One morning recently while reading on my knees from the 12th chapter of John, the blessed Spirit suddenly opened up to my heart a wondrously rich and soul-nourishing illumination of the supper which was made for the Savior in Bethany, just one week before his death. The three characters shine out with peculiar light as forming parts of one whole. Martha, Lazarus and Mary are each significant types, not so much of three different persons as of three different stages through which Jesus will lead a true believer that entertains him. And then the three actions of these three persons are very significant of the states through which we pass in the Christ-life.

Martha served, Lazarus sat, Mary anointed. We find as we progress in the life of the Spirit that we pass through the Martha life of diligent outward service, and then through the Lazarus state of death and burial and rising up into a life of quietness to sit at the table with Jesus, and then when Christ’s love rises to an overflow or a burning flame in our hearts, the Mary state of pouring ourselves out in extravagant devotion, and the breaking of costly alabaster boxes. It takes all of these three forms of service to constitute our full banquet with Jesus. They are worth analyzing and applying to our hearts.

1. Martha served. Martha had the faculty of governing, managing details, of industry and taste, an eye to outward duty, exact method, civil courtesy, social decorum, and great punctuality in performing outward duties. She loved to serve. She had more joy in waiting on the table than in sitting with the guests. It was the gift of her nature, and the element in which her mind moved. Her outward service typifies a whole field in the religious life, which every true Christian must learn in the beginnings of his experience. Outward acts of service lie at the basis of Christian life. The act of bowing on the knees, praying audibly with the tongue, reading the Scriptures, attending places of worship, taking up the outward duties of a Christian in detail, and perseverance, all this seems so strange to a penitent, and so new, and sometimes a little awkward to a young convert. But all this is very needful, and unless these outwards acts of service are entered upon, with the distinct determination of persevering along all lines of known duty, there will be no firm basis for higher experiences. Now the ruin of many young beginners is to get their eyes on the mere performing of these various duties instead of getting their whole attention fastened upon the lovely Jesus.

The reason why Martha served with such assiduous taste and such swift decorum, neglecting nothing, anticipating every need of the occasion, was because her thoughts were all the time fixed upon the blessed One for whom all these outward duties were being done. Had she performed all those outwards acts with her eyes fixed merely on the actions, its true name then would have been drudgery. But when those acts had direct reference to one she so ardently adored, then the duties flowed from her deft fingers as sweetly and easily as raindrops from an April cloud. The identical same act may be a drudgery, or a devotion, according to the inner soul that vitalizes the act. Thousands of young Christians have their attention directed so exclusively to the mere performance of certain church duties, simply as duties, without being led to do all duties out of a personal affection for Jesus, that their service for God has no charm or drawing magnetism in it, hence it becomes stale and wearisome. No outward service will have that firm, outward diligence of Martha to propel its way through a thousand resisting mediums, unless it flows from individual love for Jesus. Nevertheless there must be a conscientious thoroughness in all outward obligations and duties, financially, socially, devotionally, for these things make up the body of religious life of which personal love for God is the warm, inward soul which animates the body. Unless we know how to serve with the true, humble, painstaking spirit of a real servant, we shall never reach the higher altitudes typified by Martha’s brother and sister.

2. Lazarus sat at the table with Jesus. This presents us with a form of experience which is the appropriate outcome of death and resurrection. Lazarus was a quiet, reticent man, and with a nature peculiarly fitted to emblematize all freedom from worry, suspicion or precipitancy. His words are not recorded. He was of a passive more than of an active nature. He utterly yielded himself up to the sway of God’s providences, and was acted on more than acted. God’s dealings with him in allowing him to die, and be buried, and then raised to life, and then untrammeled from grave clothes, and then sitting at the table with Jesus, is all in perfect accord with the makeup and gifts of the man. It is all a beautiful mosaic, wrought in the black colors of sickness and death, and in the bright colors of life and an evening banquet, in which the Holy Spirit has beautifully spelled out the form of that heavenly life of purity and restfulness of soul. Lazarus was sick and died. He had passed through the strange mystical valley, had seen all creation fade from his vision, had entered the divine world, and seen the things of God.

