Sincere Ministers of the New Covenant

0:55There's an emergency room for that. I have learned that the smell of essential oils can be a fairly polarizing topic. You name any particular oil from peppermints to patchouli, and people will differ widely on their opinions. Speaking of patchouli, I have absolutely no idea what that is. But when I googled it, I was amused by the opinions that came up right away. Person one said, Patchouli oil has a sweet, intoxicating scent. I love it. Person 2 says, patchouli, I tried to like it, but it smells like cat pea.

1:41Today, Paul is going to remind us that the gospel has its own fragrance, which to some is sweet and to others is offensive. But if we intend to be sincere ministers of the gospel, we have to refuse to water down the scent of the gospel and instead trust the Holy Spirit to bring about the heart transformation that only he can bring. So let's look together here at chapter 2, verse 14. Paul begins by giving thanks to God.

2:20And to understand why he begins there, we have to back up a little bit and remind ourselves of what he was just saying right before this. You might recall that Paul had cut his ministry short in a little town called Troas. And he cut that ministry short because his coworker Titus wasn't there. Paul expected to find him when he went there. He wasn't there. And so he was filled with anxiety and he ended up leaving. Now, we know, because we've read the rest of the letter at some point, we've read the book of Acts, that Paul does eventually link up with his coworker Titus in Macedonia. He does eventually learn that the Corinthians received his letter. Very well, his severe or painful letter, and that they had repented and were beginning to put into practice the things that Paul had instructed them. But at this point in the story, Paul doesn't know those things. All that he knew was that he was rejected at Corinth, opposed in Ephesus, and anxious in Troas.

3:23To the human observer, it hardly looked as though Paul's ministry was experiencing the blessing of God. So Paul writes in verse 14, but thanks be to God. This is the same apostle who wrote to the Thessalonians, Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. Paul was a man who practiced what he preached. He didn't just tell other people, Look, when your circumstances are not good, you need to give thanks in all circumstances. He said, When my circumstances in my life are not good, I am also going to give thanks.

4:07Why? Verse 14. But 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. So, here in this verse, Paul is using imagery that would have been understood very well to his. Audience. He's talking about a triumphal procession. And when we see that phrase triumphal procession, what you need to picture in your mind is a victory parade after a team wins a championship of some sort. So think about a city like Boston, who wins the championship every year in football, the New England Patriots. Every year they have a parade to celebrate that title. So the whole city shuts down, everybody comes outside, and the team parades with the trophy through the streets.

5:03Well, in a Roman triumphal procession, after a major military victory, the victorious general would ride in a golden chariot with his officers surrounding him, and they would parade through the streets. Coming ahead of him were all of the spoils of war. So the goods that had been captured, the prisoners of war from the other armies. And then, significant to our purposes, walking alongside the chariot, you had Roman priests. And what they were doing was burning incense to the gods, thanking them for the victory. Now, what you thought about that incense depended entirely on your part in the parade, right?

5:49To the Romans, so the general, his officers, the people in the streets, the citizens, it was the sweet smell of victory. But to the prisoners of war, those government officials, those military leaders, the soldiers, that incense carried the awful odor of defeat. How you perceived the sin depended entirely on whether you were the victorious or the defeated, the triumphant or the conquered. And so, in Paul's imagery, Christ is pictured as this victorious general who is leading the triumphal procession.

6:30He is the one who left his kingdom in heaven, went to a foreign land, earth, conquered his enemies of sin and death through his crucifixion and resurrection. And then Paul and his companions are pictured as those incense-burning priests. They're the ones who are going along with the victorious general, Christ, and burning that fragrant aroma. And in this case, Christ is leading them from Corinth to Ephesus to Troas to Macedonia. And remember, it looks like defeat in city after city.

7:08And yet, Paul is saying that they're spreading the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. The question is: how do the people perceive the fragrance wherever they go? Look at verse 15. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are saved. Those who are perishing. To one, a fragrance from death to death, to the other, a fragrance from life to life. So, among those who are being saved, Paul's team and their message was a fragrance from life to life. Christ and his gospel are the sweet smell of victory over sin's power and sin's penalty.

7:55But among those who are perishing, the gospel is a fragrance from death to death. In this case, the fragrance has the awful odor of defeat to it. They're hearing that the supposed Savior is a poor Jewish carpenter of dubious birth who is executed as an enemy of the Roman state. That doesn't smell like life to them. That smells like death. And so, church, we are called to be faithful proclaimers of the gospel message, to bring that fragrance of Christ and to do so in humility and love.

8:38But we have to understand that the gospel message has a certain aroma to it, and we have no control whatsoever whether people perceive that as a sweet aroma or an awful odor. To those who are perishing in their sin, the gospel has an offensive odor. The idea that God exists, that we are accountable to him and will be judged by him. The idea that no amount of religious activity can make up for our sins. The idea that Christ alone is the way to salvation.

