In the next place our attention is called to a contrast, once again, between Martha and Mary. Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met Him, but Mary sat [still] in the house. The exercises they had passed through while waiting for the Lord’s response to their message are not described in words, but we may surely discern the effect of their exercises in their contrasted conduct. Martha had doubtless been tried as well as Mary, for the fact that they used the same words (vss. 21, 32) when they came into the Lord’s presence reveals that they had been perplexed by the Lord’s delay, and that they had spoken together of it, while bowed down in suspense and sorrow, but Martha had not yet reached the blessed end of the trial, for she is marked still by haste and, we may add, impatience. Mary, on the other hand, had learned her lesson, and thus she could calmly await the call of her Lord. Her sorrow was not gone, for her dearest earthly tie had been broken, and it was fitting that she should feel her bereavement, but her sorrow was now enlightened by assured confidence in the Lord, and she could consequently quietly sit in the house while Martha, with her eager impatience, went forth to meet Him. No doubt they were very different characters, and would be, even to the end, very different vessels. This, however, would not wholly account for the contrast; rather it was that, inasmuch as Mary had sat at the feet of Jesus and heard His word while Martha was cumbered with much serving, Mary had learned more than Martha of the heart of her Lord.
The grace of the Lord in dealing with Martha cannot well be passed over. Martha went and met Him, and apparently without a moment’s pause, her heart blurted out its impatience, and its ill-concealed reproach in the words, “Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.” This was true, for death could not have taken place in the presence of the Lord. In Martha’s lips, however, the truth was the expression of her complaint that the Lord had not been there before her brother died. Added to this, which plainly betrayed her state of soul, she ventured to say, in her ignorance of the true character of the Person of Him to whom she was speaking, and as if indicating the course which she thought He might now pursue, “But I know, that even now, whatsoever Thou wilt ask of God, God will give it Thee.” She had, therefore, faith, faith at least, in the Lord as having power with God as a prophet, for example, like Elisha had, but it is evident that she had no conception, even though she had accepted Him as God’s Christ, that she stood before the Son of God. How tenderly, notwithstanding, the Lord dealt with her weakness and lack of understanding! And how gently, stooping down to the state in which He found her, He led her on to the truth of what He was, that He in His own Person was both the resurrection and the life. “Thy brother,” He said, “shall rise again.” Yes, said Martha, “I know that he shall rise again...at the last day,” for she believed, with every godly Jew, that “at the last day” there would be a resurrection of the just. Thereupon, using even the weakness of His servant as the occasion, the Lord proclaimed to Martha, and to all His people through her, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.” Blessed is this revelation of the coming removal of the judgment of death that lay upon His people, and of life in resurrection in Him who would bear the judgment, and as the risen One to be the Life of all believers. One word more He uttered to Martha, “Believest thou this?” “Yea, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world”—that is, the Messiah according to the teaching of Psalm 2.