2 Corinthians 02 Round Two: What Do You Smell Like?

What if people could sense your faith before you said a word? Paul paints that vivid picture in 2 Corinthians 2, where he moves from a tough, tear-filled letter to a tender call for forgiveness and comfort. We open the text and follow his pastoral logic: confront sin to save a brother, then run just as hard to restore him so the enemy doesn’t turn zeal into cruelty. That shift matters for every leader, parent, mentor, and friend who wants truth to heal rather than humiliate.

We also dig into Paul’s striking image of Christ’s triumphal procession. Imagine a victory parade where Jesus leads the way and our lives release a fragrance into every space we enter. To some, it smells like life because grace offers a way home; to others, it smells like death because the gospel confronts idols and invites surrender. The goal isn’t to mask the scent or water it down, but to walk so closely with Jesus that what people notice is his presence, not our pride. Along the way, we expose the enemy’s usual playbook: nudging us from mercy into negligence or from holiness into harshness. If he can’t pull us from truth, he’ll push us past it.

You’ll hear practical wisdom on how to confront with a path to restoration, how to keep a soft heart in a hard culture, and how to become the kind of person whose presence brings relief rather than pressure. We end where Paul begins: God is the source of all comfort. Receive it deeply, then pass it on. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs encouragement, and tell us: if grace had a scent in your life this week, what would it be?

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The More We Dig. The More We Find.

Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation (NLT).
Copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation.
Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Theme: Scent And Memory
• 1:19 Smell, Nostalgia, And Faith Metaphors
• 2:24 Context: Paul’s Painful Letter And Love
• 4:15 Discipline, Overcorrection, And Forgiveness
• 6:47 Outwitting The Enemy’s Subtle Schemes
• 8:16 Triumph Parade And The Fragrance Of Christ
• 10:12 How We Smell To Believers And Unbelievers
• 12:16 Comfort, Repentance, And A Call To Trust
• 14:05 Prayer, Peace, And Passing Comfort On

