The Whole Body, Part 5: The Nose

The Body of Christ as a Fragrant Offering

Well, this morning we're back in the series that we began a few weeks ago. This idea of the body being whole, sound, mature, and healthy. We've been using as a banner text for that series title, Ephesians 4.

The desire that Paul has for a church body to grow up in all things into Him who is the head, Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by whatever joint supplies, according to the effect of working by which every part does its share, causes the growth of the body to the edifying of itself in love.

So that's been our focus. And we've worked our way down from, following the introduction, from the head to the eyes, last week the ears, and this morning the nose. I'd love to know where you think I was going or what you think is coming after that.

I wonder if nose wasn't on the short list of what you thought we'd be looking at as far as spiritual body parts go. But I think Scripture has a lot to say about the nose, or perhaps we could say has a lot to say about the sense of smell.

And that's what we're going to be looking at this morning. And before I move into Romans 12, I just want to tell you how I began to think about or approach the idea of a whole nose, a healthy, sound, mature nose.

What does it mean to have a healthy nose? What does it mean to have an unhealthy nose? Or a nose that's not quite performing its full capacity, its full function? Well, I think about it in this way. There are at least two reasons that our noses don't work as they should, at least two reasons that we can't smell in the way or smell the things that we ought to be able to smell.

One of those reasons is within the nose itself, and one of those reasons is around the nose, the environment or the atmosphere of the nose. And I think where we're going this morning, we'll be able to look at each of those, and as you come back, Lord willing, tonight, we'll be able to discuss these things more fruitfully.

The first reason that we can't smell, let's just begin with that around or outside of the nose. It's the atmosphere. If you are familiar with a certain smell, you become what we call nose blind. In other words, it's become so commonplace to you, so familiar that your mind almost deletes it.

You no longer recognize it as a scent or as a smell. If someone buys the same brand of cologne and they wear it for a decade, they no longer smell that cologne. In fact, their closest family members probably no longer smell that cologne, but everyone else does.

And like a cat, they know who's been in the territory. They smell and do that weird square jaw thing. So we go nose blind. If something's common in our atmosphere, we actually don't pick up on it. We don't smell it.

We hardly even notice it. That's a sign of our nose not functioning in the way it should. The atmosphere is actually blinding our sense of smell. The other thing that happens to our noses is we become unhealthy ourselves.

We become sick. And what happens when you get, especially this time of year, a cold, a sickness, the flu? Your nose just puffs up, turns bright red. You can't breathe through it. You have to sort of breathe through your mouth.

You have sleep apnea. Somehow it's fully clogged and running at the same time. It's like the worst feeling in the world. And if your nose is stuffy, if you have those symptoms, you can't smell anything.

You can't smell anything. It's easy to have a child that hasn't been potty trained when you have a runny nose or a stuffy nose. Like, I could deal with this all day long. So these are the two things. The atmosphere, the things around us that we go nose blind to, we can no longer smell correctly.

Or if we're unhealthy in ourselves, if we're sick, if our nose is clogged, we're going to talk about, perhaps even tonight, what clogs might be. Pride, envy, all other dynamics that might clog our ability to smell correctly.

We, of course, as a church, want to pay attention to our aroma, our fragrance. Unto the Lord and not only to one another, but also to those outside of the church. How we smell, the aroma we give off, the fragrance,.

The air of the church,.

Our worship being a fragrant aroma to God, our graces and virtues and gifts being a sense of the aroma, the fragrance, and the air of our body. And that matters not just for our body, but also for those around us, outside of us, those observing us even in our daily lives.

So there's a lot to say about the sense of smell. Ancient travelers would say of the city of Rome, you could smell it before you could see it. That's not a compliment, by the way. Some would say that of cities, certain cities.

I was about to besmirch a local city, and I won't. But it's a city that you could smell before you could see. Oh, I think we're nearing the city borders. I can smell the water treatment plant. That was the idea of ancient Rome.

You knew you were close to it because of the odor it was giving off. It's not a good thing for a church to be giving off a foul odor, and before people can even really see us or be around us, they're choking, as it were, on that foul air.