9:20All of this is a fragrance from death to death. It's offensive to those who are perishing in their sin. But to those who are, look what it says: to those who are being saved. I want you to notice the passive form of the verb there: to those who are being saved. This is something that God is doing to us. This is happening to us. To those who are being saved, that fragrance is one from life to life. The gospel has a sweet aroma.

9:52And so Jesus told Nicodemus, this great rabbi and teacher of Israel, that nobody could even see the kingdom of God unless he was born again. And so what's happening is that as God saves us, he's opening our eyes to perceive the truth, our ears to hear the truth, our minds to understand the truth, and as it were, our noses to smell the truth. It is a fragrance from life to life. And remember, it's the exact same aroma. It's just that to one, it is sweet. Sweet and to another, it is offensive.

10:34How people perceive the fragrance of the gospel is completely outside of our control. And that's why Paul says in verse 16: who is sufficient for these things? I like how the NIV translates this as well. Who is equal to such a task? Well, Paul's going to answer that question in chapter 3, but the obvious answer is no one. No one is equal to such a task. No one is sufficient for these things. To be led in this triumphal procession where some people see you as the victorious and conquering army, but most people see you as a prisoner of war, marching off to your own death.

11:19Who is sufficient for these things? It would be a lot easier if we just became, as Paul says in verse 17, peddlers of the Word of God. That word peddlers is used for hucksters. It's used for people who engage in shady business practices to make a profit. So the most common way this word was used in the first century was with people who made wine, and before they took it to the marketplace, they would water it down. So they extended their product and they sold it as though it were pure wine, but it had been watered down so they could make more profits. They called those people peddlers.

12:01And that is just a perfect word picture, not just for those in the first century in Paul's day, but also for our day as well. There are just so many peddlers of God's word out there today who water down the scriptures just like those people watered down the wine. So, friends, understand that our task, whether we're preaching the word of God or teaching the word of God, or whether we're just sharing the word of God with other people, our task is simple. It is to take the word of God and explain it and apply it to the people of God.

12:40Take the word of God and explain it and apply it to the people of God. It's challenging, but it's simple. But I don't have to tell you how rare it is to find that done in churches today. Don't get me wrong, there are healthy churches all over our country, all over the world, in our own community that are doing this well and faithfully. But in many churches, you're getting a brief how-to message every week. You get some soft platitudes about God, about prayer kind of thrown in there for good measure. Jesus might make an appearance somewhere in the sermon.

13:20And many of those churches seem to be very successful. Perhaps it's because the message doesn't carry the Scent of death to those who are perishing. See, people are not hearing in many cases that their sin has made them God's enemies, that they are sitting under God's righteous judgment for their rebellion and their disobedience. What they're being told week after week is that God is kind of like a concierge at a fancy hotel. He's not there to bother you, He's not there to interfere with your stay here on earth in any way. But if you need Him, if you want Him, He is there whenever you call.

14:07But, friends, God is not a concierge at a fancy hotel, He is the eternal, omniscient creator and sustainer of the universe. He is absolutely merciful and gracious, but He is also very clear that He will by no means clear the guilty, He will hold every person accountable for their sin, and rightfully so, because that's what a good and just judge would do. That's the message that Paul preached. He preached that there were only two options: either we could pay for our sin ourselves, or Christ the Savior could stand in our place and pay for it through His life and death and resurrection and our trust in Him.

15:00As a result, he can say here that in the sight of God, we speak in Christ. Paul saw himself as commissioned by God. His job wasn't to flatter people and tell them what they wanted to hear. His job, as one commissioned by the Father, was to take the truth of the gospel message and to preach that and that alone. His commission was to preach the truth in love. But you see, his commission isn't something that could be easily proven. How would he prove that he had been called by God to do the things that he was doing?

15:43Why doesn't he have any letters of recommendation like a lot of the false teachers had? Well, Paul's going to address that in chapter 3. Let's pick up there. He asks, Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you? You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all. See, these false teachers that came to Corinth after Paul left, they had sowed a great amount of distrust in Paul and his team.

16:31And from what we read here and from what we read later on in chapter 11, it seems like these false teachers were Jewish. They had come to Corinth and to all of these other cities to win the Gentile believers in Jesus to a Judaistic form of Christianity, where they were saying, It's good that you believe in Jesus, we want you to believe in Jesus, but if you want to be accepted by God, you've got to follow the Mosaic law. You essentially have to become Jewish like us.

17:02And not only that, they had arrived with these letters of recommendation in hand. So, where were Paul's? If he really was commissioned by God, why didn't he have letters of recommendation from all of these churches like they seemed to have? And just understand how hurtful even that question is to Paul. He had come to Corinth at the risk of his own life, on his own dime. He had never taken anything from them. He had only given himself away, preaching the word, teaching, counseling, pastoring, planting this church. And now they want letters of recommendation?

