is born guilty in Adam, and all practice sin daily. Fallen man is not able not to sin, and he is at enmity with God. The gospel is the smell of death to the perishing because it is the rejection of their only hope of salvation. For the gospel is not just one of many ways to be saved. No, Jesus Christ is the way and the truth and the life, as he said, and it is true that no one comes to the Father except through him (John 14:6). The one who has rejected Christ has sealed his hellish fate forever.

When something smells bad, you don’t eat it. When the gospel is the smell of death to you, you reject it. You may reject it kindly or you may reject it rudely, but you will reject it. It is a terrible tragedy when the gospel is rejected, however nicely it is rejected. It is a terrible tragedy when the gospel is rejected, when the word of life is delivered but not received by faith. Likewise, it is a great sorrow when someone dies who has never placed his faith in Jesus Christ.

Again, it is not the preacher’s intended effect to damn his hearers through the preaching of the gospel. That is not why we preach the gospel. But it is God’s often intended effect. God’s word is never ineffectual, and his purposes are never frustrated. In Isaiah 55:11 he says, “So is my word that goes out of my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”

John Calvin the reformer said it this way: “Faithful ministers of the gospel have a sweet savor before God, not only when they quicken souls by the fragrance of salvation, but also when they bring death to unbelievers. Both savors are agreeable to God—both that by which the elect are recreated unto salvation and that by which the reprobate are torments.” Whatever the results of our preaching may be, it is pleasing to God, provided only that the gospel is preached.

The preaching of the gospel is never without effect. God will hold every man accountable for the words of life that he heard and despised. The gospel actually has a hardening effect on those who reject it. The truth of the gospel comes to them, but as we read in Romans 1, they suppress the truth by their wickedness.

The aged Simeon said of the baby Jesus in Luke 2:34, “This child [this Christ] is destined to cause the falling and the rising of many in Israel.” You see, the smell of death is a falling, and the fragrance of life to the rising. He continued, “and to be a sign that will be spoken against.” You see, there is a reviling and rejection of this Christ. In verse 35 he concludes, “so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.”

There are many examples in the Bible of the gospel being the smell of death. We could look at tons of examples, but let’s limit ourselves to simply looking at a few examples from the book of Acts, where the hard of heart frequently rejected the gospel message. Remember in Acts 7, Stephen was preaching the gospel, and it says of the Jews gathered in Jerusalem, “When they heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him. . . . At this, they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him” (Acts 7:54, 57–58). You see, the gospel was the smell of death to them, so they were furious at the word and at the messenger. They covered their ears, yelled at him, and ultimately stoned him to death.

Look at Acts 22:22. It says, “The crowd listened to Paul until he said this,” until he spoke about the resurrection.  “Then they raised their voices and shouted, ‘Rid the earth of him! He’s not fit to live!’” You see the vehemence with which this gospel is rejected.

But it is not always that vehement. One example in Acts 26:26–29, King Herod Agrippa and the governor were listening very nicely to the apostle Paul. Paul said this: “The king is familiar with these things, and I can speak freely to him. I am convinced that none of this has escaped his notice, because it was not done in a corner. King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know you do.” Now, notice, King Agrippa does not gnash his teeth. He does not look to stone Paul. Instead, Agrippa says to Paul in a condescending way, “Do you think that in such a short time you can persuade me to be a Christian?” Pretty nice. But, you see, it is a rejection. The gospel is the smell of death to him. And Paul’s reply shows his heart, his interest. Paul replies, “Short time or long—I pray God that not only you but all who are listening to me today may become what I am, except for these chains.”

Notice that in many of these instances the gospel is not neutrally dismissed. It is never neutrally dismissed. It just may be that [some rejection] may be louder at some times than other times. Sometimes people may thank you and say that was a nice word and then reject the gospel. But there is an underlying animosity always to the gospel because darkness hates the light because the light of the gospel confronts us in our sins and highlights our need for Christ.

At the heart of every unbeliever is a certain attitude, as we read in Isaiah 30:10. There we read of those who come to the seers, saying, “See no more visions!” And to the prophets they demand, “Give us no more visions of what is right! Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions. Leave this way, get off this path, and stop confronting us with the Holy One of Israel!”

Light has come into the world. But men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil (John 3:19). The gospel is a stench to the ungodly. They despise the gospel and despise the one who preaches it. The wicked love what God hates and hate what God loves. They call evil good and good evil. 

The Fragrance of Life

So, finally, let us look at the fragrance of life. It says in verse 16, “To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life.” This same gospel is the smell of death to the reprobate and the fragrance of life to the elect. This aroma of Christ is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.

