For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are an aroma that brings death; to the other, an aroma that brings life. (2 Corinthians 2:15-16)

Two types of people; two different reactions. I’ve taught this passage for years, but this weekend I saw something I hadn’t seen before. If, as it states, the fragrance we carry is Christ in us, then we should be able to get a clue about these two types of people by thinking about Jesus and how people reacted to Him. Who was drawn to Jesus and who was repelled by Him? Who was Jesus life to, and to whom was He death?

Well, that’s actually pretty easy. The people who were drawn to Jesus were the common people who followed Him around wherever He went. They were the sinners, the tax collectors, and prostitutes — the sick, diseased and mentally ill. They were in many ways the outcasts of society — people whom good decent folk would shun. Their weakness or infirmity prevented them from even trying to be something other than the needy people they were.

And what of those who would have found Jesus to be a fragrance of death? Well, that’s easy, too. That would have been the scribes and Pharisees — the religious leaders of the day who prided themselves in being a cut above everyone else. They were not only repulsed by Jesus, they were repulsed by His friends.

And Jesus didn’t exactly do or say anything that would try to make it better for them. It’s almost as if He went out of His way to offend them. I think I know why. He loved them, too, like He loves everyone, He just knew that their self-righteousness would keep them from coming to Him to be saved, and He would have no part of it. Until they could see themselves among that motley group of followers, they would always be too good for heaven.

Jesus is a fragrance of life to sinners, and a fragrance of death to those who are trying to be better than sinners.

I am reminded of Mrs. Turpin’s vision in Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “Revelation.” (Note: Lest someone be offended by the “n” word here, Ms. O’Conner was a southern writer in the 1960s when this word was commonplace. Besides, prior to this, her character, Mrs. Turpin, had just used the same word in her own mind when casting judgment on a room full of people in a doctor’s waiting room.)

A visionary light settled in her eyes. She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling toward heaven. There were whole companies of white-trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of black niggers in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud [her husband], had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right. She leaned forward to observe them closer. They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away.

What I’ve always liked about this vision is that the respectable people are going to get into heaven too, it’s just that, by the time they get there, they will have lost what separated them, and will probably be jumping around with the freaks.