17:45It's a little late to ask the builder for letters of recommendation when he's done building the building. But Paul is like, okay, if you want a letter of recommendation, I can give you one. Verse 2. Yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all. You, the Corinthians, you guys are the letter of recommendation. How come? Because they were such upstanding citizens and such great people? Let's go back and look at 1 Corinthians 6, which we covered last year, and think about who is making up this church. Or do you not know that the righteous will not, the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you.

18:53But you were washed. You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. So here in Corinth, you have the sexually immoral, you've got idolaters, adulterers, drunkards, swindlers. Hide your kids, hide your wife. These people are probably not your first-round draft picks if you're going to be starting a new church. I don't remember ever spending any time when we plan a new life praying that God would give us some revilers, swindlers, and thieves.

19:32But that's the point. What other explanation could be given for the complete change in their beliefs and behavior? Again, these are not moral, church-going, decent people. These are idol-worshipping, out-of-control party animals who would never have thought twice about taking your money or your spouse. This is not 18th-century America. This isn't even 21st-century America, where at least there's still faint cultural pressure to be a moral person. This is first-century Corinth, a city that was so immoral that it became an adjective and a verb.

20:15If you knew a woman who had a bad reputation, she was known as a Corinthian girl. If you were going to go out and get wild on the weekend, you were going to go Corinthianize. If your city becomes an adjective and a verb, things are bad. So, how does a person explain the fact that this group of people, having been raised with those cultural values, those practices, all of a sudden experienced such a dramatic shift in their beliefs and behavior? Verse 3.

20:50And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God. Not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts. Paul says that this dramatic change in their beliefs and behavior was the result of the Spirit of the living God. No amount of advice, no amount of religious instruction was going to help them. And you see, that's not just true of the Corinthians, it's true of all people.

21:29If our lives are going to be changed in a meaningful way, the root of the problem has to be dealt with. And the root of the problem is the sinful human heart. Remember that God had given His holy law to His people. And His law wasn't just the Ten Commandments as we know them. There were 613 positive and negative commands that the people had to keep and promised to keep. And so the Old Testament, what it is, is it's a series of historical accounts of how the people promised, We will keep your word, God. It's an account of how they failed over and over again. It's an account of saying, the people saying, this time, God, we'll try harder to do better. We will keep your word this time.

22:24But you see, as long as the people's hearts were unchanged, that power was not. Of sin and disobedience and rebellion would remain unbroken. So God speaks these words through Jeremiah. Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. Not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel in those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

23:35That is what every person needs. We need to have our sin forgiven and forgotten by God. That is what we need. We need His law inside of us, because as long as His law is external to us, we are never going to be able to obey it consistently or completely. That's why the prophet Ezekiel comes next, and he says that God declares that he's going to take out our hearts of stone, and he's going to put in their place a heart of flesh. He's going to fill us with his Holy Spirit to empower us to obey his law.

24:19Paul believed the prophets, and he saw the prophets' prophecies fulfilled in the earliest Christians, and then in himself, and then in all of the believers in the churches that he planted, as God radically transformed the people that he had saved. Verse 4: Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

25:11Why does Paul have such confidence in his ministry? It's not because of his rabbinic training. It's not because of his intellectual gifts. It's not because of his experiences or skills. See, earlier, Paul had asked, who is sufficient for these things? Who is equal to such a task? For being a minister of the gospel among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, who is sufficient? He says that they are not sufficient in and of themselves, but God has made them sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant. And the evidence that God had made them sufficient to be those ministers would be the fact that the Spirit of the living God came and took up residence in the hearts of the believers that heard the gospel message through Paul. The evidence was the fruit of the Spirit in the lives of those new Christians.

26:14See, the transformed lives of the Corinthians is what gave Paul confidence that God had indeed made them sufficient to be those ministers. Because when he looked at the lives of the Corinthians, what he saw was new life. He looked at these people who not long ago were idolaters, who were participating in sin of every imaginable kind. And now instead, he sees people who are washed and justified and sanctified through the power of the Holy Spirit. It's a complete transformation.

26:52And that is exactly what you'd expect to see if you read and believed God's promises through the prophets. If you were there. On the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit filled the new Christians, or if you heard about that, or if you saw it happen in churches later on as people's lives were dramatically transformed from death to life, you would say, Of course, of course, this is exactly what God promised that he would do. That's why Paul had such confidence, because he could see the effects of his gospel ministry on the lives of these people.

27:31And, friends, that life change didn't come because he showed up and preached the Mosaic law. In fact, that life change couldn't have happened if all Paul did was come and preach the Mosaic law. Why not? Verse 6: For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. Now, what does he mean? Is Paul saying that God's law is bad? Certainly not. He's just saying that if you try to find life in your attempts to keep the law, you're never going to find it there.

