Insightful Musings on the Scriptures

by

Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67

Good morning, my fellow stinkers.

If you read below you will better understand my greeting.

We rolled into home last night just after 10pm. Had a good visit with some extended family on the way home.

Speaking of stink, we had an interesting experience Saturday afternoon at our casual alumni reunion (Northwest College). By the way, it was another terrific uplifting and inspiring weekend. But during our Saturday afternoon gathering our noses began to be offended by the “smell of death.” I figured it was local, so I was spending some time looking around on the ground under the table and around where I was sitting for something like a dead decaying rat that may have been overlooked. Later I realized that the stink was covering the whole area. That evening the landowner gave us the explanation. A week or so earlier, someone had piled into a deer on the nearby road—but they were not able to locate the injured deer. Now it is understood that he didn’t go far before dying. The stink he now emitted made him easy to find. A wind change brought the unmistakable evidence that helped to solve the case—and burial of the corruption.

The list before me is another big one. I’d better get moving. Becki has already moved by running off to her Bible Study in Woodburn. Blessings on your day.

Love, Dad/Ray.

Our American culture is quite caught up with the quest toward extinguishing any sense (scents) of negative B.O.—body odor. People are constantly trying to avoid such unpleasantness by using deodorants, perfumes, colognes, powders, soaps, etc. But in the spiritual realm, if you are a committed believer, you automatically emit a very foul odor in the presence of those who are against Christ. In this regard, please be a stinker!

You have heard the old saying that, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” In keeping with Paul’s illustration we could say that “Stink is in the nose of the smeller.” The unregenerate noses (senses) of the antagonistic unbeliever is conditioned and conformed to the odor of their own kind. In like manner, I doubt that pigs don’t think they stink. And sinners who turn things up-side down by insisting that right is wrong and wrong is right are oblivious to their own foul smell—to the point that they will react adversely to the clean and honest life of a true believer and equate it with the SMELL OF DEATH. But to God (the ultimate authority on odors) and other believers, that same believer emits the “fragrance of life” and the “aroma of Christ.”

Paul is here illustrating and emphasizing the truth that we as believers are appointed by God to be different and to register effect on the world around us. It is similar to Jesus saying that you are to be salt and light. The lesson content of these metaphors is rich. So, if we are not salt, we are useless. If we are not light, we are dark. If we are not alive, we are dead. If we are not hot, we are cold—or lukewarm—which is worse. And if we are not giving off the “aroma of Christ,” then we simply participate in the corrupt stink of the world and are in urgent need of a thorough transformational bath in the “water of the Word” (Ephesians 5:26).