2 Corinthians 2:14

But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God's word. But as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God in the sight of God, we speak in Christ... You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all. And you show that you are a letter from Christ, delivered by us, written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts.

We are God's perfume and Jesus' living letters—frail vessels carrying an unstoppable message in a triumphal procession.

Led in Triumphal Procession

The first thing we see in verse 14 is, "But thanks be to God." We get to be thankful, because Christ leads us in triumphal procession. I am thankful that I can be led by Christ and not led by myself. When I try to muddle through alone, I get into trouble. Proverbs 29:18 says, "Where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law."

When I am not led by Christ, I end up leading myself, and it all goes wonky right off the bat. It's like one of those YouTube journeys: I start out looking for how to change the wheel bearings on my truck, and an hour later I'm watching some guy in his yard launch a squirrel with a slingshot made of a colander. Or I'm on Wikipedia looking up the cause of World War I, and suddenly I'm reading about the intricacies of French cheesemaking. Thank God He is there to lead us and point us in the right direction.

So our first point is this: in Christ, I am walking in a triumphal procession. Can people see that by how I'm living? I love that it's a triumphal procession—a parade, not a death march.

A Victory Parade, Not a Death March

When I think of a triumphal procession, my mind goes to February 2014, when the Seahawks won the Super Bowl and beat the Denver Broncos—and "beat" may not even be the right word. On February 5 they had their victory parade, a two-mile route through Seattle. Over 700,000 people showed up. It was at or below freezing the whole time, and people came from as far away as Wyoming, camping out overnight. Over 25% of the students in the Seattle School District were absent; the mayor had to ask the district to stop sending out mass expulsion notices. I still remember Marshawn Lynch on the hood of a five-ton truck, throwing Skittles to the crowd.

Does our life resemble a victory parade? That's where it gets convicting. Sometimes we lose focus on the fact that the victory is based on the entire campaign, not the individual battle we're facing right now. It's not whether one lineman got beat on this play—it's whether the team won the season.

In our walk with Christ, we get caught thinking success or failure is based on what I'm doing at this moment. When we're victorious, we get prideful. And when we're beaten, we forget the victory isn't down to us. The victory is for Christ. He already won, and we get to be led by Him.

Even if you're one of those interior linemen nobody knows—you find out he got traded and you think, "I didn't even know we had that guy"—if you're on the team, you get the ring when they win the Super Bowl. It doesn't matter if you're on the highlight reel or if anyone knows your name. You just have to be on the team. If we're following Christ, we are led in triumphal procession.

We Are the Aroma of Christ

Verse 14 continues, "And through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God." We are God's perfume. That brings us to point two: am I faithfully diffusing the scent of Christ? We are God's car-fresheners for the world.

In college I had a friend named Jamie—who turned out to be my cousin, though we didn't know it until later. He drove a Bronco II, a vehicle not particularly good or bad at anything. But one time we counted, and he had fifteen Vanilla Roma air fresheners hanging in it. Here's the thing: when you spent time in Jamie's Bronco, people knew it afterward. "You rode with Jamie, didn't you?" "Yeah, why?" "Vanilla Roma." Smell is powerful.

Close your eyes and imagine your favorite smell. What else does it remind you of? For some it's bacon—home and love. For my daughter it's Christmas trees—joy, warmth, and love. For me, one trigger is the smell of diesel and propane exhaust, because I worked at Oak Harbor Freight Lines in my early twenties, right after my wife and I got married. When I smell that exhaust, the wooden trailer floors, the dust, it brings me right back. Smell is actually the most powerful trigger of memory we have.

Paul uses the illustration of smell to show our role as Christians. We are called to be that barbecue smell, the chocolate-chip-cookie smell that draws people to Jesus. We spend time with Christ and the smell rolls off us.

Not Everyone Likes the Smell

But Paul tells us not everyone will enjoy that smell. To those who are perishing, who haven't come to Christ, the smell is sometimes noxious and disgusting. We can't control whether others like it—that depends on the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives and whether they're open or rejecting it. Our job is to exude that smell wherever we go, like little air fresheners. We can't control what happens with it, but we can make sure we're not messing it up by the things we do.

Who Is Sufficient?

Then the verse asks, "Who is sufficient for these things?" None of us are sufficient on our own, because we stink. Look at the lengths we go to in order not to stink. When you got up this morning, your body and your mouth stank, so you showered and brushed your teeth. And knowing ourselves, we take preventative measures. In the U.S. alone we spend $18 billion a year on deodorant—not counting perfume or body spray.

In youth ministry we have a front-row seat to this. At camp we spend a week in a cabin with junior highers and high schoolers, and here's what we've learned: we begin to stink long before we realize we've begun to stink. At some point in life, somebody loved us enough to come tell us, "You stink, and you need to do something about it."

We were at Green Valley Lakes once, and a young man—not from our church, so I think I'm safe—brought one pair of shoes, zero pairs of socks, for a whole week. If you know anything about junior high boys, shoes without socks are deadly. He smelled so bad the whole room reeked—you could smell him on the other side of the bathroom with fifty beds between you. So somebody loved him enough to take his shoes and throw them as far off into the woods as they could.

It's just like following Jesus. Somebody loved us so much that they made a way for us not to stink spiritually—that's Jesus. The Holy Spirit used people around us to draw us close to Him. We come to Christ and our former stink is washed away—that's salvation. We know our propensity to start stinking again, so we work against it—that's sanctification. And we notice others stink like death, so we let them know they can be cleaned—that's evangelism. We are not able to take care of our own stink; Jesus is.

Sincere, Not Salesmen

Verse 17 says, "For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God's word. But as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God in the sight of God, we speak in Christ." We are not salesmen. We don't have a multitude of products to offer like the Fuller Brush man, opening fifty others if one doesn't work. We're not Joe Isuzu, promising you could buy the Isuzu for seashells and pebbles, with the subtext always reading, "He's lying."