28:21Let's go to Romans 7 on the screen. I want you guys to look at this passage afresh. This is a passage that you often go to if you're struggling with. The sinful nature. And look at what Paul writes. He says, What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means. Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had said, You shall not covet. But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. Now, listen to this. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.

29:18For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, and righteous, and good. What Paul is saying is that when we come face to face with the law, we learn immediately there's no way that we can meet this perfect and righteous standard. All it brings in our life is death, because we try to keep it and we fail. We try again and we fail again. So what do we do? Do we just ignore it and hope for the best?

30:01No, we can't do that. Look at what Galatians 3 says. For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law and do them. We can't ignore God's law and hope for the best because he's very clear that if we don't do everything written in it, we are cursed. So maybe the strategy then is to redefine the law. This is what every religion attempts to do. You take God's holy and perfect law that is written in our minds on our consciences, that's too hard to keep, and you bring it down to a bar that we can actually clear.

30:49And so look at what Jesus says about this in Matthew 5. He says, therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. We can't relax God's commands. We can't lower the bar to something that's achievable by us and our human abilities. And so it would seem that we're stuck. We can't keep the law. We can't ignore the law. We can't redefine the law. So what hope? Is there?

31:32The person of Christ. Look at what Jesus Himself said in Matthew 5. Do not think that I have come, look at this word, do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. Rather than ignoring the law or redefining and relaxing it, what Jesus does is the thing that we were called to do, but failed to do. He comes and he fulfills all of it. He lives a life of perfect obedience that we were supposed to live. He gives himself up and pays the ransom for our sin on the cross. After he paid the ransom for our sin, he rises from the grave, victorious over sin and death, and giving proof that God the Father accepted his sacrifice on our behalf. And through faith in Jesus, his righteousness is applied to you and me.

32:44And that's what brings us full circle back to the Corinthians and what they experienced. Remember the types of people that they were? 1 Corinthians 6. And such were. Some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. Church, this is exactly what Paul is saying: the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. If you're here today and you are exploring Christianity, if you're just beginning to look at Jesus and his claims, then it might be the case that your whole life you have been trying to keep a law of some kind.

33:44You might have been ignoring God's law, you might have been redefining it to something that was easier to keep trying to lower the bar. But friends, ignoring or redefining God's law doesn't change it. It is a perfectly holy standard of righteousness that every single person is required to meet. Jesus said that we have to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect. And so, even if we could keep the law perfectly from this day forward, for the rest of our lives, it still wouldn't make up for all of the sin that we've already committed.

34:24So, what you need isn't a second chance to keep God's law. What you need is the same. Is not a law of your own creation where the bar is low enough for you to keep it. What you need is a Savior who can actually meet God's holy and righteous standard, who can offer Himself in your place for your sin, and who can be victorious over the great enemies of sin and death. Friends, Jesus is the Savior that you need.

34:57And so I hope and I pray that you will turn to Him today, that you won't recommit yourself to trying harder, but that you will give yourself to Christ, the Savior who ransomed us through His life and death and resurrection. And if you're already a Christian, I want to remind you of Paul's words in the passage here: that we are the aroma of Christ to God. To some, a fragrance from life to life, and to others, a fragrance from death to death.

35:36Everywhere you go, you are the aroma of Christ. In your classroom, in your neighborhood, in your dorm, at your workplace, you are the aroma of Christ. And you have no control over whether people perceive that as the sweet scent of victory or the awful odor of defeat. You and I are called to be faithful ministers, sincere ministers of the new covenant, and to trust that God is going to use us to hold out his gospel message and to bring everyone to salvation that he is going to bring.

36:19I want you to be encouraged today that God is saving and that God intends to save souls through you. And so I want to encourage you to pray, to pray for your lost friends and family members, your co-workers and your classmates, and to pray for boldness to hold out the hope of the gospel to them, knowing that not everybody is going to receive that, but that everybody that God is calling will. Be encouraged with the words of Christ in John 6.

36:53All that the Father gives me will come to me. And whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. Let's pray. Father, we pray that you would give us the confidence of the Apostle Paul, who wasn't confident in his own abilities, but was confident in the Holy Spirit who filled him. And empowered him and used him for ministry. Father, we pray that you would help us to believe, like Paul believed, that no matter what the circumstances look like in our lives, you are leading us in triumphal procession. You are calling people into your kingdom from the AM campus and the Blin campus, from high schools and middle schools and elementary schools, from our workplaces and neighborhoods, you are calling people into your kingdom and you are using us to do it. Who is sufficient for these things?

38:17Who is equal to such a task? So, God, we pray that you would fill us with faith, not in ourselves or our training, our Bible knowledge, our preparation, but fill us with faith in you because you are calling your children to faith in Christ. And you're doing it through us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support, Our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.