Yes, You Can Ministry

We stink!

“For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.”-II Corinthians 2:15

Have you ever been around somebody that constantly has B.O.? Or maybe you’ve come in from working hard and you can smell yourself when you get in the fresh air, suddenly you realize you stink. My father was a plumber, and occasionally he would have to get in a sewer to fix a pipe. The sewer smell stays with a person for days no matter how many baths they take.

When God smells us He smells a sewer. Isaiah 6:5 says, “I am a man of unclean lips…” The prophet I Isaiah had just come into the presence of God, and he realized how despicable he was. When we come into the presence of God our uncleanliness is brought out compared to His holiness.  But, as soon as Isaiah realized his unceanliness the Lord sent one of His angels to clean him. “Then one of the seraphim flew to me, with a burning coal in his hands which he had taken from the altar with tongs. And he touched my mouth with it and said, “Behold, this has touched your lips, and your iniquity is taken away, and your sins are forgiven.”-Isaiah 6:6-7

We are unclean, and we stink in front of the Lord. II Corinthians 2:16 says, “to the one an aroma of death to death…” We cannot do not smell each other because you stink as bad as I do. We’re use to smelling dead people, but when our aroma comes before God it is a foul stench.  However, there is a bath that we can take which will permanently eradicate the smell of death. When we wash ourselves in the blood of Christ His aroma covers ours and when we go before “an aroma of life to life.” Only Jesus Christ can get rid of the smell of death we carry. You might say that the blood of Jesus is the eternal cologne.

While Jesus walked this earth He healed many that had been stricken with leprosy. Leprosy has been eradicated totally by modern medicine, but when I think of a modern disease that is comparable I think about AIDS. Lepers faced almost certain death; their body parts fell off as a result of the disease, and they smelled like people who were already dead because of their rotting flesh. However, when Jesus came to them he had compassion, and he healed them. He gave them his perfection to cover their imperfection. Their rotting flesh became clean, and their smell of death was replaced by His sweet aroma of life.

We are dead in our own bodies because of our sin. Ephesians 2:1 says, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins…” Like the lepers of Jesus’ day we have rotting flesh, we smell like a corpse in the ground, but Ephesians 2 goes on to tell us, “But God…made us alive together with Christ.” Just as the lepers were cleansed as they took on some of the righteousness of Christ we are made to be a sweet aroma before God the Father when we take on the righteousness of Christ.

“Walk in love just as also Christ loved you, and gave Himself up for us an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.”-Ephesians 5:2

Father, I thank You for covering my stench with the fresh aroma of Your Son, and I ask that You would use me as an air freshner for You wherever I go. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

The image above can be found at:

http://kingdomofstyle.typepad.co.uk/my_weblog/images/2007/11/24/pigpen.jpg