A church has to pay attention to its atmosphere, to its fragrance, to its aroma. So for our body to have a healthy nose, we must be able to detect our scent. We can't be nose-blind. We can't afford to be nose-blind.

We need a healthy, functioning ability to smell rightly, to smell things that are foul, to smell things that are sweet, to know the kind of aroma and fragrance that is not only pleasing to God, but potentially attractive to those that He is drawing to Himself.

So we ought to be sensitive to the things that are pleasing or lovely in His sight, the very things that God calls a pleasing aroma or a lovely fragrance. This will mean, and I'm tipping my hat now to where we're going in Romans 12, this will mean that we individually present our bodies as a living sacrifice, knowing that though we have individual bodies to lay down and serve Him with, we also are members one of another.

We also are a corporate body, and corporately, too, we are to lay our corporate lives down in service to Him as a pleasing aroma, as a fragrant scent. And this is held together, I think, in Romans 12, 1 through 5.

Now, the language of scent or fragrance isn't there, but when we start talking about sacrifice, especially self-sacrifice, we'll see there's a lot of Scripture that speaks to sacrifice as a fragrance.

So we'll just begin with Romans 12, 1 through 5. Paul writes, I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God... Remember, in chapter 11, he closed with this glorious doxology in light of the wisdom and majesty of God's plan of redemption, and he says in light of that, turning in a whole new section of ethical import in Romans 12, I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by these mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.

Pay attention to that word, acceptable. What is an acceptable sacrifice? A pleasing sacrifice. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is good and acceptable,.

There it is again,.

And perfect will of God. For I say, through the grace given to me, that everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith.

For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. So he begins with the individual, you lay your life down to be a pleasing sacrifice to God, and then he reminds them, as you do this, you are doing it as a member of the body, the body of Christ.

Why am I using this passage to talk about scent, fragrance, a functioning nose? Well, because it connects our individual bodies to the body in terms of sacrifice, in terms of service, in terms of the things that are pleasing.

So when I'm looking at our corporate schnoz, for lack of a better term, I want us to be thinking about service,.

Sacrifice.

What we began to talk about two weeks ago with the eyes, this idea of other-oriented esteem, that we wouldn't think of ourselves too highly, Romans 12, in fact, we would think of others better than ourselves, Philippians 2.

This is a way we're going to start thinking about and unpacking what it means to have a healthy nose, to have a smell check, to not go nose-blind. Now we opened our service with Psalm 45. Psalm 45 is a messianic psalm.

It talks about the glories of this king who somehow is exalted over all and is spoken of with almost divine grandeur. You are fairer than the sons of men. Grace is poured out upon your lips. Pay attention to this language of anointing and what is he being anointed with?

Grace is poured upon your lips. Therefore, God has blessed you forever. Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. This exalted figure is being addressed as God. Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.

A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of your kingdom. You love righteousness. You hate wickedness. Therefore, God, your God, O God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness more than your companions.

You see?

He's poured out grace upon him. He's poured out this oil of gladness. And what's the result of this? All your garments are scented with myrrhs and aloes and cacha out of the ivory palaces. Here's this image of a king in all of his glory.

Grace has been poured out upon him. Gladness has anointed him. And the result is his clothing is saturated with this glorious fragrance.

Aloes, myrrhs.

The wealthiest, most exotic, most exuberant fragrances. Now why is that significant in Psalm 45? Well, the body of Christ is to smell glorious. That's what Psalm 45 is saying. There's to be a saturation of a glorious, well-pleasing fragrance.

Something costly. Something sacrificial. The other place in Scripture that we read of this rich scent of myrrh and aloes, in fact, 75 pounds worth of it, is in John 19 when Jesus has completed His sacrifice and is in the tomb.

And there, myrrh and aloes are packed around His body prior to the resurrection. You see, His sacrifice was a well-pleasing fragrance to God. Our sacrifice, our service to God is a well-pleasing fragrance to God.

If you don't understand it from Psalm 45 or John 19, you see it from the very beginning. When you come to Noah in Genesis chapter 8, as he comes out of the ark, talk about a negative smell. Can you imagine being packed into that boat with all of those animals for that long?

