DAY 24 - WHAT'S THAT SMELL?

MILANNA MARTILLARO, YA CREATIVE & PRODUCTION RESIDENT

“...as a pleasing aroma before the Lord.” Exodus 29:25

Did you know that out of all of our five senses, that our sense of smell is the strongest? Isn’t that crazy? This means that we as humans are more capable of recognizing something through smell than we are at seeing or even touching. Do this for me: think of your favorite meal in the entire world, can you smell it?  I know that the second I start thinking of a 3 finger combo from Raising Cane’s, I can smell the Cane’s sauce like it’s in front of me. It’s wild. 

What’s even wilder is how The Bible talks about the smell. All throughout the Old Testament, we see God’s people presenting offerings to the Lord as acts of worship. One way they would do this is through burnt offerings. And when they would do this, the bible reads that it would present “a pleasing aroma before the Lord.” God was pleased by the smell of His people’s worship. He could smell their worship. How interesting. 

Fast forward to the New Testament, where Ephesians 5:2 tells us that Christ “gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” So Jesus, through His sacrifice on the cross, becomes the perfect offering on our behalf and frees us from the need to present Old Testament offerings to God. THANK YOU JESUS. But this now means that we no longer have to offer anything to the Lord, right?

Wrong. It just looks a little different.

The bible tells us in Romans 12:1, “to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God - this is your true and proper worship.” So now our bodies are the offering? What does this mean? Well, it looks a lot different than in the Old Testament (*phew*). Here, the bible is urging us to give every part of ourselves over to God and allow Him to have His proper place within our lives.  Here, the bible is telling us to live our lives in such a way that is holy and pleasing to God. We are no longer called to sacrifice burnt offerings, but rather we are called to be imitators of God (Ephesians 5:1). So how do we do this?

Lucky for us, we have a clear example to look to when learning how to live our lives in a way that is holy and pleasing to God:  

JESUS. 

Jesus is our example. He is our blueprint for how we are meant to live our lives. His spirit lives in us and leads us in the way of the everlasting. In 2 Corinthians 2:14, it tells us that God, “through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.”  

HOLD UP.

Yes, that’s right. By living our lives in a way that is holy, by being imitators of Christ, we spread His holy and pleasing aroma to those around us. When we offer our lives to Christ, we don’t just look, or act differently. God plays to our strongest sense, and we begin to smell different. This is special, young adult. We have a chance during this time in our world to become better imitators of Jesus. We have a chance to pursue true and proper worship by offering our lives over to God in every way. We have a chance to come out of this time of quarantine smelling like Jesus. A pleasing aroma to the Lord.