Mary Anoints Jesus

12 Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.^{(A) 2} There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him.^{(B) 3} Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’s feet, and wiped them^[a] with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.^{(C) 4} But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, ⁵ “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” ⁶ (He said this not because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) ⁷ Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it^[b] so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.^{(D) 8} You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”^(E)

⁴ even though I, too, have reason for confidence in the flesh.

If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: ⁵ circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee;^{(A) 6} as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

⁷ Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.^{(B) 8} More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ^{(C) 9} and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law but one that comes through faith in Christ,^[a] the righteousness from God based on faith.^{(D) 10} I want to know Christ^[b] and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, ¹¹ if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.^(E)

Pressing toward the Goal

¹² Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal,^[c] but I press on to lay hold of that for which Christ^[d] has laid hold of me.^{(F) 13} Brothers and sisters, I do not consider that I have laid hold^[e] of it, but one thing I have laid hold of: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,^{(G) 14} I press on toward the goal, toward the prize of the heavenly^[f] call of God in Christ Jesus.^(H)