I'm not much of a farm boy. I think I was meant to be a city slicker, but I like the small-town life. Even just going to some of your homes that have animals, I'm like, whoa. I have to kind of adjust a little bit.

I'm not used to fertilizer and hay and chicken feed and whatnot. But I can tell it means nothing to the homesteader, to the country lifer. That's just mud and trucks and country music. Well, you can imagine Noah finally getting fresh air.

And the first thing that he does, rightly so, is he builds an altar to God. And here you have pre-Levitical worship. It's described in this way as a sacrifice, a burnt offering. And when God smelled that aroma, it soothed him.

And he vowed that he would never destroy the earth by floodwaters again. And here you have all the way back to Genesis chapter 8, toward the very beginning of Scripture, this connection of sacrifice to aroma.

Sacrifice to fragrance. It soothed God. It, as it were, turned away his wrath. We know that that wasn't just burnt meat. Don't approach God as though you're offering something to him that he needs. The cattle of a thousand hills belongs to him.

So it's not burnt meat. God's not a man that he requires oxen and goats. But rather it was this foreshadowing of the ultimate offering, the ultimate sacrifice, that of God's own beloved Son. Keep reading in Genesis and see that with Abraham offering up Isaac.

And you see there it's the sacrifice. It's a nature of devotion to God, absolute faith in God, a total self-disavowal. I'm giving myself over to you, Lord. And that, to the Lord, is this pleasing fragrance.

It's a beautiful fragrance. Not my life for myself, but I lay it down willingly. No one can take it from me. In fact, I'm willing to lose my life because, Lord, you will give it back to me. I lay it down freely of my own will.

It's that sacrificial nature, that devotion, that faith, that love for God and fellow man. It becomes this fragrance, as it were, in the very nostrils of God, to use this anthropomorphic language. So instead of merely saying, God was pleased with the burnt offering, there in Genesis 8 .21, we read, the Lord smelled a soothing aroma.

And that pointed all the way to His Son, the well-pleasing sacrifice of Christ. Now, Paul brings us to consider how our sacrifice, our service, our concern for others, our love for others, is actually, in the same way, a sweet-smelling aroma to God.

Ephesians 5, 1 and 2. Therefore, Paul writes, be imitators of God, like dear children, and walk in love, just as Christ also loved us and gave Himself for us in offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.

See how that's connected again? Love in this way, be selfless in this way, be sacrificial in this way, because in so doing, you will be like Christ. You will offer to God a sweet-smelling fragrance. Your lives will become fragrant with, as it were, the very sacrificial love of Christ Himself.

So this means that whatever I offer to God, it's to be part of a life built upon devotion. My whole aim is to please Him. My whole desire is to devote myself to Him in faith. I lay my life down for His purposes,.

For His calling.

That may be in small, miniscule ways that go unnoticed. That may be in grand, controversial ways. Whether you're giving a cup of cold water in Jesus' name or you're laying your life down as a holy martyr, this is what it means to be a well-pleasing aroma in the sight of God.

And there's no greater incentive to Christian service and sacrifice than this. Whatever I offer to God, I do so as a living sacrifice. Paul doesn't say, give sacrificially with your resources. Not in Romans 12, at least.

He, of course, uses that language in Philippians or in 2 Corinthians. He talks about the gifts and the resources and the missionary support of a church being like a fragrant offering. But in Romans 12, he says, your whole life is the sacrifice.

You are the sacrifice. You are the living sacrifice to God. Look into how Hebrews 13, 20 holds us together. Now may the God of peace, who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead,.

The Great Shepherd of the sheep,.

Through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well-pleasing in His sight. Or we could almost say, what is well-smelling in His nose.

Because sacrifice is something that you smell. It produces something in the air. It's an aroma. It's a fragrance. It's something that goes beyond you. It somehow extends your presence. It somehow draws or repels, as we'll see momentarily in 2 Corinthians.

And this is true of every Christian act of service and love. This is also true of every odious sin and failure, every good work, every evil deed, every attempt to share and lay our lives down, every act to take it up and selfishly turn against.

