Complete Total Devotion

 John 12:3

 

 Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment.

A...s John 12 begins, Jesus returns to Bethany for dinner with Mary, Martha, their resurrected brother Lazarus, and others. Suddenly, Mary does something very dramatic in verse 3: "Mary took a pound of very costly oil of spikenard, anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair." This was no small act. Verse 5 tells us the perfume was worth a year's wages!

Judas Iscariot, who would betray Jesus in less than a week, seems to have a very godly response to this act, saying, "That perfume . . . should have been sold and the money given to the poor" (verse 5 NLT). Jesus replies to Judas in verses 7–8 by saying, "Let her alone; she has kept this for the day of My burial. For the poor you have with you always, but Me you do not have always."

This reminds us that God sees things differently than we do. It's worth noting that every time we read of Mary in Scripture, she is sitting at Jesus' feet. Perhaps this is why she had such deep spiritual insight. Mary seemed to grasp a truth that was largely missed by the others: Jesus had to die. Not only did she have a unique understanding of who He was, but she also gave Him a wonderful gift—the most precious thing she owned.

Mary was moved to do something unusual, outstanding, and even extravagant to demonstrate her total devotion to Christ. She recognized that Jesus was going to Jerusalem to be betrayed and crucified. Although He had said so very bluntly on previous occasions, the disciples had simply missed it.

How is it that Mary had this incredible spiritual perception? Perhaps it was because of her willingness to set aside everything to be close to Him, to stop what she was doing, choose what was better, and simply sit at His feet. You may be thinking, "But I don't know what it means to 'sit at His feet.'"

Mary’s action in anointing Jesus’ feet is interpreted by Jesus as preparation for his burial. In this regard it is interesting that John is careful to point out in verse 3 that it was Jesus’ feet that she anointed. Normally one would not anoint the feet of a living person (rather the head—cf. Mk 14:3) but one could anoint the feet of a corpse while preparing it for burial. Thus Mary performed (unconsciously) a prophetic or symbolic action—one which Jesus understood but which the disciples almost certainly did not at the time.

If you, like Mary, want to be a spiritually insightful person, then you must learn to be a spiritually listening person. For example, you need to draw near to God in prayer asking Him to speak to you. You need to read the Bible believing it is the very Word of God. You need to listen to the sermon at church, expecting God to speak through it. For Mary, spending time at Jesus' feet changed her perspective, and she wanted to do something for Him. She wanted to show her love in a tangible way. And when you have truly been sitting at His feet, you will want to serve Him too. With a note characteristic of someone who was there and remembered, the Evangelist adds that the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil. In the later rabbinic literature, “The fragrance of good oil is diffused from the bedroom to the dining hall, but a good name is diffused from one end of the world to the other.” If such a saying were known in the first century, this might be John’s way of indicating that Mary’s act of devotion would be spoken of throughout the entire world.