The Fragrance of Life

Sunday, August 26, 2012, 7:28 a.m. – the Lord woke me with the song “Love Never Fails.” Speak, Lord, your words to my heart. I read 2 Corinthians 2:14-3:18 (NIV 1984):

 
But thanks be to 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. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task? Unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit. On the contrary, in Christ we speak before God with sincerity, like men sent from God.

Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you? You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
 
Such confidence as this is ours through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant —not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, fading though it was, will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious? If the ministry that condemns men is glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness! For what was glorious has no glory now in comparison with the surpassing glory. And if what was fading away came with glory, how much greater is the glory of that which lasts!

 
Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold. We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away. But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
 
Sweet Aroma
 
Paul said that Christ spreads through us, his followers, the fragrance of the knowledge of him. We are the aroma (smell) of Christ to those outside of faith in Christ who are perishing in their sins, and the aroma of Christ to those who are being saved, i.e. to those who have accepted Jesus Christ by faith and are walking in daily fellowship with him. To the unsaved we are the smell of death, but to those who are being saved, we are the fragrance of life. This “aroma” comes through our testimony and witness for Christ, and through our sharing of the gospel, but most of all it comes through our lives as Christ is seen through us. Yet, is this the message we are getting in most evangelical churches today?
 
I find so many of today’s churches are trying to make the gospel a sweet smell to the unsaved, i.e. they try to make it appealing to the flesh of men and they don’t tell them that faith in Jesus Christ means they have to die to their old way of life of sin and that they have to walk in obedience to Christ. If they did, then we would be to the unsaved the smell of death and to those being saved the aroma of life. Yet, I often find this backwards, and thus the unsaved find the “gospel” appealing because they see it as a free ticket to heaven without any cost (no change necessary) to their lives. Yet, if we teach the true gospel, it is often an offense, even to those who claim they are being saved, because it confronts them with their sin and it calls them to repent of sin and to walk in obedience to Christ. Yet, the cross is an offense. If we are not offending unsaved people (or even professing believers) with the gospel, then maybe we are not preaching the real gospel.
 
So, when Paul stated here that the letter (of the law) kills but the Spirit gives life, he was not at all meaning that teaching repentance and obedience kills the spirit of men or the freedom of the Spirit we have in Christ, or that teaching grace absent of such requirements is what truly gives people life in the Spirit.
 
The letter of the law demands that we keep the law or we die (spiritually), yet Jesus Christ died for our sins, taking the punishment of our sins upon himself, so that through faith in Jesus Christ we are set free from the law of sin and death, which is when the Spirit then gives us life. We will never be good enough. We cannot do enough to earn or to deserve our salvation. It is by God’s grace alone that we are saved, through faith, yet faith must prove itself to be genuine by our actions. Abraham was considered righteous before God because of his faith, yet his faith was proved by what he did. James talked about this much, and so did Paul. Freedom in Christ is not freedom to live however we want. We are free from the control of (slavery to) sin so that we no longer obey its lustful desires, and we are free to worship our Lord in spirit and in truth. In Christ Jesus, we reflect the Lord’s glory, and we are being transformed into his likeness day-by-day.
 
Law and Grace
 
I think this subject of law and grace can be very confusing and is often misunderstood and misinterpreted. Paul talked much in his writings about law and grace because he was in that transitional period of time between the old and the new covenants, and between law and grace when Jewish believers in Jesus Christ were struggling to understand how this all worked practically in their lives on a day-to-day basis. They had grown up believing in the one true God and had followed his commandments. Now they believed in Jesus Christ, the one true God, i.e. God’s Son, i.e. God the Son, the second person of our triune God who had been promised by God to Abraham and to his descendants. So, they had to transition from following the old way of the written code to the new way of grace and of the Spirit. Their God had not changed, but their way of relating to him had changed to some extent.
 
So, in the letter to the Galatians Paul explained that the purpose of the law was that it was added because of transgressions until the Seed (Jesus Christ) to whom the promise referred had come (see Gal. 3:19). So, Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of the law. The law brought conviction of sin and it brought spiritual death. No one could be saved by following the law, because no one could keep it perfectly. Jesus had that discussion with Nicodemus who felt as though he kept the law pretty well. Yet, Jesus told him he had to be born spiritually from above. He had already been born physically, but he needed a spiritual birth. Jesus told the woman at the well that he could give her living water that would be like a spring welling up into her unto eternal life so that she would never thirst spiritually again. In both cases he was talking about spiritual life through himself, and he was letting them know that he was the fulfillment of the promise and that salvation and eternal life came through faith in him.
 
The law brought with it spiritual death, because it made us conscious of sin and it condemned us to die. So, Jesus Christ took on our punishment by taking our sins upon himself when he died on the cross. He crucified our sins with him, buried them with him, and then he rose from the dead triumphant over death, hell, Satan and sin so that we could go free from the ultimate penalty of sin (eternal damnation), and so we could be free of the control of sin on a day-to-day basis. So, by Jesus Christ dying for our sins, through faith in him we are set free of the curse of the law, which is spiritual death (eternity without God and eternal punishment). Yet, Paul makes it quite clear in his writings that now that we are under grace it does not mean we are free from the requirement to obey Christ’s commandments. Grace does not equal lawlessness. Grace requires repentance and obedience to Christ and his commands. The difference now is that the law of God is written in our hearts so that we want to obey it out of love for God, and that we are no longer, if we are in Christ, under the condemnation of the law, for Jesus set us free.
 
So, what does this mean for us in all practicality? It means, for one, that we are not required to follow all the Old Testament ceremonial and purification laws. Jesus Christ summed up the law for us in two commandments: 1) Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength, and 2) Love your neighbor as yourself. We learn in Romans 13 that love is the fulfillment of the law, and in Galatians 6 that if we carry each other’s burdens that we fulfill the law of Christ. As well, we learn in Romans 3 that, although we are not justified (saved) by observing the law, that does not mean we nullify the law by our faith, but rather we uphold the law. What this means is that faith and grace are not equal to lawlessness. Under grace we still have to die to our lives of sin and we still have to obey Christ’s commandments. We learn in scripture that we must run the race of this Christian life by following the rules, but the rules are not based in external rituals and rites, but are based in love, faith and a desire to want to please God and to demonstrate his love to others. God still has standards by which we must live our lives. And, that is love.
 
Love Never Fails / An Original Work / August 20, 2012

Based off 1 Corinthians 13 NIV
 
If I speak
With tongues of men and angels,
But do not have love,
My speech is but noise;
It sounds like thunder from above.
If I have the gift of preaching,
Knowledge, faith and prophecy,
But I do not love my brothers,
Oh, what vanity!
If I give all I possess
To help a neighbor who’s in need,
But I do not love my sisters,
I gain not a thing.
 
Love is patient; love is kind;
It does not envy; is not proud.
It is not rude; not self-seeking;
Selflessly gives out.
Love does not delight in evil,
But rejoices with the truth;
Protects always; hopes and trusts,
And always perseveres.
Love is not easily angered;
Keeps no record of the wrongs.
It forgives when wrong’s intended;
Returns hate with love.
 
Love will never fail when it is
God’s love reaching out through us,
Selfless in its care for others;
Yielding to the cross.
Prophecies and tongues
And knowledge,
Wisdom, teaching, miracles,
Gifts of healing, helping others –
These will all be stilled.
When perfection comes
The imperfect will surely disappear.
Faith and hope and love remain;
The greatest of these, love.
 
http://youtu.be/wNi1-ZSy2Q0