Making Sense of Scents Smell is the most underrated of the five senses. People function with great difficulty if they lose their sight, hearing, or touch, but they think they can get along well enough without being able to smell. It is also the least controllable of the senses. The eyes can be closed, the mouth shut, the hand withdrawn, and the ears plugged, but it is hard to avoid smelling bad odors. Yet, the sense of smell deserves more recognition than it gets. One expression of its importance is the connection between taste and smell. Losing smell means losing taste. A sense of smell is also critical to avoiding danger. Fire is often first detected by the smell of smoke. Animals depend on their sense of smell for survival. They need it to detect prey or threats, perhaps from great distances. Elephants and camels smell water many miles away. Skunks use noxious odor to defend themselves. Mammals identify their young by their smell. Even humans rely on their sense of smell more than they realize. Bad odors are danger signs, indicating that food is not fit to eat. On the other hand, the aroma of food can aid appetite. However, the importance of smell goes beyond its practicality. The perfume industry bears witness to that. Smelling her husband’s scent on his clothes in his closet evokes for his widow the most vivid sense of his lingering presence. The Bible verifies these facts. For example, Paul suggests a hierarchy of senses when he places smell last in his list (1 Cor. 12:17). Yet, when Isaac’s eyesight had dimmed and he did not trust his sense of touch to identify Esau, he relied on his sense of smell (Gen. 27:18-27). The Bible refers to sacrifices as a “soothing aroma” to God more than forty times. God even provided for a special altar in the tabernacle, where priests burned incense twice a day (Ex. 30:1-10). On pain of death, the high priest was required to enter the most holy place annually on the day of atonement to burn incense to cover the ark with its smoke (Lev. 16:12,13). Paul calls Christ’s sacrifice a “fragrant aroma” to God (Eph. 5:2). Christians’ good works are described the same way (Phil. 4:18). Paul also portrayed himself as either an aroma of life or odor of death, depending on whether the gospel he preached was received or rejected (2 Cor. 2:14-16). John refers to the prayers of the saints as the smoke of incense which rises up to God (Rev. 5:8; 8:3,4). This world holds many sources of awful odors, such as sewage plants, paper mills, and hog farms, which waft miles away to annoy and even nauseate. People cope with them by avoiding them or masking them. Yet, some adapt to the odors of their environment by adopting them, like the smell of campfire smoke on clothing, and simply becoming used to them. After God struck Egypt with plagues, “the land stank” (Ex. 7:21; 8:14). So it is with this world. As the crimes of Jacob’s sons made him to stink to the Canaanites (Gen. 34:30), so sin is a stench in God’s nostrils. As dead flies overwhelm the power of perfume (Eccl. 10:1), so sinners cannot mask the odor of sin which clings to them and rises from their lives. Their only recourse is to cover themselves with the savor of Christ’s sacrifice. Moral character gives off an unmistakable odor, and God has a very fine sense of smell. None can escape the smell of his environment. God knows where a person has been by the smell he gives off. If he wallows with swine, he comes away smelling like them, but if he has made the Savior his associate, he comes away “smelling like a rose” — indeed, “the Rose of Sharon.”