All through the Old Testament sweet and delicious odors were to fill the temple. Incense was to mingle with the sweet-smelling offerings. The reason we enjoy a good roast cooking, and sweet perfume, is because we are made in the image of God who also delights in pleasant fragrance. He is the author of sense of smell, and all the fragrant aromas in the world of nature. He is also the author of the very first perfume recipe known to man. It was a very exclusive secret formula to be used in the temple, and for anointing holy objects, and the priests. The formula and the description of its uses can be found in Ex. 30:22-28. It was a sacred formula that could only be used for the special purposes that God stipulated. Any other use was strictly forbidden.
Worship and pleasant smell were linked together. When the Jews went after other gods, they would burn incense to them. They could not conceive of any truly religious love and devotion without the presence of pleasant fragrance. There are hundreds of text in Scripture dealing with various kinds of perfume and aromatic materials. The main point of it all is, pleasant smell is associated with religious love just as it is with romantic love. Prov, 27:9 says, "Oil and perfume rejoice the heart." All relationships are made better with the presence of pleasant odor.
When we move into the New Testament, we discover that Paul had a real nose for nice smells. He expressed his thanks to the Philippians Christians for their support by writing in Phil. 4:18, "I am filled, having received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God." Paul connected spiritual love, and the sacrifice of Christ, with a sweet smell in Eph. 5:2. "And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." Our great Shepherd lover was never more fragrant than when he breathed out His last breath and said, "It is finished." God did not let His Son see corruption in the tomb. Lazarus was stinking after four days in the tomb, but no foul odor was permitted to come upon the body of our Lord. He became, by His death, the eternal lover, whose fragrance is like that of an eternal rose.
When Jesus came to the home of Mary and Martha just shortly before the crucifixion, we read of this unique event in John 12:3, "Mary took a pound of costly ointment of pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped His feet with her hair, and the house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment." Here was a great act of love, with great symbolic meaning. Jesus said it was for the day of His burial. Many other spices and perfumes were put upon the body of Christ when He was buried, but this event hints that death would never leave its ugly smell on Christ, for He was the very embodiment of love and fragrance.
In Him all excellence is found. His name a fragrance sheds around, Like that most costly oil of nard, Which Mary poured upon her Lord.
The Shulamite girl says her lover's name is like perfume poured out. That is exactly how the church, the Bride of Christ, feels about Him and His name. Bonar wrote,
I love the name of Jesus, Immanuel, Christ the Lord, Like fragrance on the breezes, His name abroad is poured.
The most significant passage in all the Bible which relates to smell, love, and the Gospel of Christ, is II. Cor. 2:14-16. "But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumph, 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." In this passage Paul links the very issues of heaven and hell to the nose. To spread the Gospel is to spread the fragrance of the knowledge of Christ. Has anyone ever told you, you smell like a Christian? How is a Christian suppose to smell? According to Paul, he is to smell sweet and pleasant, like the perfume of God in Christ.
Religious love is aided by pleasant smell. Pleasant odor was very important to Paul, for he was dealing with people in Greek culture, and if you study how the Greeks love perfume you will understand Paul's concern. Listen to Antiphones as he describes the bath of an Athenian man of fashion.
In a large gilded tub he steeps his feet and legs in rich Egyptian unguents. His jaws and breast he rubs with thick palm oil, and both his arms with extract sweet of mint, his eyebrows and his hair with margoram, his knees and neck with essence of ground thyme. Descriptions of a Greek banquet are unbelievable in the costly perfume used. Xenophones describes an unique method by which all were showered with it.
He slipped four doves, whose wings were saturate With scents, all different in kind-these doves, Wheeling in circles round, let fall upon us A shower of sweet perfumery, drenching, bathing Both clothes and furniture and lordlings all.
The Romans were also fanatics for perfume, but time does not permit us to explore. In a world like that, Christians had to have a pleasant appeal to the nose of people in order to win their attention. The pleasant appeal was, of course, the name of Jesus. His was, and is, the only name on earth that rid men of the foul odor of sin. All though the Bible the word stink, and the word stank, are used to describe sin and its consequences. Hate is linked to a stench in the nostrils. Every man either stinks before God, because he is a sinner, and has no deodorant that can cleanse him, or he is like perfume before God, because by his faith in Christ he has covered himself with the sweet-smelling sacrifice of the cross. A rotten breath can hurt romance, and a rotten soul hurts your relationship with God. Jesus Christ is God's only remedy for the foul breath of the sinful soul. If you put your trust in Him you can come out of this foul world smelling like a rose.
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