“In Them That Are Saved, and in Them That Perish”

Paul is describing the strange effect his ministry has on the people who hear it, and he reaches for an image from a Roman triumph. The saving word sits inside it.

Led in Triumph

Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place.

2 Corinthians 2:14

The picture is a triumphal procession — a victorious general leading a parade through the city, incense burning along the route so the whole street fills with the smell of the victory. Paul casts himself and his fellow-workers as part of that procession, and the knowledge of Christ as the fragrance spreading from it. Wherever the gospel is preached, a scent goes out.

But a fragrance is received differently by different people, and Paul presses exactly that.

The Same Savour, Two Meanings

For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish: to the one we are the savour of death unto death; and to the other the savour of life unto life.

2 Corinthians 2:15–16

En tois sōzomenois — in them that are being saved. The identical aroma — the sincere preaching of Christ — means opposite things to the two companies it reaches. To those being saved it is the savour of life unto life; to those perishing, the savour of death unto death. One scent, two effects, sorted entirely by the state of the one who breathes it in.

This is the same division 1 Corinthians drew with the word of the cross, now stated with a fragrance instead of a message. And it carries the same comfort for a discouraged minister: the gospel’s mixed reception is not a sign that something has gone wrong with the preaching. The savour is a sweet savour of Christ to God in both cases — pleasing to Him whether it is received or rejected. The preacher is not responsible for which effect it has; he is responsible for the sincerity of the scent.

“Who Is Sufficient?”

The weight of it presses a question out of Paul: “And who is sufficient for these things?”

It is a real question, not rhetorical flourish. To be the aroma that decides life and death is a burden no one is equal to. Paul does not answer it here with false confidence; he lets it stand, and it will be answered a few verses later — our sufficiency is of God. The one who carries a fragrance this consequential can only be adequate to it by God’s enabling, never his own.

Not Corrupting the Word

Paul closes with a contrast that guards the whole image: “For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ.”

Corrupt here carries the sense of a peddler watering down his goods for profit — adulterating the wine to stretch the sale. Paul refuses it. He will not dilute the message to make it more palatable or more lucrative. He speaks as of sincerity, as of God, in the sight of God — the fragrance kept pure, because a corrupted gospel is no longer the savour of Christ at all.

That is the minister’s actual responsibility in a passage about a reception he cannot control. He cannot determine whether the aroma means life or death to a given hearer. He can determine whether what he preaches is the genuine, unadulterated knowledge of Christ, or a thinned-out counterfeit. Paul keeps it pure and leaves the effect to God.

What the Word Means Here

The full sense — salvation set against perishing — disclosed by response to the aroma of Christ. To be saved is to belong to the company for whom the gospel is the savour of life unto life.

Its contribution to the gateway is twofold, and both are pastoral. First, it reassures the faithful witness that a divided response is not failure: the same true gospel is death to some and life to others, and remains a sweet savour to God in both. Second, it fixes the preacher’s duty where it belongs — not on manufacturing results, which are God’s, but on keeping the word uncorrupted, sincere, spoken in God’s sight. The savour saves; the servant keeps it pure.

This study is part of What Does It Mean to Be Saved?, an examination of every New Testament use of saving language in context, within Resource Cluster 3: Life in Christ. 91 of 91 passage studies are complete — see every occurrence.