Twelve Extraordinary Women, Week 23

THE CONFLICT BETWEEN THEM

Was Martha’s frustration at Mary justified? At first, she probably tried to hint in a “subtle” way that she needed help, by making extra noise—maybe moving some pots and pans around with a little more vigor than the situation really required, and then by letting some utensils or cookware clatter together loudly in a washbasin. Martha might have cleared her throat or exhaled a few times loudly enough to be heard in the next room. Anything to remind Mary that she needed and expected a little help. When all of that failed, she probably tried to peek around the corner or walk briskly through to the dining room, hoping to catch Mary’s eye. In the end, however, she just gave up all pretense of subtlety or civility and aired her grievance against Mary right in front of Jesus. In fact, she complained to Him and asked Him to intervene and set Mary straight.

Jesus’ reply must have startled Martha. It didn’t seem to have occurred to her that she might be the one in the wrong, but the little scene earned her the gentlest of admonitions from Jesus. Luke’s account ends there, so we’re probably safe to conclude that the message penetrated straight to Martha’s heart and had exactly the sanctifying effect Christ’s words always have on those who love Him.

In the later incident recorded in John 12, where Mary anointed Jesus’ feet, Martha once again is seen in the role of server. But this time Judas was the one who complained.

John 12:4–5 ESV

4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was about to betray him), said, 5 “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?”

He apparently tried his best to drum up a general outcry against Mary’s extravagance and managed to stir some expressions from some of the other disciples. But Martha wisely seems to have held her peace this time. She no longer seemed resentful of Mary’s devotion to Christ. Martha herself loved Christ no less than Mary did, I believe. He clearly loved them both deeply.

Some important lessons emerge from Jesus’ reprimand of Martha. We would all do well to heed these admonitions.

For reference, in today’s money 300 denarii is the equivalent of $22,500.

Now, when Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea anointed Jesus’ body with 75 lbs of myrrh and aloes. The value of the 75 pounds of aloes and myrrh in today's market has been valued at $150,000-$200,000. Normal Jewish burials called for five pounds of spices ($10,000-13,500).

John 19:39–40 ESV

39 Nicodemus also, who earlier had come to Jesus by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds in weight. 40 So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews.

PREFERENCE OF OTHERS OVER SELF

Jesus’ gentle admonition to Martha is first of all a reminder that we should honor others over ourselves. Scripture elsewhere says, “Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another” (Rom. 12:10 NKJV). “Be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility, for ‘God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble’ ” (1 Peter 5:5 NKJV). “Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others” (Phil. 2:3–4 NKJV).

Humility had been a constant theme in Jesus’ teaching, and a difficult lesson for most of His disciples to learn. Even on the night of Jesus’ betrayal, each of the disciples had ignored basic hospitality rather than take a servant’s role and wash the others’ feet (John 13:1–7).

In the Luke 10 account, Martha’s external behavior at first appeared to be true servanthood. She was the one who put on the apron and went to work in the task of serving others. But her treatment of Mary soon revealed a serious defect in her servant’s heart. She allowed herself to become censorious and sharp-tongued. Such words in front of other guests were certain to humiliate Mary. Martha either gave no thought to the hurtful effect of her words on her sister, or she simply didn’t care.

Furthermore, Martha was wrong in her judgment of Mary. She assumed Mary was being lazy. Did Martha imagine that she, rather than Christ, was Mary’s true master?

In reality, Mary was the one whose heart was in the right place. Her motives and desires were more commendable than Martha’s. Jesus knew it, even though no mere mortal could ever make that judgment by observing the external behavior of the two women. But Jesus knew it because He knew the hearts of both women.

Martha’s behavior shows how subtly and sinfully human pride can corrupt even the best of our actions. What Martha was doing was by no means a bad thing. She was waiting on Christ and her other guests. In a very practical and functional sense, she was acting as servant to all, just as Christ had so often commanded. She no doubt began with the best of motives and the noblest of intentions.

But the moment she stopped listening to Christ and made something other than Him the focus of her heart and attention, her perspective became very self-centered. At that point, even her service to Christ became tainted with self-absorption and spoiled by a very uncharitable failure to assume the best of her sister. Martha was showing an attitude of sinful pride that made her susceptible to several other kinds of evil as well: anger, resentment, jealousy, distrust, a critical spirit, judgmentalism, and unkindness. All of that flared up in Martha in a matter of minutes.

