The Smell of Victory
February 1, 2026
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
Discussion Questions
When you think of successful lives and ministries, what do you think of? Like the church in Corinth, how is our view of success often shaped more by the world than the cross?
What aspects of Christianity, if you’re honest, often feel like death?
What is a time that following Jesus in obedience felt really difficult to you and didn’t look or feel very successful? What helped you get through?
Consider reading Isaiah 53, a passage that looks forward to the death of Jesus. Talk about how this passage “smells” to our natural selves and how it “smells” when we’ve been won over the beauty of the cross?
Scripture Reading
2 Corinthians 2:12-3:6
2:12 When I came to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ, even though a door was opened for me in the Lord, 13 my spirit was not at rest because I did not find my brother Titus there. So I took leave of them and went on to Macedonia.
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. 15 For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, 16 to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? 17 For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ.
3:1 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you, or from you? 2 You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all. 3 And 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.
4 Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. 5 Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, 6 who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
We paused our study of 2 Corinthians last week, but this morning we’re picking it back up. I titled the sermon “The Smell of Victory.” I’ll tell you why after we pray.
“Dear Heavenly Father . . .
I titled the sermon “The Smell of Victory.” Strange as it is, the title comes from a line my exterminator once told me. A few years ago we had, I’m embarrassed to say, a few mice. A few people in our house might feel it’s better just to move permanently into a hotel in such a situation as this. So I called in the professional. He came, he saw, he conquered.
That afternoon he said something both funny and profound and, in a way, that relates to this passage. He told me that he had put stuff out for the mice, and that they would eat it, they would go outside and die. “There was,” he said, “a small chance that they might stay inside. If that happens,” he wanted me to know, “you might get a faint odor for a day or so.” But then he said, “Don’t worry. You know what we call that?” I said, “No.” He got a big smile and said, “We call it ‘the smell of victory.’”
I guess that’s a matter of perspective, isn’t it? To us who live in the house, while unpleasant in some ways, we know that the smell means that all hope is not lost, and we don’t have to move houses. But to the other mice, well, to those who are perishing, to use Paul’s words, it is the smell of death to death.
In this passage, we’ll see that it’s not just the mere smell that matters, whether the smell is a beautiful smell or a putrid smell. When we look at Jesus, we’re asking what does he mean to us? We need to see and understand the reality of Christ’s horrific, grotesque, excruciating crucifixion, and then ask the question, how does he smell to us? Is it more death to death, which would be a natural response. Or do we smell in the person and work of Jesus something more like victory and life to life?
And then you’ll remember that Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his resurrection daily and follow me.” Wait. That’s not what he said. He didn’t say daily take up your resurrection. He said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his crossdaily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). So, we need to ask, What do we think of Christian ministry that looks and smells like a cross? Are we put off by a cross-shaped life or are we intrigued, are we amazed? It smells like victory to those being saved.
All this, I think, frames this passage in this letter for how it relates to us. But with the snow day last Sunday, it’s been a few weeks since we’ve been considering the context of 2 Corinthians. I want to get back to the passage, but I think about three minutes of context might help us understand the passage and the issues better.
Remember, in the context of this letter, Jesus has lived and died and gone to heaven. And from heaven he pours out his Holy Spirit and lives are changed and churches are planted. Paul’s life has changed, and he also now plants churches, including this church. He lived there in Corinth for eighteen months, then moved on. And for a host of reasons, his relationship with this church has been very rocky.
One reason for the rocky relationship is that the Corinthian culture’s views of success and failure have made it difficult for the Corinthian church to embrace God’s view of success. God’s view of success became a major issue between the church and Paul. In fact, it was a central struggle in how this church related to God and related to Christian instruction and related to the hope of the gospel. If someone suffers a lot as he serves Jesus, is that a sign that God is not using him?, they wondered. If someone seems to always be sacrificing and sacrificing and sacrificing and yet sees little outward success, is the gospel he preached even true? And is God even good if his ministers are so weak and seemingly unimpressive? To put it bluntly and succinctly, the church kept asking why Paul’s ministry looked and smelled more like death than life.
To make it worse, the church in Corinth had wolves that lurked around the fringes of the flock. In chapter 11, Paul refers to them with ironic flair, calling them super-apostles because of their grandiose personalities and splashy results. These wolves—these false teachers, these super apostles—pounced on Paul’s weakness. In the comment sections on social media, they would not have been kind to Paul. So, the great apostle Paul had to keep explaining to them why the struggles, sacrifices, and perceived shortcomings of his ministry were not a sign that he was a bad, unsuccessful apostle.
