What an awful thing to resemble Judas Iscariot. He heard all the teaching of Christ, saw his wonderful works of compassion, saw his love, but he did not understand a thing. His heart was as hard as flint. He was far, far away, only serving his own interest with no interest in the forgiveness of sin or in personal conversion. Are any of us like that among God’s people: no belief, yet in church Sunday after Sunday, only interested in our own affairs, not in the living God and the salvation that he gives?
Some of the modern translations translate this differently, and they wreck it. They say something like, leave her alone so that she may keep it for the day of my burial. Now there is a manuscript, an ancient manuscript which puts it just like that. Our translators have considered another manuscript much more reliable which puts it the way we have it in the King James Version. So which is right? Well clearly this one. Because it is completely in line with what Matthew and Mark say. The unbelieving, liberal theologians have for many years said, ‘No, no, John is right, and Matthew and Mark are wrong.’ They say this because they do not believe in the inspiration and infallibility of Scripture, and they say, ’Yes, Matthew and Mark say, she poured all of it out and there was none left, and that she did it because she thought this was her only opportunity, because she would never be allowed to do it at his burial. But they were wrong, say the unbelieving theologians, and John is correcting them. So they choose the manuscript that suggests that Christ said, let her keep it until the day of my burial. But it is quite clear in Matthew that what she did, she did against his burial. She did not have any leftover. Mark makes it even more clear in Mark 14.8 – ‘She hath done what she could: she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying.’