(2 Cor. 2:14-17)

With Jesus’ joy and love, I welcome you to February, the second month of the year. Our theme for the month is “Fragrance of Love” 

Fragrance is defined as a sweet smell that is pleasant to perception. There are majorly two types - fragrance that have long lasting effects, and those that are short lived on the user. The quality of the fragrance is largely dependent on how it is made and what it is made of. Love has fragrance, and it is a long lasting one. If you are practicing love, you smell good and your life attracts people. However, it is impossible to truly love without God. For God is love.

1 John 4:7-10 says My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.

Are you loving? Do you know God? What type of fragrance do you wear? What fragrance do others perceive on you? Can they smell Christ on you?  Do you have the aroma of faith, hope, peace, love, and God’s grace? 

You need the fragrance of Jesus Christ to attract people to His Kingdom. The Song of Solomon emphasizes the fragrance of love. Christians who do not heed this revelation and do not intentionally allow love to radiate through them are missing out.

2 Corinthians 2:14-15 says, 14 But thanks be to God! For through what Christ has done, he has triumphed over us so that now wherever we go he uses us to tell others about the Lord and to spread the Gospel like a sweet perfume. 15 As far as God is concerned there is a sweet, wholesome fragrance in our lives. It is the fragrance of Christ within us, an aroma to both the saved and the unsaved all around us.

We are the aroma of Christ to God. We can smell of death or we can smell of life to God and to those whose lives we touch in small everyday kinds of ways and in big ways. Let us be the fragrance of love and life. As the whole world celebrates love this month, I believe it is another chance to reconsider your ways. And it is my hope that you will encounter the living God, and become the aroma of Christ to God and others on a daily basis. 

In this series, we shall consider love forgives, love serves, love lives right. Come along!