These things produce odors, odors in the church, odors from the church into the world, odors unto God. In the kingdom of God, it's not only those mighty acts which count. It's not just the awe-inspiring and viral testimonies that commend someone before God.

But as Jesus reminds us, the least act is noticed, even a cup of water in His name. The smallest things are noticed. The smallest things have an odor. Some of you know exactly what that looks like. Just some small little effortless thing that blessed you.

A brother or sister being thoughtful. Might have been a stray text message. Might have been something left at the door. Might have been a pat on the back in a time of need. It might have just been that little glancing encouragement, I've been praying for you.

And somehow that blessed you. And if I could put it in this figurative language, the air smelled a little different toward them.

You regarded them.

You thought of them. You enjoyed them. A little bit differently than you had before. And that's what it is toward God. Every little act, every little deed. Hebrews 6 .10 says, For God is not unjust to forget your work or your labor of love, which you've shown toward His name.

Whatever we do toward His name has this kind of aroma, this kind of fragrance. And again, this is the image that Paul's drawing out.

Our lives are to be this way.

This is the image of a sacrifice that creates a soothing aroma. God is well-pleased. And that's why we lay our lives down. That's why we seek from the least to the greatest of deeds, because we want to be pleasing to Him.

We want to be a fragrant offering. We want to return the love we received from Him. Think of the power of a good smell. I think it shut down, but when we used to live in Leominster, we'd go to the parking lot at Twin City, where Outback Steakhouse was.

I do a lot of my banking there at Workers Credit Union. As soon as I opened the door, I was smelling T-bones and baby back ribs.

It's like, oh, man.

That's what it was like going to Jerusalem. They're offering the burnt offerings. It's like everyone's mouth is watering as they're making their way to the holy city. It's the power of a smell. You see those old Looney Tunes cartoons where the mom puts the apple pie on the windowsill, and the odors almost have this life, and all of a sudden the dogs are sort of carried along by the odor.

There's something about the power of a fragrance.

It draws.

It begins to have this effect on your life. All of a sudden, your stomach begins to rumble. Your mouth begins to salivate. You become caught in the daydream. Wouldn't it be amazing to have that? You start looking at pictures of food on your phone.

It's the power of fragrance. Or negatively, the repulsive power of fragrance, a stench you can't bear. An infantile... I would like to talk about this tonight. I don't want to explore it too much this morning.

We have other things we need to get to, so let me just put it as a bookmark. An infantile church is oblivious to its smell. Think of an infant. It doesn't matter how soiled they are. They're just smiling.

They're just playing. They're oblivious to their odor.

A church that is juvenile, a church that is immature, will tend to overreact. We don't know what to do with this. Mom, Dad, get them away from us. They can't handle that. A mature church acknowledges the odor for what it is and has a way to deal with it.

Yeah, that stinks. We need to get rid of that smell. How it is in the home with odor, so it ought to be in the church. We cannot afford to be oblivious and infantile to our odor as individuals but also corporately.

What's the air of the church? How would you know but by the reaction of those within and without? What's the fragrance that we give off? What's the atmosphere in the air? There will be some who are repelled.

It must be so, as we'll see from 2 Corinthians. But the question is why? Why are they repelled? Is it the scent, the fragrance of the gospel that is repulsive to them?

It must be.

God forbid we take away the offense of the cross. Or is it something else that's repulsive?

Something else.

And are we infantile?

We don't even see it. We're just smiling in our soil. Or are we so juvenile that we don't know what to do with this? We just need to get away from it. Are we mature? We know how to deal with it. We know repentance.

We know sanctification. We know the power of worship to purge foul odors. Everything we offer to God, we offer it through Christ. Therefore, it becomes fragrant, well-pleasing in His sight. Do we understand these things?

We'll talk about that more tonight. Let me give three points to kind of walk us through this topic. And I'm not going to give them all up front because they're rather larger points. They're more like sentences.