And here, I think, is where it hits us. Far outnumbering the wolves were probably many well-meaning, sincere believers who didn’t know what to think, how to respond, or who was right. I think many of us can relate to this. Many well-meaning believers struggle not to become disappointed and disillusioned when our Christian lives are shaped like a cross. Jesus did say to pick up our crosses and follow him. We know that. But when we daily pick up crosses and when others daily pick up crosses, and it becomes hard, then what do we do? When our Christian lives start to look, feel, and smell more like death than life, it’s hard not to think, Is this what we signed up for? Is this the smell of victory?
We’ll be preaching this letter until the summer, and it’s helpful to know the issues because they never dip too far below the surface. And this morning, in fact, these issues float right to the top of this passage.
We’ll explore the passage in two parts. We’ll first explore the many conundrums we face as we embrace God’s view of success; then we’ll discuss the confidence we can have as we embrace God’s view of success. First conundrums; then confidence.
1. The conundrums of Christian ministry
In this passage, I see several what might be called conundrums of Christian ministry. A conundrum is a confusing or difficult problem. A conundrum arises when the cost of following through is high. It’s also a good word for when the right answers don’t seem intuitive or obvious. A conundrum happens when you have five really good things to do, but you can only do three of them, so which do you choose to do and which do you not do? Do we preach through 2 Corinthians this spring, because if we do that, there are sixty-five other books of the Bible that we’re not preaching. Do I take this job, do I marry this person, do I change my career, do I quit this hobby, do I partner with these people, do we move to this house or that house, and so on. And as we make these decisions, how do we measure success? In this passage Paul names and explores several of these Christian ministry and Christian living conundrums that can make it really hard to embrace God’s view of success.
Where to go and what to do, vv. 12–13
The first conundrum is a very relatable one: Our ambiguity about where to go and what to do. We see it in vv. 12–13.
12 When I came to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ, even though a door was opened for me in the Lord, 13 my spirit was not at rest because I did not find my brother Titus there. So I took leave of them and went on to Macedonia.
Notice the phrase tagged right after the phrase “an open door for me.” Paul says, “an open door for me in the Lord.” Paul wants to spread the news and aroma of Jesus, and Paul finds this place called Troas a good place to do that. He attributes the success there to the Lord’s work. But Paul says his “spirit was not at rest.” Why? It’s because Paul didn’t find Titus there, so he went to look for him.
It will help to recall the situation and the geography. Greece looks like a hand with fingers pointed down, and Corinth is over here (the bottom fingers), and Macedonia up here (the back of the hand). Paul is not in Greece, but what we would call Turkey. He’s in Ephesus, which looks like an open hand with the fingers horizontal. Paul had evidently made plans to visit Titus in Troas. The point was, yes, to see his brother Titus. But more than that, it was Titus who was there in Corinth doing recon, figuring out whether the rebellion in the church had quieted down or whether it had flared up. Paul was turning himself inside out not knowing how they were doing.[1] And since Titus didn’t make it and the season for crossing the sea was finished and there’s no GPS or texting, so Paul went up, and mostly by land made his way over to Macedonia, in the hope of finding Titus to learning how the church he loved was doing.
What a conundrum, though. Where do we go and what do we do, especially when the Lord has opened this door of effective ministry? If we were to ask Paul while he was on that trip to find Titus whether he thought he was doing the right thing, I think he would have said, “I don’t know. I don’t know. I hope so. It’s so hard to know what ministry success looks like sometimes.”
Listen to these words from chapter 7 and how Paul describes his emotional state when he does find Titus: “For even when we came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were afflicted at every turn—fighting without and fear within” (2 Cor. 7:5). Paul says he had fighting without and fear within; he’s in a conflicted conundrum. He wants to preach Jesus in new places. But he wants to see this church thrive. He wants to serve the Lord, but he doesn’t know whether that means going here and doing this or staying here and doing that.
Which is a conundrum so relevant. Have you ever felt like this? Ever wondered what to do next? Ever been unsure of how the Lord wants you to move? Should I leave this church and go to another? Should I stay at this church and leave another? Where do you find confidence in such a situation? We’ll come to that later.
