As we sit down together at this meal, with the Lord Jesus at the head of the table, we are partaking of a very simple meal—bread and wine. Because of this we may mistakenly forget one of the most important features of food and drink, which is the wonderful blessing of aroma. Smell is essential to what we call eating and drinking. You know what it is like to eat when you have a terrible cold—nothing tastes.
So what is the aroma here? That is simply another way of asking how this meal should taste. Just as St. Paul teaches us that we are the one loaf, and that we are the one body, so in another place he teaches that we are the aroma, we are the taste. The King James says that we are “a sweet savour of Christ” (2 Cor. 2:15). Other translations render this as aroma—showing the connection between aroma and savor. We cannot savor food without smelling it.
This is the savor of “his knowledge by us” (v. 14). The Lord Jesus was bruised for our iniquities. As the Puritan Thomas Watson observed, it is when spices are bruised that they give off their aroma. As we follow in our imitation of Christ, when we surrender for others, sacrifice for others, lay down our lives for others, it is in this way that we manifest the aroma of life unto life. For those who are perishing, it is a stench, but this is only because they have no stomach for the bread of life, and have no taste for the wine that washes away every bitter taste that sin leaves in the mouth.
This meal is supposed to have an aroma. When we gather together in love like this, that aroma should strike us in the face when we enter the room. You know what it is like to walk into a home where the cook has been doing wonderful things all day. This service should far surpass that—love smells and tastes like nothing else. All the delightful smells that you have ever encountered together with food are just faint types and shadows. They point to this; in some small way they smell like this.