But here's the first of three sentences. A healthy nose is able to detect odors and lead the body to seek a pleasing fragrance. A healthy nose is able to detect odors and leads the body to seek a pleasing fragrance.

2 Corinthians 2, 14 and following. Paul says, now, thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us, he's speaking as an apostle, diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place.

Just pause there. Thanks be to God, he says, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place. Paul is appealing to a phenomenon in the ancient Roman world called the triumph.

When a great military victory had been wrought, the Senate could award that general, or perhaps even Caesar himself, a military triumph. And all of the captive treasures and exotic elements of that conquered territory, as well as captured soldiers, they would be, along with their leader, put in this huge train and marched all along the way toward their highest temple, the temple of Jupiter.

And, of course, that conquering general and his parade chariot would be showered with adoration, flower petals, and fragrant spices, vessels of perfume. There was this pungent fragrance that filled the air, filled the streets of the city of Rome.

And Paul is leaning into this imagery. He says, Christ has His triumph now. He did not stay dead in the tomb, but now He's risen and ascended, exalted on high, and we as apostles are in this triumphant train.

He's leading us, as it were, in triumph. And as a result of that triumph, this knowledge of Him is like this fragrance that's spreading in our midst. We're showered in it. We're emanating it. It's this fragrance.

It's this glorious aroma. It's the victory of Christ. And we're heralds. We're ambassadors of this victory. That's the image. Now, he says this in verse 15. We are, to God, the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, as it really is.

He says, in God's sight, to God, we really are, as apostles, he's saying, the fragrance of Christ to those who are being saved and to those who are perishing. So in that train, you've got the soldiers of the victor.

In that train, you've got the enemies, the rebels. All are showered with perfume. All have that aroma. And Paul says, as it really is in the sight of God, it's a fragrance of Christ, a glorious perfume, a costly perfume.

The apostles are saturated with it. And guess what? They're not the only ones who are surrounded by this fragrance. Also the rebels, those who resist his will, those who are perishing, they, too, smell this fragrance from our apostolic labors.

And what does he say? Verse 16. To the one, that is, to those who are perishing, we are the aroma of death leading to death. And to the other, we are the aroma of life leading to life. So it's the same fragrance.

It's the same perfume. It's the fragrance of Christ, diffused in every place by this knowledge of God. And he says, to those who God is saving, to those who are being conquered by grace and brought in to the army of the Lord, this fragrance, this perfume is glorious.

It's rich. It's wonderful. It's life unto life. It's victory unto victory. It's hope unto hope. Join the celebration. That's what that smell says. But to those who are perishing, that fragrance of Christ, it's a scent of death to them.

And not just death, but death to death. Not just death right now as the gospel is being disseminated, but a reminder that death must come. Judgment must come. Again, Christ is the victor. Think about these poor captives in that Roman general's train.

What happened at the end of that train? They were all sacrificed to the Roman pantheon. So as flower petals and perfumes are showering the legions, those captives knew that scent is just a reminder we are about to be killed.

We didn't die on the battlefield. We're going to be killed. This is the imagery that Paul uses to talk about his apostolic ministry. He's saying, it's not surprising for me to see that when I let the knowledge of God be known, there's a fragrance that draws those who are being saved.

They're captivated by the gospel. To them, it's life leading to life. But others are repelled. They're so offended. They find the fragrance of Christ so odious, they seek to kill me. They seek to take my life from me.

That's Paul's experience as an apostle. So you recognize what Paul is recognizing. Wherever he goes, he carries with him the fragrance of Christ. He lays his whole life down. A life lived in sacrifice for the good of God's kingdom, for the good of God's people, even for the good of those who hate God.

He's willing to do anything. If by any means he could win some, that's part of the fragrance of Christ that he carries with him. And that fragrance of Christ is something that he finds in Christ. Christ made himself of no accord.

He laid his life down in sacrifice and became a well-pleasing aroma to God. Paul says, that's how I'm going to live my life. And in seeking to be like Jesus, Paul became fragrant, a well-pleasing aroma.

But as he carries out that aroma, it has this effect. It repulses those who hate God. It's an offensive stench. Some of you ladies are pregnant, or have been pregnant recently, or have been pregnant eons ago.