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to the Bible Breakdown Podcast. Every day, we take one chapter of the Bible, dig deeper, and discover that the more we dig, the more we find. You can find out more at the BibleBreakdown.com. Now let's grow in God's Word together. Well hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Bible Breakdown Podcast with your host, Pastor Brandon. Today, 2 Corinthians chapter 2. And if I were to give this one a title, it would be, What do you smell like? What do you smell like? Well, I don't know if you've ever done this before, but I have been working and kind of outside doing yard work and whatever. And I come inside, and because I have been outside and I've been just around everything, I don't smell anything. But as soon as I walk up to my family, they're like, oh Lord, please either leave or go get a shower, right? And it's crazy how sometimes because we can be in a certain environment, we don't really smell any different. Everybody around us can smell that way. That's a bad example. I've also been in a place to where I have been around a barbecue pit. You know what I mean? You smell the barbecue sauce and you smell all that, and then you leave, somebody comes up to you and they just say, Man, let me just stand beside you. You smell good. And you realize it's not you that smell good, it's what you've been around, right? That works both ways. Well, we're gonna get to that today in God's word. But before we do that, as always, if you like what we're doing here, make sure you like, share, and subscribe on the YouTube channel. Leave us a five-star review on the podcast, and also gather with us at the Bible Breakdown Discussion Group on Facebook, where we are just digging into God's word. And the man, the more we dig, the more we find. And this is one of those today. And I I love the idea of you know, you know, they say that the of all the five senses, the sense that you have, you know, it's uh what is it? Uh hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and one more. You're probably yelling at your your phone or wherever you're listening, there's number five, but I don't know. Whichever one that is, the one that is most closely associated with memory is smell. That's why I don't know if you know this about me, but but I like certain smells like uh from certain candles and stuff. And it's not because I care two cents about a candle, I like the memory attached to it. And so if I have uh certain smells that remind me of Christmases with my kids when they were little or uh experiences, and I when I find those smells, I will do that because I'm kind of a nostalgic person and I think about that. Well, there's a part of this chapter we're gonna look at today. And if you want to go ahead and open your Bibles with me to 2 Corinthians chapter 2, there's a part of this that talks about how we smell like the fragrance of Christ. And I'm curious if you were to, this is gonna be kind of silly, so I want you to let me know in the Bible breakdown discussion, but if you were to give a smell, if you were to describe the smell of your relationship with God, what would that smell like? I got no idea what some of y'all might say. Um, it smells like a um a pepperoni pizza because it is I have no idea where I'm going with that. I don't, I don't, I don't know. So I can't wait to hear. And the I'm not even gonna try to do another illustration off the top of my head because I don't even know what to do with that. But whatever you have, I want to hear in the Bible breakdown discussion for today. What, if you could describe the smell of your relationship with God, what would that smell like? Very interesting, right? Well, as we dig into God's word, I love how the apostle Paul will use all these different metaphors and analogies and illustrations and examples to paint these word pictures. One of the reasons why he probably does this is if his, you know, one of the languages that he would have known from a young age, because before Paul got saved, he was a Jewish Pharisee, and he would have known Hebrew. Hebrew is a very pictorial, very picture kind of language. And I wonder if he borrows from some of that when he does this. But we see these beautiful pictures, and one of these he talks about is the fragrance of being close to Christ. And so let's get to that, but because there's a couple other ones that's really good, and let's read God's word together. And man, the more we dig, the more we find. So here we go. Second Corinthians chapter 2. What do you smell like? Here we go, verse one. So I decided that I would not bring you grief with another painful visit. For I, if I cause you grief, who will make me glad? Certainly not someone that I have grieved. That is why I wrote to you as I did, so that when I do come, I won't be grieved by the very ones who ought to give me the greatest joy. Surely you know that my joy comes from your being joyful. I wrote that letter with great anguish, with a troubled heart and many tears. I didn't want to grieve you, but I wanted to let you know how much love that I have for you. So pause, what is he talking about? He's talking about in his previous letters when he had to rebuke them. He had to tell them, This is wrong, this is sinful, this is gonna lead you down a wrong path. And he's saying I wanted to do it in a letter so that you could fix all that, so that when I got there, we could rejoice in the fact that you repented. And he's just saying, so I did that way because I didn't I didn't want to see you down. And I didn't want to have to do that. I wanted you to get past that. So that's that's what he's talking about. Verse five. I am not overstating it when I say that the man who caused you all that trouble hurt all of you more than he hurt me. Now pause. What's he talking about? Remember, in the last uh uh letter, First Corinthians, he talks about how there was a man who was shacking up with his stepmother, with a man who or a woman who was his father's wife. We're we're assuming stepmother, right? And he was being proud of it. And so he is saying, okay, all of you got mad at him for me. And he's like, Don't I'm okay. I was telling you it was wrong. Well, apparently they went overboard because look at what he says. Most of you opposed him, and that was punishment enough. Now, however, it is time to forgive and comfort him. Otherwise, he may become overcome with discouragement. So I urge you now to reaffirm your love for him. So I don't know what they did to this guy, but they must have like run him out of town for Paul. Because if you remember back in 1 Corinthians, he is saying, Y'all need to shut that down, y'all need to stop this fool, quit it. Well, they must have gone so far over into the quit it that now he's like, back up, fam, slow it down. It's time to forgive him because he is super discouraged. Verse 9 says, I wrote to you as I did to test you, to see if you would fully comply with my instructions. When you forgive this man, so he's saying, I hope you do, when you forgive him, don't worry, I forgive him too. And when I forgive whatever needs to be forgiven, I do so with Christ's authority for your benefit, so that Satan will not outsmart us, for we are familiar with his evil schemes. He's not saying, by the way, that when he forgives him, Jesus is going to forgive him too. What he's saying is, is I'm going to forgive him because Christ has given us the ability to forgive one another. But I love how he also says we're doing this because we're not giving the enemy a place. Other translations say we are not ignorant of the enemy's devices. That's why we never need to glorify the enemy, but it's important to study tactics so that we understand that many times, you notice that a lot of times people think of the devil as this guy with a red suit and horns and a pitchfork and a pointed tail and all that. You know, most of the time the enemy's the enemy's going to attack your life