Again, we see throughout the book of Acts many times when the preached gospel is received as the fragrance of life. When Peter preached in Acts 2, we read in verse 41, “Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.” The aroma of Christ came as the fragrance of life to many—three thousand people that day.

Acts 11:20–21 says, “Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus.” So here is the aroma of Christ coming to tell the good news about the Lord Jesus. It says, “The Lord’s hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord.” The fragrance of life was coming through the preaching of the gospel and people were being saved.

Most often in the book of Acts we see both [life and death] at the same time. So, for example, in Acts 13:45, as the gospel is preached, we see first the smell of death. It says, “When the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and talked abusively against what Paul was saying.” To them it was the smell of death. And yet a few verses later, in verse 48, we read, “When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honored the word of the Lord; and all who were appointed for eternal life believed.”

Too many throughout the history of the church have wanted to improve the gospel that God has made known in his word. They have tried to invent a gospel that would be the fragrance of life to all and the smell of death to none. This is a great trap to fall into. After all, no one wants to be the smell of death. This is an attempt at what I call deodorizing the gospel. They are trying to make it so that it is not a scent to anyone. So they shape their gospel to make it more appealing. They smooth out its rough edges. They just declare to people that God loves them and has a wonderful plan for their lives. They will not confront people in their sin. They will not call them to repentance. They will not say that God demands obedience of his believers. They will not speak of hell and judgment to come. Why? Because people do not want to hear such uncomfortable truth.

What do these false shepherds do? They bury such inconvenient, uncomfortable truths. They sweep them under the rug. They hide them in the attic. They deodorize the gospel.

It is true that this compromised, watered-down gospel will not be the smell of death. Surely no one will be offended by such a sweet message. No one will despise you for it. That is why it is so popular. The only problem is that it will be a stench to one person, and that is God. It will be a stench to God in whose name you are speaking such vile lies. The other problem is that while it is not going to be the smell of death, it will also not be the fragrance of life to anyone. A gospel that refuses to confront a man in his sins and point him to Christ as his only hope to be delivered from the eternal hell that his sin deserves is another gospel, which is no gospel at all. As Paul said in Galatians 1:

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ [they are trying to change it, they are trying to twist it]. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! (Gal. 1:6–8)

            A gospel that will not make clear a man’s responsibility to repent of all his sins and surrender all and follow Christ – that gospel has no true saving effect. Yes, it will not be the smell of death, but it will also not be the fragrance of life.

I remember having a close family friend who began to attend an evangelical church in the Bay Area. I was encouraged to hear that she had been going there for months and that the church was at least once regarded as a serious, Bible-preaching church. I had heard of the church before with the minister who started it, who has since died. My wife and I then went to visit this church with her one Sunday and came away extremely disappointed. Whatever the church once was, it had now become seeker friendly. It certainly no longer preached a clear gospel. Nothing they said was necessarily heretical or maybe even untrue, in and of itself. All I can say is that there was no aroma of Christ emanating from the pulpit. Everyone there was presumed to be a Christian already and made to feel very comfortable. There was nothing there that could be the fragrance of life or the smell of death to anyone visiting. There was no clear gospel challenge. And where there is no gospel challenge, there is no hope of salvation.

To those being saved, this gospel of salvation is, it says, the fragrance of life. And that translation in the NIV does not even do justice to the Greek. In the Greek it says, “osmê ek zôês eis zôên.” Osmê means “odor,” so literally, “an odor of life unto life.”

We are to hold out the word of life to this crooked and depraved generation (Phil. 2:16), and this word of life then brings life to the dead. God causes his people to be born again through his word. Remember, James 1:18 says, “He chose to give us birth [this is re-birth] through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.” Or look 1 Peter 1:23. It speaks about the work of regeneration that comes through the word of God. It says, “For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.”

Even from before creation, the elect have their names written in the Lamb’s book of life. We read about that book especially throughout Revelation. Revelation 13, 20, 21 all speak about this book of life. And though they are born dead in their transgressions and sins, in time, those whose names are written in this book will be made alive as they hear the gospel preached, or, metaphorically speaking, when they smell the aroma of Christ. In John 5:24, the Lord Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.” That is salvation—crossing over from death to life.

Salvation is synonymous with receiving eternal life. Those who believe in Jesus Christ receive this gift of eternal life. So in John 20:31, which is the theme verse of the whole book of John, we read, “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

Application

Let me close with a few words of application.