We're called to be sincere—honest about our successes and our failures, and honest about the message of Jesus Christ, which is not always pleasant for everyone. Imagine a doctor who only told you what you wanted to hear: "You want to lose weight? Do you like Ben and Jerry's? Just go eat Ben and Jerry's." That doesn't help. The message of Jesus is reconciliation, which means there is a problem that needs solving.

When we repent or face trials and handle them like Christians, the message in us is magnified—because we know we're not sufficient. When we mess up and go to the person and say, "I shouldn't have said that, I'm sorry," that speaks volumes, because the world doesn't do that well. When we face hostility—as we will, because our message is hostile to the world—and we handle it the way Jesus did, that speaks volumes.

God Commissions Us into Hard Places

Recently in our house we watched The Hiding Place, the story of Corrie ten Boom, her sister Betsie, and their father in World War II, hiding Jews and ending up in a concentration camp. God commissioned them to take His word into that camp. Being commissioned doesn't mean everywhere we go will be pleasant.

In the barracks, one sister said, "I can be thankful for everything, but I cannot be thankful for these lice." Her sister replied, "God doesn't do anything by mistake." Then they discovered their barracks was the one the guards wouldn't enter—because of the lice. So by the grace of God, they were free to lead Bible studies and bring people to the Lord as those people were going off to their deaths. As Corrie said, "There is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still." Her sister died in the camp, her father in another, and Corrie was released on a clerical error—by the hand of God—so she could write her story for us.

We don't fear flesh and blood. We walk by faith, knowing God is with us, and we speak the words of life because we are commissioned by God. Every one of us is commissioned to take His message wherever we go. This is our joy and our opportunity.

Paul says we do this "in the sight of God." That is both a comfort and a caution. A comfort, because Christ leads us in a triumphal procession—He is not hovering over the smite button; He's saying, "Let's throw Skittles, let's celebrate the victory already won." A caution, because He wants us to succeed, and we have a responsibility to deliver the message accurately. It is a sacred thing to be sent out by the living God.

Living Letters from Jesus

Jumping to chapter 3, verse 3: "And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts." We are living love letters to the world from Jesus. That's point three: I am Jesus' living letter to this world.

The God who created heaven and earth, who could break open the skies and shout down from heaven, says instead, "I'm going to use my people—regular, normal, ordinary, frail people—to deliver this message." I can't even grasp that.

This means we'll be different kinds of letters to different people. Just like the smell, some are hostile and some are receptive. Our message changes because it's written on human hearts, not on stone—some people need comfort, some need confronting, some need encouragement, some need exhortation. We're almost more like a live stream, constantly interactive, because that's how God designed it.

We are cracked pots, earthen vessels that leak. We are not sufficient to deliver the message of Jesus Christ. But God chooses us anyway. He says, "I'm going to give you the Holy Spirit, and you are going to be my message." We say, "God, I can't do this," and God says, "I know." Isn't that great? We get to do it together.

The Message Is Jesus

So we must remember it's not about us, and do everything we can not to distort the message. To avoid distorting it, we need to know what it is—and the cool thing is, the message is Jesus. Can I accurately communicate every nuance of who Jesus is? No—but the Holy Spirit will speak through me. I don't have to know what TULIP means or the Westminster Catechism. I know Jesus.

Is it wrong to learn more about our faith? Absolutely not—it's a good thing. But don't let not knowing the answer to every question stop you from bringing it up. And be aware that we are always preaching. I have to remind myself I am preaching even while driving—am I accurately delivering God's message to the boneheads out there? That's where I struggle.

You are the message Jesus has chosen to send to the people around you, and this is a privilege, not a chore. It's all based on our outlook. If you treat it like a burden, you're not walking in a victory parade. Nobody wants to be invited to a death march: "Life is horrible—you want to come with me?" That's not effective. But everyone wants to be on the winning team. Ask the Cleveland Browns if they'd like to be on a winning team—I was rooting for them all season.

Verse 4 says, "Such is the confidence that we have through Christ towards God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything that's coming from us. But our sufficiency is from God who made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the spirit." The message is not great because I'm great. The message is great because He is great, and Jesus is sufficient to make up for the frailties of His chosen vessel.

Communion with Jesus

To wrap up: we walk in triumphal procession led by Jesus. We diffuse the scent of Jesus. We deliver letters about Jesus, from Jesus. For this to work, we need to be in communion with Jesus. That's why we partake in communion as a body—we stop, remember, and celebrate.

But this isn't just about us. Jesus leads us always in triumphal procession, and He is with us today as we celebrate communion. For me, that's a brain-breaking thought—I'm taking communion and Jesus is with me. We get to celebrate together with Him.

So let's take this time to ask God to search our hearts—to show us where we're succeeding, where we're falling short, where we need to work on the smell or tighten up the prose in our letter. Each one of us is the instrument God has chosen to bring His message to this world. You were chosen for this task, and we have been given the ministry of reconciliation.

Closing Prayer

Jesus, as we prepare to celebrate communion, Father God, it seems like such a strange thing to celebrate Your death and burial. But, Father God, we need to remember that it did not stop there. We're celebrating Your resurrection, Jesus. We're celebrating the fact that You came back for us, that You delivered Yourself up for us so that we wouldn't have to live the life we'd lived before, so that we wouldn't have to be trapped in our sin, but could find reconciliation in You. So today, Jesus, as we prepare to celebrate communion, I pray that You would comfort us where we need comforting, encourage us where we need encouraging, Lord God, and remind us of the gratitude and the magnitude of what You've done. Jesus, we pray these things in Your name. Amen.