“The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him.” Was there to be no testimony to this deepest character of His glory? His grace had prepared a suited vessel for it in one who in heart entered into the true character of what was transpiring. It was Mary — she who had learned to know Him as no one else seemed to have known Him in the Gospels. Her heart anticipates what lay deepest in His heart, even before it had found expression in His words. The secret of the Lord was with Mary, as with all who fear Him, and so, with intelligence of the suited moment, she took the “ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair.” “Because of the savor of thy good ointment, thy name is as ointment poured forth.” So it was that day — “the house was filled with the odor of the ointment.”
The Lord’s Estimate
of Her Devotedness
But what is so precious here is the way our Lord expresses His estimate of the act of her devotedness, in contrast to the thoughts of His poor disciples who understood nothing. “They had indignation, saying, to what purpose is this waste?” Judas adding, “Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?” Then Jesus said, “Let her alone; against the day of My burying hath she kept this. For the poor always ye have with you; but Me ye have not always.” He will receive no more the anointing of our hands; He has passed beyond the reach of such, though not beyond the expression of our love. Yet, there is a sense in which His own will have Him forever and in a more blessed way than they had Him while He was yet with them upon earth. The part that Mary chose by His grace we know shall never be taken away from her. Still, there is a way in which we have Him now in this day of His rejection that we shall never have Him in glory. There is a fellowship of His sufferings, more intimate and sweeter, if possible, than the fellowship of His glory. What if we were to miss it? This is what affects my heart. If Mary had failed to seize that last night, to render love’s adoring testimony to His preciousness, she never could have recalled it through eternity. How exquisitely suited to the moment was that testimony to the perfect fragrance of His death before God, whom men counted worthy only of a malefactor’s cross! She had come beforehand to anoint Him for His burial, and how soon the opportunity would have been forever lost! It is not that love will not find suited ways of expressing itself to Him in the everlasting glory, but it will not be in the way in which He looks for it now, and misses it, if wanting.
The Awakening of Love
Has He not died and risen again to win our hearts for Himself? In Luke 7, He recounts every token of the sinful woman’s love, for it was precious to Him. Can we, as His forgiven ones, be known in a cold, heartless world as plainly as she —by love that seeks to lavish its expression on this precious Object? “To whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.” Not that the action of this dear woman in Luke 7 is to be confounded with the outwardly somewhat similar one of Mary of Bethany, as though it were of the same order of intelligence. But they were both the expression of love, of real devoted attachment to the person of the Lord Jesus, each in its own place and measure. The former was the first awakening of love, as when first He attracts the heart to Himself by all His blessed grace; the latter was the fruit of the deep-tried experience of what He is in Himself.
Perhaps we ask, How can we know what would suit Him now? Ah! love finds it out, because it studies its object, as Mary did, sitting at the feet of Jesus. Thus she gained the instinctive intelligence with which she acted. The possession of intelligence of the mind and will of the Lord is the firstfruit and proof of love, and love needs to be guided by the intelligence it thus gains in order to express itself acceptably to the Lord. Mary Magdalene needed it when she thought of carrying away the dead body of the Lord. But she loved Him, and this detained her in the place where she acquired the intelligence in the richest way. Then again, love has its own way of expressing itself, that no mere intelligence could imitate. But into how many innumerable details the principle enters, love finding its joyful liberty only in carrying out His will under His eye, in every particular of the life, love giving its peculiar character and acceptance to the obedience.
Our Estimate of Him
The very way we have Him now, in the presence of the world that has cast Him out, affords constant opportunities for our love to express itself. In the glory there will be no self to deny, no cross to take up, no world to refuse, no breaking of the dearest ties of kindred, no misjudgment of fellow-believers to face, no loss of any kind to encounter for love of Him. All hearts will flow together to Him there. Now these things test our estimate of Him and afford the privilege of proving what the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord is to our souls.
Alas! in the base treachery of our hearts it is too easy to escape it all. If you go with the ordinary profession of His name, use the security that infinite, sovereign grace has given you from judgment to come, to settle down at ease in the world that has rejected Him, do good to men, as with the ointment sold for so much and given to the poor, these things will gain for the Christian the favor and esteem of the world, and the reproach of Christ will be unknown. But at what incalculable loss His touching words remind us, “Me ye have not always.”
Our Opportunity
When the glory comes, “His servants shall serve Him,” perfectly then, as surely as we shall “see His face,” love finding new ways to express itself to its object in the glory, but if He came tonight to take us into it, never again would He call us to go forth to Him outside the camp bearing His reproach — never ask again, “This do in remembrance of Me,” leading our hearts to announce His death — never look for or receive from bridal affections formed by the Spirit the cry that bids Him “Come” — never look for us to be identified with His interests in the church and His testimony to the world. All this and much more is over forever and the opportunity past if we miss it now. “Me ye have not always.”
Oh, to know the power of these words to stir up our souls to more devotedness that will make the most of the days as they come, and so quickly passing, never to be recalled! Oh, to be found for Him, in the face of everything, accounting anything in which we taste the fellowship of His sufferings our greatest present gain and glory.
J. A. Trench, adapted