Mark 14:3 – “She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.”
Imagine…someone who went out of his or her way to do something for you that you can never repay them back. How would you feel? Would you try to repay them in some way or another, even though you know anything you do will never be equal the thing that that person did for you? That is, in fact, what Jesus did for Mary (the sister of Martha and Lazarus). We know in Luke 10:38-42 that Mary was captivated by Jesus’ teaching and cared deeply for him. But the thing that Jesus did for both Mary and Martha was He rose their brother from the back from the dead! How awesome that must have been especially for Mary who loved Jesus and her brother, because that is certainly something we do not have the power to do by our own strength. How could she repay Jesus, or show Him her appreciation and love? It was through her deep devotion that led her to take expensive perfume and anoint Jesus with it. It was pretty much all that she could do! (Mark 14:8)
Jesus did something even greater than raising Lazarus for you and me. He took the punishment for OUR sins on the cross, and there made atonement between us and God. He tore down the curtain separating us and God, and now, we get to worship God freely, because we are made righteous in His eyes through the blood of the perfect Lamb, Jesus Christ. Not only that, we receive the gift of salvation if we believe in what Jesus did, acknowledge how sinful we were, and place your faith in God. If you don’t understand what that means, I think it is time that you understand that God loves you so much that “he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) He did all this for you and me. What can we do to repay him? How can we repay him? Simple (even though it is quite hard…) - we must follow Jesus’ greatest two commandments that he gave us in Matthew 22:37-39 ” ‘Love the Lord your God with ALL your heart and with ALL your soul and with ALL your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ “ It is quite interesting how we can repay God for what he has done for us out of his great love for us, by loving him and others…
Actually, I feel I’m using the wrong word here, the word repay… repay means something we do out of obligation… We have to repay back all the money we took out from a loan from a bank, or repay damages done from our own accidents, or repay borrowed money from a friend. Those are all obligations that we don’t do out of love, but a sense of guilt almost, because we are indebted to them. If you understand that we don’t NEED to repay God back for what he has done for us, then you understand grace, something we’ve been given but do not deserve! (Not to be confused with mercy – NOT getting what we DO deserve…punishment for our sins.) Once you understand grace, you’ll have this sense of love within you and devotion like Mary had when she poured out perfume on the Jesus. Our actions are a result from devotion, and NOT obligation, and that is the type of love Jesus commands us to love our God and our neighbors with! It’s the type of love that builds a deeper and stronger relationship with God and others. It is the type of love that causes conviction and change in people’s hearts. It is the type of love that cannot die… so don’t keep THAT type of love in a box!