First, be the aroma of Christ. First of all, you must be a born-again believer yourself to be the aroma of Christ. For outside of Christ, we are nothing but a sinful stench to God. To be the aroma of Christ, we must come to Christ with true, saving faith. But for those who are believers, we must resolve to represent Christ faithfully both in how we speak and how we live. We must be an honor to Christ if we are going to be the aroma of Christ. Paul asks in verse 16 of our text, “Who is equal to such a task?” The implied answer is, “No one.” It takes more than personal resolve especially to persevere in this. We cannot do this in our own strength. We need God’s help. We need to be empowered by the Holy Spirit, and he gives the Holy Spirit to those who ask.

This has application for personal evangelism. We must be careful to share with people the true gospel and not just tell them some aspects of the gospel that we think are more palatable to them. We must be wary not to deodorize the gospel. And we should be aware of how important our life witness is to the gospel that we share. The aroma in personal evangelism is not just what we speak, but it is how we live. They see us as believers, and so they listen to what we speak.

As those entrusted with the responsibility to preach the word from the pulpit, we must also represent him faithfully in message and in manner. We must declare the true gospel and the whole counsel of God with all integrity, seriousness, and soundness of speech. To be the aroma of Christ, we must devalue the goal of trying to be liked by everyone. Those unwilling to be the smell of death, those unwilling to be unliked, will never be the fragrance of life to anyone. You cannot be the fragrance of life to some without being the smell of death to others. It is, after all, the same aroma of Christ.

The second application is this: Pray to be the fragrance of life. So as we are the aroma of Christ, our next prayer is to be the fragrance of life. As we send forth this aroma of Christ, it is our earnest interest to be the fragrance of life. You see, we must have a burden for the lost. The desire of our hearts must be to see souls saved. But we cannot make ourselves the fragrance of life. No matter how faithfully we emanate the aroma of Christ, only God can make us the fragrance of life, for only God can open the hearts of those to whom we speak. As Paul preached the gospel in Philippi, we are told that the Lord opened the heart of Lydia to respond to Paul’s message. We try to persuade men, but only God can raise the dead to life. Therefore, we need to be earnestly and faithfully praying for God to do what only God can do, which is to make alive in Christ those who are now dead in their transgressions and sins.

Finally, I say this: Be thankful for those who have shared with you the fragrance of the knowledge of Christ. What a great blessing that we have ourselves received the gospel, that we have had presented to us the aroma of Christ. We at this church too often take it for granted. But it is a tremendous privilege, and an increasingly rare one, to be in a church that has so faithfully declared the clear and complete gospel for so many years. Through the leadership of our pastor, we have spread everywhere the aroma of Christ for nearly half a century, and have been the fragrance of life to many. But to many more, we have been the smell of death.

So we read in our text, many (hoi polloi) today peddle the word of God for profit and water down the gospel and speak to people only what their itching ears want to hear. That is not the work of the true church of God. That is the work of a synagogue of Satan.

But it is important to keep in mind that many that are synagogues of Satan today were once true churches that faithfully preached the whole counsel of God in their generation. This is a scary fact. You have heard our pastor many times speaking about his experience growing up in a church that was born out of revival. And men and women of God fully committed themselves to Christ and spread the gospel throughout South India and beyond in the power of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, a few decades later, the leaders of the denomination became power hungry and most of the churches in that denomination became extremely corrupt.

This sad lesson has been taught through many other churches throughout history. Even the great Martyn Lloyd-Jones, after his health forced him to resign from regular pulpit ministry, tragically witnessed before he died that his own church, where he had ministered for almost thirty years, turned into a center for charismatic chaos that was no longer the aroma of Christ.

Our goal and prayer must be that we as a church may persevere in spreading everywhere the aroma of Christ. Our prayer is that we would continue in Christ to speak before God with sincerity like men sent from God, and that we would resist the temptation to deodorize the gospel, that we would not compromise or adjust the word of God, that we would not add to it or subtract from it to try to please men. And our prayer, our earnest prayer, is that for generations to come the aroma of Christ being presented here would indeed be the fragrance of life to many more who are being saved.

Heavenly Father, may we truly be the aroma of Christ. Fill us with your Holy Spirit so that we would have power to speak the gospel clearly and fearlessly, that we would have grace to live a life worthy of the gospel that we speak. And our prayer is that all of our ministries, whether it be from the pulpit or from personal evangelism or from our academy or through the college ministry, through our web ministry, book ministry, through Global Grace—that all these ministries would be the aroma of Christ, that though they surely will be the smell of death to many even, our prayer is that they would be the fragrance of life. Our prayer is that you will, through the gospel ministry of this church, continue to add to your number those who are being saved, and that you would do this, not just in this generation, but in the generations to come.  We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

[1] D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Joy Unspeakable: Power and Renewal in the Holy Spirit (Wheaton, IL: Harold Shaw, 1984), 160.