Chapter 602 of 957

The Gospel’S Aroma

THE GOSPEL’S AROMA

2 CORINTHIANS 2:12-17

To those who responded to Paul’s teaching and trusted Christ, the gospel was beautiful and fragrant.

After the uproar in Ephesus (Acts 19–20:1), 2:12-13 look back to Paul’s travels. He turned northwest from that city and came to the seaport of Troas (Acts 20:5) where an evangelistic opportunity awaited him. The agitation which troubled his spirit at Troas and which impelled him to cross over the Aegean Sea into Macedonia in search of Titus is simply reported, with no further explanation. In fact, at this point, the storytelling breaks off and will not be resumed until 7:5. The intervening section forms one large digression on the theme of the gospel ministry, its methods and its people. 2:14 is an exclamation which prefaces the whole. Paul’s ministry is distinguished in two ways:

It evokes a double reaction from the hearers. As we have seen many times in Acts, those who heard Christ’s message could not sit on the fence and remain neutral once they had been confronted by Paul’s presentation. Now he explains to us something of the nature of this “rejection or response” which he had known. To those who are destined to salvation the “word of the cross” (1 Corinthians 1:18) is a perfume of Christ, offering life in him (2:16), but to those who stubbornly refuse Christ it smells only of death and doom. An awful responsibility therefore rests on the hearer: “Take heed then how you hear” (Luke 8:18), as well as on the preacher. The rhetorical question (2:16) will be answered in 3:5.

The ministry of God’s servant is marked by sincerity (2:17; see also 1:12) in contrast to “many” who “made merchandise of the word,” a strange phrase probably referring to certain prevalent religious teachers who put their preaching on a commercial basis by the constant flourish of the collection box. Paul will have none of this (1 Corinthians 9:15-18), and mentions the only sort of accrediting worth having (2:17b).

Notes 2:16: there is an interesting use by the rabbis of the term “aroma” in reference to the law. They spoke of the Mosaic law as a medicine, either fatal (to the ungodly) or life-giving (to the righteous). In the case of the Israelites, the law as a vitalizing power counteracted the bad effects of the “evil impulse,”—what Paul calls “the flesh,”—but his secret of victory is discovered elsewhere (Galatians 5:16ff.). An extension of this background is that Jewish traders sometimes became missionaries by holding out the offer of a “medicine of life” (based on Psalm 34). Paul perhaps is using the very term (in 2:17, peddlers) which they employed.

↑ Back to top