Looks, feels, smells like death, vv. 15–16
In the next verses, we come to another conundrum, the conundrum that the ministry that we hope will bring life to us and others often seems to feel like death and does bring death to some. Let’s read vv. 14–16 again.
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. 15 For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, 16 to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?
Paul uses a metaphor here that probably isn’t as hopeful about ministry success as it first sounds. It is hopeful; there is confidence in these verses. But we should let the conundrum hit us first.
Paul speaks of being led in a triumphal procession and spreading the fragrance of Jesus. They live in the Roman Empire, so Paul gives them a metaphor they’d be familiar with, that of a victory parade for a Roman general, which Paul calls a triumphal procession. When a general won a great victory, he might have been honored with a parade.
You’re probably familiar with the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, the Rose Bowl Parade, the Super Bowl Parade, or some smaller, local parades. In our parades, we have floats, marching bands, dancing, and candy tossed to children.
A Roman triumphal procession didn’t have that exactly. In a triumphal victory parade, there would be several things. You’d have the general featured in a prominent way. You’d have some of his soldiers with him. You’d have incense or perfume strewn about that would give the whole thing a smell. You’d have animals that would be sacrificed to the gods. And you’d have some of the captured, subdued people walking in the parade.
Pastor Ben Betchel preached this passage a few years ago, and the equated Roman triumphal procession to a Super Bowl Parade, but instead of just the winning team in the parade, you’d have the losing team joining the parade, and they’d have to wear the uniforms of the winning team and be paraded through the streets for people to mock them as the losers that they were. This is what happened in Rome.
It seems that in Paul’s metaphor, strange as it is, Christ is the general who is leading Paul. And Christ is leading Paul as a captured foe. This is strange. It reflects a conundrum, a puzzle. The idea is that though Paul was an enemy of Christ, Christ has saved him and won him into his service as a captured person, who no longer gets to do his own will but must do what his general and Lord commands.
I’m thankful this is not the only description of Christian ministry success. There are other pictures of Christian ministry. There are softer, warmer images of Christian ministry. We have Jesus himself saying, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). We have images of Christian ministry success in the Bible that look more like life and resurrection than daily taking up a cross.
But, of course, we have this one too. And I’m thankful it’s here, actually, because it brings needed balance to the full reality of Christian living and daily following Jesus, which often looks and smells like picking up a cross. This imagery lets us know that if the Christian life is hard, that’s not always because we’re doing it wrong.
Sometimes Christian ministry is very hard. Take the act of extending forgiveness. If someone wrongs you, and you say, “Lord, in my heart I want to punish this person for what they did to me and what they said to me. But, instead, I’m going to release my anger and hurt and ask you to take it and ask you to give me forgiveness toward them in the same way you have forgiven me.”
When you do that, there might be therapeutic moments where it makes you feel better. But let’s be clear: Daily extending forgiveness will often feel like daily death. And it will certainly look like and smell like death to the watching world. It won’t seem like victory.
But, according to this passage, obeying Christ our general will be a spreading of the aroma of Christ. And this was Paul’s conundrum and ours. The ministry we want to feel like life and to bring life, often feels like death and sometimes is received as death.
Results are often slow and uneven (not quick “life”), unlike peddlers, v. 17
There’s one more conundrum to mention briefly. The last conundrum is that faithful Christian ministry often produces slow and uneven results, which makes some people prefer to take shortcuts. Look at v. 17.
17 For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ.
I’m struck by this comment, “For we are not, like so many…” That comment hits me hard. We often have a romantic view of the early church and how faithful they were. And surely there was great faithfulness among some, even many. But at the same time, Paul writes to this church a mere thirty years into the birth of the Christian church and says that many peddle the word of God to achieve something ministry “success.”
Let’s press into that imagery for a minute. What does he mean by peddling the word of God for success? A peddler is a term from the marketplace. It communicates buyers and sellers, supply and demand, products and consumers. That’s not necessarily bad. The market is a good thing. It’s how we get food and clothing, cars and homes. So what is Paul critiquing? He’s saying that a peddler must understand what the buyer wants, and then the peddler must find a way to meet those felt needs. The peddler must be willing to adapt his product, even eager to adapt, to the market.