In like manner, we are to add to the Martha service that unquestioning yielding up to all of our Father’s unknown will to enter the Lazarus form of life. We, too, must grow sick of ourselves. We must faint under the burden of our internal heart-leprousy, our carnal nature, and self-will must expire; we must close our eyes in a mystical death, upon all the things of earth, and open our vision to the real life of heaven. We, too, must enter the silent grave where we see ourselves as utterly nothing, and where we are shrouded about with the mantle of God’s will.

When Christ came to raise Lazarus, Martha thought the decay of the body would render it too offensive to have the door removed from the sepulcher. That lovely brother had become painfully offensive in the grave. And so in a very significant manner when we yield ourselves up to be utterly crucified in our nature, God deals with us according to his unsearchable purposes and leads us into a death to sin and the world, and then he lays us into a silent grave, where we become like dead men out of mind, and where, alas, we become very offensive to those still living in the world, and where even our loved ones feel like keeping a distance from us. All true saints must pass through life, where they become sick of themselves, and then become loathsome, or contemptible, to unsanctified human nature. It was out of this death and resurrection experience that there came to Lazarus that deep, unruffled stillness of soul, that reticence of speech, that longing, dreamy, far-away look in the eye, as if he saw perpetually the outspreading blaze of the divine presence, and the sweet splendors of the heavenly world, where he had spent four ecstatic days. So the very act of sitting with Christ at the table sets forth great calmness and restfulness of spirit. He had gotten through with wrestlings of self, the tossings of a fevered will, death and the grave had thoroughly conquered him, self-righteousness, self-esteem, self-seeking, self-resentment, self-agitation had been left in the grave, and henceforth he was the deep, quiet, loving channel for the outflow of a real heavenly life. All this must be true in us, if we indeed and in truth sit at supper with our Lord. If our nature is not perfectly conquered how can we quietly sit with divine restfulness and gaze upon our Savior with ease and freedom?

We are told that by reason of Lazarus being raised from death, many of the Jews went away and believed on Jesus. Our power to cause others to believe on Jesus depends on what we are in the very core and disposition of our spirit. There is a supernatural impression that flows from a soul that has been thoroughly crucified with Jesus and raised into a state of heavenly love and peacefulness of heart and life.

Let us settle it, that to sit with Jesus in real, loving fellowship is not a mere thing of option, but is a thing of profound interior fitness of nature. There must be the bringing of the soul through whatever steps of trial or losses, or crucifixions, or utter self-abandonment to God, where it is conquered, washed white and clean, softened into tender love, and hushed into a divine stillness, and had the very fountains of being flooded with Jesus, to prepare it to take that seat at that table, and eat with that holy, infinite One.

3. “Mary took 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 odor of the ointment.” This presents a still higher form of the Christ-life, that overflowing, outpouring extravagance of love service, which brooks no cost, breaks alabaster boxes, which runs out in missionary zeal, and a sweet, holy frenzy of devotion to Jesus. Mary was the fitting character for this type of service. Her heart was utterly abandoned to Jesus. She seemed to despise all other things in comparison with him. She sank at his feet and drank in the deep, ocean meaning of his words, and gazed into the depths of his Spirit, and the magnitudes of his coming kingdom, until she saw the contemptible littleness of all that the world prizes, until she was well-nigh beside herself with divine fervor, and she yearned to give the highest possible expression of her personal love for the Master. Her act at the banquet beautifully illustrates those believers who reach the highest state of divine contemplation, and whose love becomes a burning flame. Her act is so significant, we need to analyze it.

In the first place it was prophetic. Jesus says she anointed Him for His burial. Just one week from that time Christ was buried, and although Mary probably little dreamed of Christ being crucified so soon, yet the Holy Spirit impelled her to act wiser than she knew, and as love can see farther than anything else, she doubtless felt a great, sad premonition and wished to show the Master a last signal expression of her unutterable affection for Him. This is still true of souls who enter her state of all-consuming love for God. They have divine premonitions concerning the true body of Christ, they discover the subtle drifting of spiritual or satanic currents, they have a deep instinctive feeling whether others are advancing or receding in the divine life, they detect the dark and cool shadow of approaching crucifixion and trouble, they have forethrobbings of the coming of the Jesus, and prophetic glimpses shoot through their mind of the majestic sweetness and glory of Christ’s coming reign. They are in a prophetic region of life and often speak or do things far more wise and penetrating than ever their intellects could calculate.

