I’ve stated this before, but I just love it when God will use ordinary situations and general conversations to reveal spiritual truths. And then in my Bible reading, the Lord will confirm with a perfect scripture to go along with that spiritual truth over which I had been pondering.
One day as my husband and I were having a meal with my daughter and her fiancé Michael, we began talking about potatoes. (Like I said, just a general conversation.) Michael shared with us how he once worked in the produce section of a local grocery store. He said when arranging the bags of potatoes, they were to do a quick visual inspection and smell to detect any bad potatoes. I believe most people recognize the distinctive smell of a rotten potato!
The thing about those potatoes is that they may often still look okay on the outside, but they put off that odor that gives away their true condition. Other types of produce can be the same. Such as watermelons.
Michael stated that once an odor was coming from a bin of watermelons. And of course, it was after taking each watermelon out of that bin and he reached the bottom and picked up a melon, that he could feel the shift in the weight as the liquified bad contents moved and the bottom of the melon revealed the rottenness not seen from the top. If rotten produce is not removed as soon as their condition is discovered, their close proximity with other items can cause multiple items to go bad quickly.
As Michael was talking, I just started thinking.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could be fully warned in some way, like with a bad odor, of those people we should avoid because of the possibility of them affecting (or infecting) us? You know, the people who seem to be one way, but after getting to know them, you find out they are not what they profess. Sometimes, relationships with the wrong individuals can cause us to fall ourselves. Or perhaps we don’t fall, but we are betrayed and hurt for trusting and confiding in someone unworthy of the confidence we had placed in them.
But this topic can be looked at from both sides. It’s not just about figuring out the people we should distance ourselves from, but being sure that we live what we profess. That we are not “that person” that puts off a foul odor and spreads the rottenness of our behavior to others.
So, what are we to do?
Go to the Word. The Bible is full of scripture to help teach us who we should avoid.
13 Take hold of instruction; do not let go. Guard her, for she is your life.
14 Do not enter the path of the wicked And do not proceed in the way of evil people.
15 Avoid it, do not pass by it; Turn away from it and pass on. Proverbs 4:13-15 NASB
But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. 2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, slanderers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, 4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 holding to a form of godliness although they have denied its power; avoid such people as these. 2 Timothy 3:1-5 NASB
4 Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness. 5 You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin. 6 No one who remains in Him sins continually; no one who sins continually has seen Him or knows Him. 7 Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; 8 the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. 9 No one who has been born of God practices sin, because His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin continually, because he has been born of God. 10 By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother and sister. 1 John 3:4-10 NASB
Now you may be thinking, “I thought we were to love everyone? Didn’t Jesus day ‘Go into all the world’?”
Yes. We are told to love. We are told to be witnesses. We are to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with everyone. We are to live among them, but we are not to live like them. The way we live should distinguish us from those who do not trust in Christ as their Savior.
14 Do not be mismatched with unbelievers; for what do righteousness and lawlessness share together, or what does light have in common with darkness? 15 Or what harmony does Christ have with Belial, or what does a believer share with an unbeliever? 16 Or what agreement does the temple of God have with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said, “I will dwell among them and walk among them;
And I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
17 Therefore, come out from their midst and be separate,” says the Lord.
“And do not touch what is unclean;
And I will welcome you.
18 And I will be a father to you,
And you shall be sons and daughters to Me,”
Says the Lord Almighty. 2 Corinthians 6:14-18 NASB
So, we have read of those we are to avoid. The Bible also tells us how we are to appear before others.
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; 2 and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma. Ephesians 5:1-2 NASB
This verse says that Jesus’ sacrifice was a pleasing aroma to God. When we receive Christ as our Savior and the Holy Spirit then resides within us, then the same sweet aroma that the sacrifice of Christ lifted up to God the Father, should be rising up from us. Afterall, we are to be crucified daily with Christ. If the crucifixion of Christ resulted in a fragrant aroma to the Father, then our daily crucifixion should be a pleasing aroma rising constantly before our Father!
The following verse expounds on this truth.
14 But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us reveals the fragrance of the knowledge of Him in every place. 15 For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing: 16 to the one an aroma from death to death, to the other an aroma from life to life. And who is adequate for these things? 17 For we are not like the many, peddling the word of God, but as from sincerity, but as from God, we speak in Christ in the sight of God. 2 Corinthians 2:14-17 NASB
When we are Spirit controlled, the words we speak and the actions we take reveals the fragrance of life to those who are saved and are being saved. However, to those who do not know Christ and who are refusing to heed to the drawing of the Spirit, then our lives are a fragrance of death to them.
Allow me to illustrate it this way. If my husband and I have been working outside all day, we become dirty, sweaty and smelly. Normally when he showers, the fragrance from the body wash can be smelled easily even after he is dressed, and it’s very pleasing. If we both are filthy and then he showers first, the clean fragrance of him seems to intensify the smell of my own dirtiness.
When we live lives controlled by the Holy Spirit, unbelievers around us are confronted with the truth of God. If they are refusing Christ, then they are really smelling the fragrance of the eternal death they are facing apart from Christ, and that aroma to them is not pleasing.
The verse I came across that confirmed the spiritual truth I had been pondering after our conversations about rotten potatoes was this:
13 Now as they observed the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed, and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus. Acts 4:13 NASB
Peter and John were being questioned by the religious leaders. Not only had they performed a miracle in the name of Jesus, but the way they handled themselves gave evidence of Christ. How I hope and pray I am recognized as having been with Jesus! I long to exude that sweet fragrance of being crucified daily with Christ, without a hint of the rottenness so widespread in our world.
Living in this world is hard. The Bible clearly teaches what things and behaviors are sin. But this world has accepted certain things once considered wrong as right. Those things, those lifestyles that God deems sin, is affecting us all. Sadly, it’s becoming harder to detect the real Christian because they are living lifestyles so closely resembling those we were instructed to avoid.
So, after thinking about rotten potatoes, I found myself asking these questions, and I hope you will ask the same of yourself.
Do I handle myself in a way that others can see Christ in me? Do I put off a fragrance that is sweet, rising up to my heavenly Father? Or do I put off a fragrance of rottenness that tells others I have been too closely associating with the unbelievers around me?
The most important question to ask yourself is: have you truly received Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, or is the rottenness coming from you evidence that the Holy Spirit is not living within you?
13 Therefore, prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, set your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, 15 but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; 16 because it is written: “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” 1 Peter 1:13-16 NASB