Paul is saying that people took the word of God and said, “Hmmm, ‘as is,’ the word of God seems to get both life to life and death to death. What if I changed the word of God so that it got only life to life? That would make my life better. It would make other people’s lives better. I’ll adapt the word to get better results.”
Paul’s conundrum is that faithful Christian ministry doesn’t make him look very much like a successful super apostle. Paul’s point is that if you change the word of God, you don’t get more life to life, you actually get what seems like life, but in the end leads to death. And Paul, he tells them, is unwilling to tamper with the word just so that people will like him better.
Think back to my exterminator story and the smell of victory. At our house we certainly didn’t want an unpleasant, faint odor. So, perhaps my exterminator would think, “I know, instead of spreading poison, I’ll change and spread potpourri.” It would have started with smelling like life. I would have been like, Oh, this is great. Not only are we getting rid of a problem, but it even smells nice. This would be short-sighted, though.
This short-sightedness is so relevant. In our preaching meeting, one person said, “You know, if we really put our heads together, and we didn’t feel constrained by certain doctrinal convictions, we could get a lot more people in this building. We could change what God says about sex, and we’d have a whole new demographic to reach. We could become those who preach angry and degrading hot takes and political rants, and that would open up whole new demographics. We could mock protestors and immigrants. And we could mock law enforcement, and there are people who would love to hear that in their church. But that is the kind of peddling Paul renounces, choosing to stay focused on Jesus and preach faithful, steady, nuanced truth even if it doesn’t make him sound like a super successful apostle.
2. The confidence of Christian ministry
Into all these challenges and conundrums, Paul doesn’t find his confidence and his view of success by looking in the mirror and telling himself that he’s up for the task. Quite the opposite. Look at 2:14 and then 3:1–6.
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. . . .
3 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you, or from you? 2 You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all. 3 And 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.
4 Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. 5 Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, 6 who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
Notice the sweeping statement in v. 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.” Remember, he had just shared the conundrum of where to go and what to do. Do I stay in Troas or do I leave? Do I marry this person or that person? Do I live here or there? Do I quit my job or stay in the same job? It’s so hard to know. But Paul’s confidence rests in the sweeping sovereignty of God over every detail such that he can say, “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.” Notice the words: Always, he says. Everywhere, he says.
For all the conundrums of life and ministry, Paul rested in the supernatural, sovereign hand of God to draw straight lines with crooked sticks. “Lean not on your own understanding,” we’re told in Proverbs 3, and God “will make your ways straight.” This is Paul’s confidence. And he wants it to be yours. Every major decision in your life, you’ll have twenty reasons to second-guess it. Paul offers us a better confidence.
If you look inside yourself for the confidence in life and ministry, you’ll either end up in pride or despair. If you look inside, and then do stuff and it goes well, you’ll become proud. If you look inside, and do stuff, and it goes badly, you’ll despair. Paul is offering something better than constantly asking the question if you have what it takes. There’s no rest there. Paul’s confidence rests, not in himself, but in God. I’ll read it again:
4 Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. 5 Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, 6 who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
Paul is telling you that in some strange, mysterious way, when we tell others that Jesus lived and died and rose again, and if they turn from all their sins to trust in Jesus, then that message will bring life—because God’s Spirit will bring life.
We have the picture of the bridges on those wooden boards with the screws and we’ve been asking you to put up rubber bands as you have gospel conversations with people. One of the reasons we’re counting “gospel conversations” and not counting conversions instead is that we’re just trying to do our part and leave the rest to God. We plant. We water. Our confidence is that God will make ministry success grow.
And if he doesn’t, that’s okay, because picking up a cross daily is the success. And God, by his Spirit, makes us competent for that. If you are a Christian, you have everything you need right now in Christ to serve him successfully.
In this passage, God invites those of you who are weary and heavy-laden, those of you beaten up by the world, those of you trying so hard to please others, to lay down success in their eyes and daily take up a cross and join the triumphant procession.
And just as the cross of Jesus has become a beautiful smell to you, when your life becomes shaped like a cross, it will become a beautiful smell, not to everyone, but to many. When you pour yourself out for Jesus, others will smell in your sacrifice and in your love, the faint smell of Jesus.
Be encouraged, church, that those who take up their crosses daily will one day take up their resurrection. Let’s pray.
“Dear Heavenly Father…”
[1] In the sermon John Piper did on this passage, he used the “hands as maps” gestures, and it seemed helpful, so I did too.
