Smelly cheese

During my family holiday to Europe, I had visited a Christmas market in Paris with my daughter, and we had come across a delightful fromagerie (a shop which specialises in selling cheeses and cured meats). There was one particular goat's cheese which my daughter and I took a particular liking to, and we had bought a piece of it. The lady who sold it to us warned that it was a very strong cheese, and indeed it was. The aroma was wonderful and filled the entire hotel room that night as our entire family savoured the cheese and a piece of similarly aromatic cured ham. We couldn't finish it and packed it away.

A couple of days later, I noticed the same aroma filling the tour bus, and realized that my children had taken some out to eat. I also noticed, with alarm, many if not all of the other passengers wrinkling their noses up in utter disgust, and those closest to where my children were sitting were furiously fanning their noses. Some of them looked pretty close to vomiting. I realized that what my family considered "ambrosial" was in fact much closer to "scatological" with respect to the noses of others around us.

I scrambled to the back of the bus where my children were sitting, and wrapped up the offending source of the smell with no less that three layers of plastic bags, tying each one securely with an airtight knot. Even then, I suspect it took more than half an hour for the lingering smell to slowly abate.

As I settled into my seat with a sigh of relief and embarrassment, I remarked under my breath to my wife seated beside me that this reminded me of 2 Cor 2:14-16:

"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."

The good news of the gospel is a marvellous aroma to us who are being saved. We have been given grace to see the wretchedness of our sinful condition and our desperate need for salvation, and the revelation of Christ meeting that need by His death on the cross is a sweet fragrance to us. It gives us hope where we have no hope.

On the other hand, to those who have not seen their need of Christ, the gospel is horribly offensive. It stinks. To suggest that a man does not have any righteousness of his own, that he is a sinner destined for hell, and that there is nothing he can do to save himself, that all his good works count for nothing, stirs the self-righteous to indignation. Surely there must be something good in me! Surely I must have done something good! To state plainly what the Bible says - that those who do not believe in the Son of God are already condemned - can arouse an extremely disproportionate response of anger. I have experienced that personally myself. And yet we must remember never to remove the offence of the cross - the central truth of the gospel that only faith alone (but not faith which is alone) can justify.