Joel M Bradshaw

9…Then the priest will burn the entire sacrifice on the altar as a burnt offering. It is a special gift, a pleasing aroma to the LORD.–Leviticus 1

Anyone who has ever been near a BBQ will understand the aroma. In fact, smelling a cookout in the neighborhood in the summer is one of life’s greatest aromas. But God is not some hungry person like you or me. He doesn’t salivate when He smells the cookout like you or I might. Something deeply spiritual and relational was communicated. The sacrificial system was the means God instituted for relationship management between Holy Him and sinful humanity. We later learn that day and night it was always on the altar (Numbers 28). The burnt offering therefore maintained the fire that consumed all other sacrifices. When John the Baptist used his famous line describing Jesus in John 1:29, he most likely had the burnt offering on his mind.

Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ. He loved usa and offered himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God. (Ephesians 5:2)

But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. (2 Corinthians 2:14-15)

The sacrifice of Jesus on the cross was the sweetest of aromas to God, for it accomplished once-for-all what the regularly sacrifices were unable to fully do. A person’s relationship with God is no longer maintained with regular physical sacrifices, but now through the daily spiritual and inward sacrifice of the selfish desires and practices as one’s mind is now transformed to wanting what Jesus wants (Romans 12:1-2).

Jesus is the sweet aroma that we now spread. Your life’s goal is to be seen as pleasing to God and this is only possible in and through Jesus. May your life therefore in Christ be in a spiritual sense like that delightful cookout smell.–JMB