Mary was upon earth and Christ was about to be offered as the true Paschal Lamb, but in Mary’s heart the sentiment was energetic, that no place in earth or heaven was too exalted for Him who sat at the table with His own that evening in Bethany. Hence it was that Mary, to express this feeling, anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair, and as she did so, her whole soul bowed before Him in gratitude and adoration. Whether the whole truth of His glorious Person had yet dawned upon her, we know not, but the “instinct of affection” through which she had been led into the apprehension of His coming death, would also be used to enlarge her conceptions of the One who sat at the table before her eyes. She was indeed a true worshipper, and her overflowing heart poured forth its tribute of homage in the manner suited to the moment, as led, we must believe, by the Spirit of God. Overwhelmed with the vision of His grace and beauty, her heart absorbed in devotion to Him, and in communion with His own mind as to His rejection and death, she found an outlet for the emotions which filled her heart in breaking her alabaster box of very precious ointment of spikenard (Mark 14), and in pouring it on His head, as Mark says, and on His feet, as recorded by John. By this act she proclaimed that Christ was everything to her and that He was worthy of the most precious thing which a redeemed heart could bestow.
These considerations prepare us for the statement that the house was filled with the odor of the ointment. This was a matter of fact, but underlying the fact is the teaching that nothing is so fragrant to the heart of God, or to the hearts of the saints when in communion with Him, as an act of absorbing devotedness to Christ. Its odor steals abroad, like the dawning light of the morning, until it reaches all that are in the house, the habitation of God by the Spirit. Who, indeed, has not felt it in some feeble measure, when gathered with the saints around the Lord? Some note of praise has been struck by an adoring soul, which, like grateful incense ascending up to the Father, has filled, at the same time, every heart in the assembly with its blessed fragrance. For all time therefore it is true that, when a “Mary” anoints the feet of her Lord with her costly ointment, the house is filled with the odor of the ointment.