In the second place, there was not the least reserve for self in any way. In the account given by Matthew and Mark, they tell us this banquet was given in the house of Simon the leper, and Marks tells us that Mary broke the alabaster box containing the sweet perfume that the box might never be used for any other purpose. This is the outpouring of life to the uttermost, that asks no pay, that has no reservations in any direction, but a fountain of love, bent only on expressing itself at all costs, all hazards, even though the casket of life should be shattered to pieces in the outflow. To reach a state of constant, flaming love for God, we must be willing to break all the boxes in which is bound the subtle essence of our lives. Sometimes it is a box of some secret, almost unknown, reserve in the will, a half timid, half fearful holding back ourselves from some line of suffering, or from some lonely and strange-looking path, or from some heroic duty, or from some overwhelming manifestation of God. There are often scarcely perceived and deep reservations, even in very good people, from a boundless abandonment to God. This is a box to be broken.

Another is the social box, our standing with friends. Every saint who ascends the spicy mountains of burning love and holy contemplation will find at every epoch in their experience that they have to snap some social cords, and over and over again break some beautiful white alabaster encasement of human esteem, and the judgment of dear friends, in order to pour out the last drop of loving obedience at the feet of our blessed Jesus. Some must utterly break the financial box and lovingly consent to a life of poverty; nay, even rejoice in being poor, that thereby the pure spikenard of the Christ-life will have no hiding place, but all poured out in a life of faith on all lines: Others must break the box of human affection, and have all earthly loves so rent asunder, or utterly shut off, as to have no other love but the all-melting, spotless, boundless, disinterested love of God flowing through them without hindrance.

Mary lived to see that her alabaster box was a fitting type of the spotless body of Jesus, which was utterly broken; and the spikenard of His life was poured out to the last drop for her redemption. It is an axiom that the very life of the infinite Christ is poured through us in proportion as we are broken, and even after we have known great and wonderful operations of the Spirit, there will often be forms of will or desire, or religious ambition that seem as pure to us as alabaster, but burning love will in its extravagance break them all for Jesus.

In the third place the ointment was very costly Estimating a Roman penny to be fifteen cents of American money, the little box of nard was worth about fifty dollars. It resembled the attar of roses. Pure, ardent love gives its very best and delights in what seems to others a reckless waste of itself for the glory of God. There is a place of personal love for Jesus where the soul positively enjoys fasting in prayer, and self-denial, and almost goes wild in a holy ignoring of self that it may pour the very essence of its inner heart out to the Lord. It always puts God first and gives Him the best.

A fourth feature is that the house was filled with the odor of the ointment. In like manner, when Christ broke his alabaster-like body the whole earth and all heaven was filled with the perfume of His gentle, loving spirit. In the same way it is as we break the boxes of our human nature and self-love, there is liberated from us the very odor of the Christ nature. The Holy Spirit tells us that the very name of a divinely good person is like ointment poured forth. The most fragrant characters in the world are those who most thoroughly broke themselves, and poured their life out most extravagantly for the Lord. But see, in wiping His feet with her hair the perfume came back upon her own head. What a world of truth lies in this. Those who give all receive the most. What we pour out in loving service to God now will some day settle back as sweet odor upon our heads. The compensations of God are infallible, and minute, and as far-reaching as the white, shining years of eternity.

The last feature of her act was, it utterly shocked the conservative and calculating spirit of some of the apostles. Judas was the principal critic but the other evangelists tell us that some other apostles found fault with Mary’s excess. Those who love God perfectly will always shock the conservatism of colder disciples. And even among the holy ones, those who get a furnace experience of burning love must endure the criticism of God’s people who cannot fully understand the seeming waste and extravagant breaking of many precious things for what seems a mere sentiment. Yet this hot-hearted pouring of ourselves out on all lines for Jesus, turns out in the end to be the very wisdom of God, the discretion of heaven, and is rewarded by being rehearsed wherever the gospel is preached. This is the last and sweetest stage of the Christ-life on earth.