Who can contemplate the unspeakable costliness of that precious gift of God which we have in Christ Jesus, without feeling the heart stirred to desire that true costliness might more characterize our service and our praise? " While the King sitteth at his table, my spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof," says the bride in the Song of songs: and Mary the sister of Martha purposed that her King and her Lord should so be honored at the feast in Bethany recorded in John 12, her service consisting in anointing His head and His feet. It was a sorrowful service, for it had reference to His burial: yet it was also a joyful service, for it was the outcome of a love that stayed not to count the value of her offering. It was likewise a costly service in the estimate of the blessed Lord, for it was made precious by the love that could but give its best, yet counted that as far too small. God left it to Judas to tell us its value.
We would press costliness in service as a point needing to be taken more into account in these busy days in which much is done at little cost. It might be well had we some enemy to show us the absolute value and real cost of much that we do; he might thereby help us more than many a friend. In the service of our blessed Lord there was a costliness which we little consider. There was costliness in His entire consecration to God costliness in His daily toil of walking, of speaking, of suffering, and of sympathy; costliness in His nightly vigils of sleepless prayings and untold tears; costliness in His bruisings, buffetings, and temptations under the power of the prince of darkness who had authority to bruise His heel.
There was much of this costliness of service in the lifelong ministry of the Apostle Paul, who, like David, would not offer to his God " burnt-offerings without cost " (1 Chron. 21: 24). It may often be said of much that is now done and of much that is given for the work of God-it " cost me nothing "; and when such is the case can we wonder if nothing comes out of it to the glory of God? Need we be surprised that what costs us little or nothing is valued as little or nothing by Him to Whom it is given?
It is not the intrinsic value of the gift, or the cost of the service, that is the measure of its preciousness to God, any more than it is to us; but the preciousness is according to the wholeheartedness that lays the heart on the altar first, and then places all it possesses on the top of it. These matters should be well pondered by us; their importance is not to be realized by simply speaking to one another of our heavenly calling and our future hopes, but by going with Christ into the garden of Gethsemane and standing near Him on Calvary.
The costliness of the love of Christ had filled Marv's heart, and the result, the necessary result, was the costliness of her service to her Lord. Who can tell His appreciation of it, or fathom the deep meaning of those words in His holy lips, " Let her alone; why trouble ye her? she bath wrought a GOOD WORK on Me "? (Mark 14: 6.)
We are in danger of allowing the glory too exclusively to occupy our thoughts; but if our spiritual affections are to be deepened and heightened we must dwell much on Calvary, and then loss will be gain, and the cost of labor a joy too deep to forego. Thus our service, if it is to be Christlike, must become more costly to us, and it will then become more precious to Him, and more blessed to His Church and to the world.
" For Thee, Lord, I would labor, I would live.
For Thee would spend my every passing hour
Myself, my time, my treasures I would give—
A witness of Thy love's constraining power."