Mark 14:9

Mark 14:9 (R.V.)

Love to the Christ as a Person.

I. Looking at this incident closely, we find as its main characteristic that it was the expression of a feeling, and that it was intensely personal. This woman had come under a great sense of gratitude to Christ. He had become enshrined in her soul almost as God; nay, all her thoughts of Him were like her thoughts of God, except that their dread was softened by a human grace. It is not true, it is not an idea, that inspires her, but this Jesus Himself; and so upon Jesus Himself she lavishes her tribute of reverent love.

II. But this is a gospel to be preached in all the world; how shall it preach to us? We have no seen and present Lord to receive the raptures and gifts of our love. The outward parallel is not for us, but the inward parallel sets forth an unending relation and an unfaltering duty. Christ asked from men nothing of an external nature, but He steadily required their personal love and loyalty. He did not ask of any a place to lay His head, it mattered little if Simon asked Him to his feasts, but once there, it did matter whether Simon loved Him or not. Waiving all personal ministration, He yet claims personal love.

III. Let us see if Christ was mistaken in planting His system upon personal love and devotion to Himself. Or, more broadly, Why does this faith, that claims to be the world's salvation, wear this guise of personal relations? Simply because in no other way can man be delivered from his evil. In the ideas that the loud-voiced wisdom of the age would have Us believe to be the salvation of the world, God is driven farther and farther into unknowable heavens, the Christ is made to figure only on a dim and blurred page of history. The Faith that is to redeem the world must have a surer method, it must have a vitalising motive, and such a motive can proceed only from a person using the strongest force in a person love. The love we now render is the fidelity of our whole nature, the verdict of our intelligence, the assent of our conscience, the allegiance of our will, the loyalty of sympathetic conviction all-permeated with tender gratitude; but it is still personal, loving Him who loved us and gave Himself for us.

T. T. Munger, The Freedom of Faith,p. 109.

I. One lesson of this incident is, that we should not grudge any outlay where God and His glory are concerned; that we should be on our guard against a captious, withholding temper; against that temper which the disciples showed in their remark upon Mary's offering: "Why was this waste of the ointment made?"

II, Note the sense which Christ Himself entertains of such acts of devotion: "She hath wrought a good work on Me," etc. This, remember, is not the judgment of man. It is Christ's own view of an act which His disciples blamed as extravagant. He pronounces it a good act, and He declares the praise of it shall endure. And His words on this subject reach even to us. What He spoke of Mary's homage, He speaks doubt it not of all like generous free-giving in all after times. To such conduct He awards an everlasting memorial, a remembrance of the doers when they are dead, living on, age after age, in the hearts and on the lips, of their fellow-men. A life that never goes beyond the level of common practice, that is never quickened by any effort of unusual charity, or unusual self-denial; a life that even in its religion is a selfish life, that seeks its own and not the things which are Jesus Christ's, that knows nothing of His constraining love, that never contemplates the giving up of field, or house, or ease, or pleasure, or natural inclination, or party views, the better to advance His cause in the world; such a life is not, surely, the life that we can be content to lead. Certainly it is not the life exhibited for our pattern in the Gospel. It may be that the utmost we can accomplish will be small; it may be that our poor efforts to serve the Lord Christ will show as nothing, compared with what some of our kind have wrought; but this need not dishearten us. If we have done our best, "what we could," we shall have the seal of His approval; we shall have been faithful in our few things; and that fidelity we have His word for it will gain for us admission into the joy of our Lord.

R. D. B. Rawnsley, Sermons preached in Country Churches,p. 95.

References: Mark 14:12. A. Rowland, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxvii., p. 3.Mark 14:12. H. M. Luckock, Footprints of the Son of Man,p. 300. Mark 14:14. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xiii., No. 785; Ibid., Evening by Evening,p. 315.Mark 14:17. A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve,p. 371; W. Hanna, Our Lord's Life on Earth,p. 429. Mark 14:19. Preacher's Monthly,vol. iv., p. 163.