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Crushed Like A Rose
Does God crush you like a rose to make perfume?
BY
Someone wrote to me recently
about songs that ask God to “crush me,” “wreck me,” and “consume me,” saying,
If God can abuse his bride,
yet tell her that it is for her good, of course a husband can do that to his.
And both blame her for not trusting.
This reminded me of the popular teaching that just as the
sweetest perfume comes out of crushed roses, God wants to crush us like a rose so He can make perfume like that.
As if somehow our lives would
become more pleasing to God if He crushed us.
And apparently, from the songs she was referencing, that’s a
pretty popular notion.
Does the
Bible ever compare the people of God to a flower?
Not unless you count the lilies Jesus pointed to when He said
this in Matthew 6:28-30:
"And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the
field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even
Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so
clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown
into the oven, will he not much
more clothe you, O you of little faith?"
He compares us to other plants, too. The people of God are
compared to trees that bring forth good fruit (Psalm 1,
Jeremiah 17:8), wheat that multiplies
(Matthew 13), and branches of a vine that
draw their life from the vine (John 15), which I talked more about here.
But God’s people aren’t compared to roses that need to be crushed
for fragrant perfume any more than they’re compared to eggplants that need to
be sliced and cooked for delicious ratatouille. It’s just not there, and
nothing that resembles it is there.
What the
Bible actually says about crushing
God the Father did crush, or bruise, His Son in order to secure
our salvation, according to Isaiah 53:9-10 when the prophet, clearly speaking
of Jesus, said,
"And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his
death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. Yet
it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he
has put him to grief. . . ."
I
talked more about that in this post, “Do you pray for God to ‘break’ you?
But the crushing was done in
Jesus Christ so that it doesn’t have to happen to us. He took it
FOR us. The Bible never says God the Father will crush those who have come to
Him through Jesus Christ — in fact it’s contrary to His Father’s heart.
The Bible does talk about
God’s people being refined like gold through trials, and our faith being tried
and strengthened (I Peter 1:6-7; I Peter 4:12-13; James 1:2-4,12). But this is
very different from being crushed to make perfume.
In fact, when it comes to crushing, this is what the Bible has
to say about the Lord’s heart toward His people, in Psalm 34:17-19:
"When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and
delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is
near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are
the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them
all."
What the
Bible actually says about fragrance
The sacrifices in the Old Testament were designed to be a
sweet-smelling fragrance to God (for example, Exodus 29, Leviticus 1, and
Numbers 29). The ultimate sacrifice, Jesus Christ, was a sweet-smelling
fragrance to God (Ephesians 5:2).
Paul also spoke of himself and his compatriots as a
sweet-smelling fragrance:
II Corinthians 2:14-16 - "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. For we
are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are
being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from
death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life."
Do you see that this reference to being a sweet fragrance has
nothing to do with being crushed? It’s not even about our lives
somehow becoming pleasing to God. It’s about spreading
the sweet-smelling gospel.
God’s people can be a sweet-smelling fragrance to God without
being crushed because we are in Christ, all our life is in Christ. We don’t
have to be crushed to be pleasing to God, because Jesus Christ has borne all the
crushing that needs to be borne. Jesus Christ is the sweet-smelling aroma to
God.
Just
to be crystal clear, your “pleasingness” to God, your winning of God’s smile of
approval, does not come through being crushed into perfume. It comes by grace
alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Jesus has already done it all.
What the
Bible actually says about people who hurt other people
The saddest thing about this wrong teaching is that there are
people who love God who have been taught to think that the crushing being done
to them by another human being — the cruelty they’re experiencing, even sometimes
at the hands of those who claim to be servants of God — is
somehow from God Himself, so that He can “crush them,” “wreck them,” and
“consume them” in the process of making them into sweet perfume.
On the contrary, though, the truth is that God is opposed to the
wicked who harm others, and many Scriptures attest to that.
(A few are II Samuel 22:28; Psalm 10:17-18; Psalm 11:5; Psalm 37:9; Psalm
140:12; Psalm 103:6; Proverbs 6:16-19; and II Timothy 3:1-5.) When those who
claim to be servants of God harm others, we can see God’s attitude toward them
by reading the scathing warning He gives the leaders of Israel in Ezekiel 34.
What’s the
good news?
Here’s the joy for the people of God. Jesus
Christ bore all the crushing that needs to be borne in
order for the lives of His people to be a sweet-smelling fragrance before God.
It is all accomplished for us in Christ.
Now instead of crushed roses, we can be like trees planted by rivers
of water bringing forth fruit. We can be like branches drawing our
strength from the Vine.
God is opposed to the wicked who would oppress the defenseless. He
always views that crushing as wrong.
And finally,
Though there is suffering in
this life, some of it severe,
·
God provides a way of escape in times of testing (I Corinthians 10:13). He doesn’t
want us to suffer passively, but to escape cruel and dangerous situations if
possible, as David escaped Saul.
·
But even as we do that, we can be thankful in the
midst of suffering for doing right, because through it we will become stronger and develop
stronger character, and
with that stronger character will come the anticipation of God’s continued work
in us and His love poured out in us (Romans 5:2-5).
·
In our afflictions, our Lord provides comfort so we can then in turn comfort
others (II Corinthians 1:3-4). And the glory that is to be revealed in us is
greater than any suffering we endure (Romans 8:18, II Corinthians 4:16-17).
Instead of thinking about how our God needs to crush us in order
to make perfume, we can remember that He is perfectly pleased with
those who are in Christ, He weepswith us in
our suffering, He comforts us in our
afflictions, and He strengthens our faith as we
look to Him in the midst of trials.
That’s good news.
I’m Rebecca Davis, a writer, editor, wife,
mother, grandmother, speaker, friend, advocate for the oppressed, and lover of
Jesus who lives in Greenville, South Carolina.
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