Worst of all, Martha’s words impugned the Lord Himself: “Lord, do You not care … ?” (Luke 10:40 NKJV).

Luke 10:40 ESV

40 But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.”

Did she really imagine that He did not care? She certainly knew better. But Martha’s thoughts and feelings had become too self-focused. Because of that, she also fell into an all-too-common religious trap described by Paul in his letter to the Corinthians: “They, measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise” (2 Cor. 10:12 NKJV). She turned her attention from Christ and began watching Mary with a critical eye. Naturally, it began to ruin the whole evening for Martha.

Mary, by contrast, was so consumed with thoughts of Christ that she became completely oblivious to everything else. She sat at His feet and listened to Him intently, absorbing His every word and nuance. She was by no means being lazy. She simply understood the true importance of this occasion. The Son of God Himself was a guest in her home. Listening to Him and worshiping Him were at that moment the very best use of Mary’s energies and the one right place for her to focus her attention.

One thing that stood out about Mary of Bethany was her keen ability to observe and understand the heart of Christ. Mary’s temperament seemed naturally more contemplative than Martha’s. In Luke 10, she wanted to listen intently to Jesus, while Martha bustled around making preparations to serve the meal. In John 11, when Jesus arrived after Lazarus had already died, Martha ran out of the house to meet Him, but Mary remained in the house, immersed in grief (John 11:20). She was absorbed, as usual, in deep thoughts. People like Mary are not given to sudden impulse or shallow activity. Yet while Jesus had to coax a confession of faith from Martha (vv. 23–27)—and even that was pretty shaky (v. 39)—Mary simply fell at His feet in worship (v. 32).

Mary seemed to be able to discern Jesus’ true meaning even better than any of the twelve disciples. Her gesture of anointing Him in preparation for His burial at the beginning of that final week in Jerusalem shows a remarkably mature understanding. That was the fruit of her willingness to sit still, listen, and ponder. It was the very thing that always made Mary such a sharp contrast to Martha, whose first inclination was usually to act—or react. (Martha had a lot in common with Peter in that regard.)

If Martha had truly preferred Mary over herself, she might have seen in Mary a depth of understanding and love for Christ that surpassed even her own. She could have learned much from her more quiet, thoughtful sister. But not right now. Martha had a table to set, a meal to get out of the oven, and “many things” she was “worried and troubled about” (Luke 10:41 NKJV).

Luke 10:41 ESV

41 But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things,

Before she knew it, her resentment against Mary had built up, and she could no longer restrain herself. Her public criticism of Mary was an ugly expression of pride.

PRIORITY OF WORSHIP OVER SERVICE

It’s interesting to read this narrative and try to imagine how the average person might respond if placed in a situation like Martha’s. My strong suspicion is that many women would be inclined to sympathize with Martha, not Mary. After all, it would normally be considered rude to let your sister do all the hard work in the kitchen while you sit chatting with guests.

So in a real sense, Martha’s feelings were natural and somewhat understandable. That may be one reason Jesus’ rebuke was so mild. In normal circumstances, any older sister would think it obligatory for the younger sister to help in serving a meal to guests. In other words, what Martha expected Mary to do was, in itself, perfectly fine and good.

Nevertheless, what Mary was doing was better still. She had “chosen that good part” (Luke 10:42 NKJV). She had discovered the one thing needful: true worship and devotion of one’s heart and full attention to Christ. That was a higher priority even than service, and the good part she had chosen would not be taken away from her, even for the sake of something as gracious and beneficial as helping Martha prepare Jesus a meal. Mary’s humble, obedient heart was a far greater gift to Christ than Martha’s well-set table.

This establishes worship as the highest of all priorities for every Christian. Nothing, including even service rendered to Christ, is more important than listening to Him and honoring Him with our hearts. Remember what Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well: God is seeking true worshipers (John 4:23). Christ had found one in Mary. He would not affirm Martha’s reprimand of her, because it was Mary, not Martha, who properly understood that worship is a higher duty to Christ than service rendered on His behalf.

It is a danger, even for people who love Christ, that we not become so concerned with doing things for Him that we begin to neglect hearing Him and remembering what He has done for us. We must never allow our service for Christ to crowd out our worship of Him. The moment our works become more important to us than our worship, we have turned the true spiritual priorities on their heads.