in a subtle way. He's not going to show up with a pitchfork and horns and say boo. He's not going to do that. Because he knows you're going to notice it's him. You know what he's going to do? He is most of the time going to attack you through personalities and principalities. What I mean by that is subtle attacks, subtle little things, you know, being offended, uh, offending one another, unforgiveness, all these different things. Because what the enemy will do is if he can't pull you away from God, then he'll push you too far until you miss him on the other side. And so you have to be so very careful. And it looks like that's what happened. Is when they couldn't, when the devil couldn't pull the church of Corinth away from God by celebrating sin, he tried to push them too far. So then they kicked this guy out completely. And so Paul is going, we can't be ignorant of the enemy's devices, but forgive him, come back to that center place. Verse 12. When I came to the city of Troas to preach the good news of Christ, the Lord opened a door of opportunity for me. I had no peace in mind because of my dear brother Titus hadn't yet arrived with a report from you. So I said goodbye and went on to Macedonia to find him. But thank God that he made us his captives and continues to lead us along in Christ's triumphal procession. Now, what is he talking about there? Well, whenever a Roman general would win a battle, he would then march the people that he had conquered through the town as his trophies. And so what Paul is doing is he is saying, Jesus has conquered it all and he has captured us, and now he parades us around as his trophies. You know, and saying, so he's he's actually saying that God is bragging on all of us and he is doing amazing works in all of our lives. Let's pick back up. Now he uses us to spread the knowledge of Christ everywhere. Here it is, like a sweet perfume. Our lives are a Christ-like fragrance rising up to God. But this fragrance is perceived differently by those who are being saved and by those who are perishing. To those who are perishing, we're a dreadful smell of death and doom. But to those who are being saved, we are a life-giving perfume. And who is adequate for such a task as this? You see, we are not like the many hucksters who preach for personal profit. We preach the word of God with sincerity and with Christ's authority, knowing that God is watching us. Other words, he said, What we do is serious because we want to have a sincere message to share with all of you. So there's a lot there. There's a lot that I stopped to say. So let's bring all this back to a conclusion, and that is this. If you could describe your relationship with God as a smell, what would it be? Well, Paul was saying, thank goodness that God has captured all of us. In other words, he's captured our hearts, he's he's conquered death, hell, and the grave, and now we are his trophies. And as we live for him, he says it's like our lives are like a sweet perfume. We're like a Christ-like fragrance rising up to God. And to other Christ followers, when they see our lives and we see their lives, man, it's like a sweet smell. Man, I see you going after God, and I affirm that, and I appreciate that, and I celebrate your pursuit of God. But to those who are not Christ's followers, they look at us and it doesn't smell good because they don't understand. That's why I like to say all the time, it's one thing to know about the love of God, and it's quite another to experience the love of God for yourself. You can never fully understand the goodness of God until you embrace all that the Lord has for you. And so he's saying for those who are non-Christians, Christians smell like death. Well, to a Christian, a non-Christian smells like death as well, because of the fragrance. And so, what do you smell like? Do you smell like a sweet smelling fragrance before the Lord because your life is fully committed to God? Or to put put it the way Paul did, he says, Do you smell like death and doom? And there's a lot of ways we can smell like that. We can smell it, smell that way by the life that we live. We can smell it like that because we we live the life, but we we look like we've been eating, you know, been drinking lemon juice, you know, and we we just have the most sour attitude ever. And people are going, well, if that's your if that's what Jesus does, I don't want that. And so what does your life smell like? If you could describe your relationship with God, what would it smell like? Well, I want you to think about that today. And remember the theme of 2 Corinthians is that God is a God of all comfort. Do you smell bad because you're struggling right now? And you're turning to everyone but God? And when you do turn to God, you're turning to God with anger. God, why would you? How could you? Why didn't you? When will you? Maybe instead of asking God all the why questions, you should turn to God and say, God, I don't understand. But even if you don't do it my way, will you show me how? Will you show me how I can walk with you through this? Because though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will not be afraid because you walk close beside me. Do you smell like death because you need the comfort of the Lord? Do you smell like death because you don't have a relationship with Jesus? Can I tell you that the God of all comfort wants to comfort your soul by washing away all of your sin? And I'm so thankful that you're listening to this podcast right now. It's no accident you're doing that, that God's not mad at you. God loves you. You've never been more loved than you are right now. And the greatest comfort that you'll ever receive is the knowing that your sins have been washed away. You know, Jesus didn't die on the cross to teach us righteousness, he died on the cross to fix our broken relationship with our Creator. And then it's as we follow him that we become righteous, as he is righteous. And so if you're thinking that you're going to turn to Christ and become perfect because of how you act, then that's all wrong. When you come to Christ, he fixes that broken relationship, he washes away all that sin. And then it's as we follow him that then he heals us from the inside out. The Bible says that God is the God of all comfort. And what does your relationship with God smell like? Do you need the God of comfort to comfort you? Well, if so, let's pray together and just invite him to do that in this moment. Father, thank you so much for your goodness, your mercy, your kindness. Thank you that you are the God of all comfort. Lord, I pray for everybody right now who's listening to this and they need your comfort. Maybe they need your comfort because they're going through a difficult season. Well, God, your word says that you are the source of all comfort. And I pray that right now, Holy Spirit, that you will comfort them as only they can. Your word says you will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are continually upon you as we focus our attention on you, that you, God, will come in like a flood and fill our hearts with your goodness. For those who need the comfort of salvation, they need to have you wash away all their sins. They want to give their allegiance to you. I pray, God, right now, that you will lead them to repent of every one of their sins. Help them to experience your love and help them to realize, God, that you are salvation. You are our rescuer. You are our king. And when we turn our lives to you, there is no better place to be than in the hands of a good God who loves us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. But don't forget, 2 Corinthians chapter 1 says, God is the source of all comfort, and he comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. How do you smell? And who do you need to talk to today that needs the comfort that you have received from the Lord? I love you. I'll see you tomorrow for 2 Corinthians chapter 3.