This is the season for giving gifts. We give gifts to others to show them that we love them.  Ultimately, we give because God gave us the very best gift, Jesus. He came to pay for our sins and show us the depth of His love.

Did you know that Jesus received gifts? We know that shortly after His birth He received the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh from the wise men. But did you know that several days before His death He received another gift? Matthew 26:6-14, Mark 14: 3-9, and John 12: 1-8 record that while Jesus was at Bethany, in the house of Simeon the leper, Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, took an alabaster flask of very expensive ointment, pure nard, and anointed Jesus’s head and wiped his feet with her hair.

What type of gift was this?

• It was a very expensive gift.  Both the alabaster flask and the pure nard were very costly. This gift was worth more than a year’s wages.
• It was a precious gift. “Early in the first century Pliny the Elder remarked that ‘the best ointment is preserved in alabaster.’ The value of the perfume, and its identification as nard, suggests that it was a family heirloom that was passed on from one generation to another, from mother to daughter.” (Lane)
• It involved a total sacrifice. The neck of the bottle had to be broken to extract the nard. Once given, there was no getting it back.
• It was a gift given with deep perception. Mary had listened to Jesus’s teaching. She had heard him say that He would be mocked, scourged, and crucified. She knew in her soul that He would die. She wanted to honor Him in some way. (Enduring Word)
• It was given in humility and total abandonment to her Lord. Women didn’t normally loosen their hair. Yet Mary did, and even used it to wipe Jesus’s feet. (Pulpit Commentary)
• It was a gift of utter devotion given out of love for her Lord. She wanted to show Him the depth of her love. So Mary offered to Jesus a gift that was very precious to her; a costly family heirloom. She broke it and gave it all to Jesus, wiping his feet with her hair.

Jesus saw her love. He saw her heart. Jesus honored her.

What gift do we have for Christ this Christmas? Are we willing to offer Him a heart of love and devotion? Are we willing to give ourselves to Him in total abandonment? He did that for us when He came to earth to pay for our sins. Can we not do the same?

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