In fact, that tendency is the very thing that is so poisonous about all forms of pietism and theological liberalism. Whenever you elevate good deeds over sound doctrine and true worship, you ruin the works too. Doing good works for the works’ sake has a tendency to exalt self and depreciate the work of Christ. Good deeds, human charity, and acts of kindness are crucial expressions of real faith, but they must flow from a true reliance on God’s redemption and His righteousness. After all, our own good works can never be a means of earning God’s favor; that’s why in Scripture the focus of faith is always on what God has done for us, and never on what we do for Him (Rom. 10:2–4). Observe any form of religion where good works are ranked as more important than authentic faith or sound doctrine, and you’ll discover a system that denigrates Christ while unduly magnifying self.

Not that Martha was guilty of gross self-righteousness. We shouldn’t be any more harsh in our assessment of her than Christ was. She loved the Lord. Her faith was real, but by neglecting the needful thing and busying herself with mere activity, she became spiritually unbalanced. Her behavior reminds us that a damaging spirit of self-righteousness can slip in and contaminate even the hearts of those who have sincerely embraced Christ as their true righteousness. Martha’s harshness toward Mary exposed precisely that kind of imbalance in her own heart.

Jesus’ gentle words of correction to Martha (as well as His commendation of Mary) set the priorities once more in their proper order. Worship (which is epitomized here by listening intently to Jesus’ teachings) is the one thing most needed. Service to Christ must always be subordinate to that.

FAITH OVER WORKS

A third vital spiritual principle goes hand in hand with the priority of worship over service and is so closely related to it that the two actually overlap. This third principle is the truth (taught from the beginning to the end of Scripture) that what we believe is ultimately more crucial than what we do.

Martha’s “much serving” was a distraction from the “one thing” that was really needed—listening to and learning from Jesus. Religious works often have a sinister tendency to eclipse faith itself. Proper good works always flow from faith and are the fruit of it. What we do is vital, because that is the evidence that our faith is living and real (James 2:14–26). But faith must come first and is the only viable foundation for true and lasting good works. All of that is wrapped up in the truth that works are not the instrument of justification; faith is (Rom. 4:4–5).

Martha seems to have forgotten these things momentarily. She was acting as if Christ needed her work for Him more than she needed His work on her behalf. Rather than humbly fixing her faith on the vital importance of Christ’s work for sinners, she was thinking too much in terms of what she could do for Him.

Again, this seems to be the natural drift of the human heart. We wrongly imagine that what we do for Christ is more important than what He has done for us. Every major spiritual decline in the history of Christianity has come when the church has lost sight of the primacy of faith and begun to stress works instead. Virtually every serious doctrinal deviation throughout church history has had this same tendency at its core—beginning with the error of the Judaizers, who insisted that an Old Covenant ritual (circumcision) was essential for justification. They denied that faith alone could be instrumental in justification, and that undermined the very foundation of the gospel.

Human instinct seems to tell us that what we do is more important than what we believe. But that is a false instinct, the product of our fallen self-righteousness. It is a totally wrong way of thinking—sinfully wrong. We must never think more highly of our works for Christ than we do of His works on our behalf.

Of course, such a thought would never consciously enter Martha’s mind. She loved Christ. She genuinely trusted Him, although her faith had moments of weakness. Still, on this occasion, she allowed her anxiety about what she must do for Christ to overwhelm her gratitude over what He would do for her.

I’m very grateful that Christ’s rebuke of Martha was a gentle one. I must confess that it is very easy for me to identify with her. I love the privilege of serving the Lord, and He has blessed me with more than enough to stay busy. It is tempting at times to become swept up in the activity of ministry and forget that faith and worship must always have priority over work. In these hectic times, we all need to cultivate more of Mary’s worshipful, listening spirit and less of Martha’s scrambling commotion.

Martha and Mary also remind us that God uses all kinds of people. He has gifted us differently for a reason, and we’re not to despise one another or look at others with contempt, just because we have differing temperaments or contrasting personalities.

Martha was a noble and godly woman with a servant’s heart and a rare capacity for work. Mary was nobler still, with an unusual predisposition for worship and wisdom. Both were remarkable in their own ways. If we weigh their gifts and their instincts together, they give us a wonderful example to follow. May we diligently cultivate the best instincts of both of these extraordinary women.

MacArthur, John F., Jr. 2005. Twelve Extraordinary Women: How God Shaped Women of the Bible and What He Wants to Do with You. Nashville, TN: Nelson Books.