19.3 The Aroma of Christ
My wife and I were introduced to the essential oils of aromatic herbs about 20 years ago. We purchased oils primarily from a company called Young Living, whose oils are of high quality. But quality means expense, and we have not been able to purchase as we would if we had unlimited means.
I love essential oils, and I love the medicinal herbs given to us by God out from which we obtain these oils. Pharmaceutical drugs are intended to mask the symptoms so that the victims are no longer aware of their sickness. That way they are always coming back for more chemicals. Essential oils re-set the frequency of the body, enabling the body to heal itself.
Healing. Aroma is for healing. Creation is in dire need of healing, from the largest overall down to the brokenness of each individual entity. Indeed, Ezekiel said that it is from this Altar that the river of Life proceeds. Yes, it’s origin is the Mercy Seat, but it is the Altar of Incense that gives the river its healing essence. In John’s vision, he sees the river of life, the tree of life, and the aroma of healing in the same picture.
Yet these are all metaphors. The Church, brethren walking together in love, are the reality. The primary purpose of the communities of Christ is to heal all that which is unhealed in their local area.
Two Ways of Healing. Modern medicine views healing as violence, whether attacking the symptoms with the knife or with toxic chemicals. Modern medicine rarely considers healing the actual underlying problem. Natural medicine views healing as restoration, as gently providing the body itself with what it needs to restore the original underlying lack, causing the symptoms of the problem gradually to disappear.
Indeed we see this same stark difference in addressing all problems in society. Human government uses the imposition of violence to correct the symptoms only. Freedom and respect strengthen individuals in their underlying need to be able, themselves, to heal.
Jesus as He Is. Hopefully, in the upcoming session on the image or face of God that is the Church, we will look further at how the existence of a local community of Christ, the Church, enables healing to take place in the area around it.
Here, however, we want to understand Christ flowing out from us as the many essences or patterns of healing aroma. He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim… recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed (Luke 4:18). The Church is the Lord Jesus, fulfilling what He is.
Physician Heal Thyself. Yet the only healing that can go out from any Community of Christ, any local gathering together, is the outflow of that healing aroma in which the Church lives together, the essence of healing flowing out from one to another.
Think of that, as sons of God, our nature is to exude the aroma or essence of healing, of wholeness, of joy and blessing, so that anyone with whom we interact walks away inspired and lifted up without even realizing anything happened. This quality is not forced, but rather the natural result of being real humans.
Attacking Sin. Here again we see the great contrast between the two visions of order in the universe, command and control by violence versus the joy of peace arising out of liberty. Notice in Jesus’ sending, He sets free those who have been oppressed by “order” imposed by violence.
In the local church, most have known the healing of violence, the preaching against sinners, the correcting of fault, the exposure of sin. The idea behind the imposer is that by attacking the symptom, the target will “get the message” and stop doing what is offensive. But the very quality that is deemed offensive was created by God for His expression and to whack it off is to cripple God.
Every Good Thing. The sharing of your faith becomes effective by the acknowledgment of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus (Philemon 1:6). This primary supporting verse fits under most any topic we might address, but it fits even more so here regarding the healing aroma of Christ.
The word sharing means fellowship together, the word effective is the adjective form of energeo, that is, made into the fire that is Jesus, and the two “in’s” are very telling. The first in means inside of all the sphere that we are and the second in means our penetration into Christ and His penetration into us with purpose.
How True Healing Works. When any member of the body is unwell, it is lacking in both nutrition and energy, that is, in frequency or spirit. That member sort of “shrivels up” into itself and is no longer sending forth its contribution to the body. Then, the gospel of the serpent imposes on that member the sense of fault, of not measuring up – you are responsible for your sickness.
True healing, however, brings to that member the two things that he or she needs to be whole and filled with life. The first thing is Spirit, Christ as the healing aroma, the gentle wafting of knowing that whatever I am, it is Jesus living as me, that Jesus Himself has come into union with all that I am in all of my stumbling foolishness.
Drink My Blood. And then true healing brings the nutrition the member needs, the knowledge of Word, of Christ as Bread, the knowledge of Jesus as He really is.
You see, these are the functions of the Blood, and the Blood is Christ alone, coming as joy and entirely through faith. Then, the Blood itself takes into itself those poisons that had accumulated in the member and carries them away into a place where they are never remembered again.
But this aroma of Christ, a frequency of wholeness that resets the diminished frequency of the member, comes from the fellowship together that is the Community of Christ.
An Experience of Healing. I saw this quality of the aroma of Christ bringing the joy of healing recently. I was visiting with several, including two sisters who had great need of healing. They would raise to me aspects of their life experience, imagining that these things somehow had caused a break between them and Jesus. As I gently showed them how those very things in their lives were Jesus Himself living now as them, the light of peace arose in their face as they rested in the frequency of wholeness that is the aroma of Christ. What they thought was a problem I acknowledged as the good things of Jesus inside of them and their spirits came back into harmony with the Holy Spirit.
The Aroma of Family. We are not speaking, however, of sons of God going around as individuals, but rather of the Church, the family of Christ, walking together, loving one another with a pure heart fervently. The aroma of Christ coming out from one individual is hardly measurable against the sweet garden of Christ that is the gathering together of Community.
When a gathering together of many members as a local church is walking in all the wholeness of Christ together, then the aroma of healing coming forth from them is as a great wind of freshness, healing and energizing all who come near its life.
Patterns of Smell. Now, the patterns of home come out of the pattern language developed through much investigation by Christopher Alexander and his team. Alexander reduced the number of overall patterns to fifteen basic concepts of order in human society and in the natural world. These fifteen patterns were then fitted into the arena of designing a home by individuals focused on architecture. These patterns have also been applied to software development with great success. There is much ongoing room, then, to apply these patterns to an understanding of every aspect of life in making all things wholesome.
How would the pattern language fit the patterns of smell in the use of essential oils? I would love to see such a study.
Eyes of Fire. You see, we never think of anything real (that is, anything not sin and death) in the natural world, in human society, or in the realms of the spirit as anything other than coming out of the good speaking of Jesus every moment. To heal is to connect any individual person or thing into the knowledge of that good speaking, a connection that comes first in the sight of our own eyes of faith.
Gnosticism likes to call the things of the earth and of human activity "evil." Turned from God, yes, all things of the earth are unwholesome. Yet we have turned around upon the Mercy Seat of God, and now we see all things good through eyes of fire, through eyes of the Energeia that is Christ causing all things to be what they really are.
The Aroma of Death. Now, the aroma of death that comes out from Christ to some, as Paul states in 2 Corinthians 2 could be puzzling to us. Except it is a simple thing, really. The aroma of goodness, of seeing all things good, of imparting the joy of life to those who once wandered broken under the false weight of sin and death, is a stench of putridness to those who despise the goodness of God, those who demand punishment, not restoration.
Those who have crafted their own righteousness are deeply offended when God restores one whom they consider deserving of punishment. They define seeing all things good as something “of the devil.” Christ smells bad to them only because they retreat into their own story of “I am right.”
A Whole Field of Study. Smell is the aroma of Christ as the good frequencies of Spirit and taste is the bread of Christ as wholesome nutrition, the building blocks of life.
Now when I think of all the smells of Christ wafting forth from the garden of His peace, the family of Christ, brethren walking together in love, I see that there must be an entire description of the many aromas and frequencies of peace. Yet I do not know of any study applying the patterns of wholeness to the aromas of the essential oils. Thus all we can do is close our eyes and dream of the fragrances of the garden of Christ.
In this lesson I have simply placed before us the realization that here is a whole field of study, the aroma that is Christ, believers together as Incense.