Christ as the Fragrance of the Knowledge of God

… as they are tested and toil, and they glory in the struggles they endure for Christ. For just as Christ was put on display for our sake when He endured death on the tree and was made perfect through sufferings (Hebrews 2:10), so they too say that they are led in triumph for Him, that is, made known to people everywhere and made glorious through trials, and that they conquer the world by being ready to suffer all things, and very gladly, for the name of Christ. For they are sharers in His sufferings and, as he says, partakers “of the glory that is to be revealed” (1 Peter 5:1).

They say that it is God who leads them in triumph, not as handing them over to suffering, nor as heaping afflictions on them, but because, by His good pleasure, as they proclaim Jesus to people throughout the whole world under heaven, they fall into the trials that come for His sake. For without trials it is impossible to win approval. And the fruit of these trials is that they suffer in Christ, that is, for Christ’s sake, which is glorious and full of good hopes.

What, then, is this fragrance of the knowledge of God the Father, made known to the world through the holy apostles, and in every place, as they themselves say? The inspired Paul himself will teach us again when he says, “For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your servants through Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:5); and again, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Christ Jesus, and Him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2).

How, then, will He who was born of a woman, who endured the cross and underwent death, even though He came to life again, be the fragrance of the knowledge of God the Father, if, as some suppose, Christ is thought to be a mere man like us, that is, a God-bearing man, and not Himself God by nature, even if the Word from God is understood to have taken up the human in the plan of salvation? For by being like us and nothing more, He will not give forth the fragrance of the nature of God the Father; nor would He who endured death become the fragrance of the One who knows no death.

How, then, is Christ the fragrance of the knowledge of the Father? Is it not clear that it is insofar as He is understood to be God, and is God, even though He appeared in the flesh for our sake? Otherwise, how do those who preach Christ proclaim to the world the One who is God by nature and in truth? Or how could they know Jesus? And how is God the Father said by the holy teachers of the mysteries to be reconciling the world to Himself in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:19), unless one accepts the humanity into union with the Word who was born of God, as the wise plan of salvation required? For the inspired disciples, speaking in the Spirit, proclaim the Word of God not as having dwelt in a man, but as having become flesh (John 1:14), that is, as united to flesh that has a rational soul. For in this way the One who was crucified would also be the Lord of glory (1 Corinthians 2:8).

So whether the Word from God is thought of with the flesh, or not so, but by Himself, as before He became like us, He is the fragrance of the knowledge of God the Father, since in His own nature He spreads to us the fragrance of the One from whom He is. And if what I say is true, how could He be something that came into being, counted among those who received their being out of nothing? For such a one could not become the fragrance of the One who is uncreated and who does not exist as something brought into being. For we shall not see what has come into being in what never came into being, nor what never came into being in what has come into being.

Yet the Son has shown the Father in Himself; therefore He is God by nature, because of the sameness of substance. So let the Son hear from us as well, “Your name is ointment poured out” (Song of Songs 1:3); for through Him and in Him we have come to know the God and Father from whom He was begotten.

“For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing” (2 Corinthians 2:15).