Today's Devotional

August 16, 2005

Subject:  How Does "Christ-Scent" Smell To You?

2 Corinthians 2:15 - 16 "For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish: To the one we are the savour of death unto death; and to the other the savour of life unto life. And who is sufficient for these things?"

This has probably happened to you before.  You're in the store with a friend checking out colognes and perfumes and they say "ooh try this, it smells good."  So you spray it on your arm or the back of your hand and you say, "uhm, I don't think that works for me."  However the same cologne or perfume may have worked perfectly for the other person.  You have one scent creating two separate smells.  Why is that? Well it's because we have different chemical make-ups which cause different reactions in each of our bodies therefore creating different scents.  

This is true on the spiritual level too.  The scripture above says that we (believers) are a sweet "smell" of Christ in the saved and the unsaved.  That's a sweet smell.  If that's true, why do we smell like death to some?  It's because of their internal make-up.  They're different inside, kind of like the physical differences that caused the perfume and cologne to smell different.  In this case however, it's spiritual.  It's the indwelling Holy Spirit that makes the difference in your aroma and how you smell.  Without Christ in a person's life, the "Christ-cologne" or the fragrance of Christ smells like death, but to the saved, it smells like life.  Two distinctly different smells.

Today we must understand the affect that we have on the world.  To some we are a pleasant aroma, but to others, we stink.   Remember though its because of our internal make-ups.  The beauty of it all is that those internal make-ups can be changed.  So if you know someone to whom you smell like death, let them know its not their nose that's the problem.  

Carlen