What a unique phenomenon, that something that never bothered you all of a sudden becomes so odious that you can't bear to be in the same room, maybe even in the same building. Get that out of the house right now.

I'm going to turn green. Some, you know, coffee in the morning, or a certain kind of soup. You have one bad experience of morning sickness, and forever that scent is just a red flag in your mind, in your experience.

This is the kind of power of scent that we're talking about. Someone can go through the motions, jump through the hoops, grow up in the church, and all of a sudden the knowledge of God is being disseminated.

That fragrance is wafting, and that becomes a stench they can't bear. Get me out of here. I can't stand that. Paul recognizes what we need to recognize. The church is not some social club. We all try to be friendly and do good.

It's a spiritual temple where transformed lives of believers are engaged in advancing the kingdom as we worship the risen King. That's what a church is. That's a fragrant church if a church is recognizing that.

And so we sacrifice as this act of worship. Hebrews 13 .15, Therefore by Him, by Christ, let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name, not forgetting to do good or to share, because with these sacrifices God is well pleased.

That's a pleasing fragrance. What's the pleasing fragrance? Doing good, sharing, offering thanksgiving, seeking to please Him who is our God. That's what Paul is saying. I beseech you, brethren, by these mercies of God, present your bodies a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable, pleasing in His sight, pleasing in His smell.

We make it our aim, Paul says, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him. For you were once darkness, he says in Ephesians 5. Now you're light in the Lord, so walk as children of light, finding out what is acceptable or pleasing to the Lord.

What do you smell? What smells good? Get more of that. The smell is meant to draw out. That smells so good, I need to have more. I want more of that smell and more of whatever that smell's coming from.

When a meal's being prepared, think of Thanksgiving Day. You wake up, you purposely skip breakfast, and all the stuffing and the gravy and the potatoes, and you feel like a desert traveler by noon. When can I eat?

And your hand's getting batted away as you're sneaking off pieces. That's the idea. It smells so amazing, I've just got to have the source. I've got to get into that. That's how it ought to be. So the question is, if we're seeking to please Him in this way, and we recognize pleasing Him has a lot to do with our selfless sacrifice, our acts of love and service toward one another, if that's the fragrance we're to give off in the church, that becomes a fragrance, an aroma, that attracts others to the church, even as it repels others from the church, do we have that kind of fragrance as a church body?

Do you remember the Sunday nights last year when we were looking at church history from Needham's book? And he was talking about that vigorous, rough-necked North African church. The church in Carthage.

The church in Numidia. And an interesting thing that Nick Needham pointed out is we see in their writings almost no evidence, no effort, no intentionality about missions. They didn't write about it. They didn't think about it.

They were not engaged in outreach. That is not what the North African church was doing. Why did they not need to do that? Because their worship was so transformative, their way of life and love was so powerful, they didn't need to go outreach.

People were coming in through the windows. That was the North African church. That is a fragrant church. That is a church where people come and by the steps and through the window panes, their thought should be, truly, God is in this place.

What is our fragrance as a church? Again, that was the first point. A healthy nose is able to detect odors and leads the body to seek a pleasing fragrance. Second, a healthy nose is able to detect odors and perfumes the body for the sake of others.

A healthy nose is able to detect odors and perfumes the body for the sake of others. To the first point, healthy nose is able to detect odors and it leads the body to seek a pleasing fragrance. Do we seek to please the Lord?

Do we seek a life of selfless love and sacrifice? Is that a well-pleasing aroma to the Lord? A well-pleasing fragrance in the church? The second point is closely tied to that. If our nose is healthy and we can detect odors, we will be perfuming the body for the sake of others.

Why else would you perfume a body? Unless you're detecting odors. And out of courtesy, out of polite, or out of a desire not to be offensive, you mask that odor, you perfume it. Every teenage man knows what I'm talking about.

You do the sniff test. You find the shirt on the back of the chair and you smell it and you go, I think it's good. You throw it back on. And everyone's turning sideways around you and birds are falling from the sky and you realize it wasn't as good as I thought it was.