Week 7

"Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. 2 And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." 

    I grew up on a small farm outside of New Braunfels, Texas. As a boy we had a few cows, chickens, horses, and even some sheep. One afternoon a pack of feral dogs came onto our farm and began chasing the sheep through the pasture. It took awhile for us to get our rifles and dispatch some of those dogs and scare off the rest. Sheep aren’t very hardy animals and exhaustion soon set in and several of the sheep quickly died. We built a fire in a small depression and began stacking the sheep carcasses on the fire. I can vividly remember the pungent stench that came from those burning sheep. A few years later when I began reading God’s word I can recall reading about the sheep sacrificed in the Old Testament and then being burnt on the alter. I also remember God saying that the offering was a fragrant aroma. That certainly didn’t mesh with my experience to say the least!
    In today’s scripture reading Paul says that Christ Jesus was an offering and a sacrifice to the Lord. Moreover, that sacrifice was a fragrant aroma. How could this possibly be? I’ve come to understand that it is not the literal smell that is fragrant but the willingness of the one making the offering. Jesus has offered himself to God for us. He has not brought a substitute offering. He has brought himself to be our substitute offering for sin, The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! The exhortation from Paul is for us to imitate Jesus and give ourselves up as an offering and sacrifice to God. When we do so as an act of faith and willingly, it is indeed a fragrant aroma.

In Christ,

John