13. THE TRANSFIGURATION
Matt. 17:1-13; Mark 9:2-13; Luke 9:28-36.
The transfiguration is one of those passages in
the Saviour's earthly history which an expositor would rather pass over in
reverent silence. For such silence the same apology might be pleaded which is
so kindly made in the Gospel narrative for Peter's foolish speech concerning
the three tabernacles: "He wist not what to say." Who does know what to say any
more than he? Who is able fully to speak of that wondrous night-scene among the
mountains,[13.1] during which heaven was for a few brief moments let down to
earth, and the mortal body of Jesus being transfigured shone with celestial
brightness, and the spirits of just men made perfect appeared and held converse
with Him respecting His approaching passion, and a voice came forth from the
excellent glory, pronouncing Him to be God's well-beloved Son? It is too high
for us, this august spectacle, we cannot attain unto it; its grandeur oppresses
and stupefies; its mystery surpasses our comprehension; its glory is ineffable.
Therefore, avoiding all speculation, curious questioning, theological
disquisition, and ambitious word-picturing in connection with the remarkable
occurrence here recorded, we confine ourselves in this chapter to the humble
task of explaining briefly its significance for Jesus Himself, and its lesson
for His disciples.
The "transfiguration," to be understood, must be
viewed in connection with the announcement made by Jesus shortly before it
happened, concerning His death. This it evident from the simple fact, that the
three evangelists who relate the event so carefully note the time of its
occurrence with reference to that announcement, and the conversation which
accompanied it. All tell how, within six or eight days thereafter,[13.2] Jesus
took three of His disciples, Peter, James, and John, and brought them into an
high mountain apart, and was transfigured before them. The Gospel historians
are not wont to be so careful in their indications of time, and their minute
accuracy here signifies in effect: "While the foregoing communications and
discourses concerning the cross were fresh in the thoughts of all the parties,
the wondrous events we are now to relate took place." The relative date, in
fact, is a finger post pointing back to the conversation on the passion, and
saying: "If you desire to understand what follows, remember what went
before."
This inference from the note of time given by
all the evangelists is fully borne out by a statement made by Luke alone,
respecting the subject of the conversation on the holy mount between Jesus and
His celestial visitants. "And," we read, "behold, there talked with Him two
men, which were Moses and Elias; who appeared in glory, and spake of His
decease (or exodus) which He should accomplish at Jerusalem."[13.3] That exit,
so different from their own in its circumstances and consequences, was the
theme of their talk. They had appeared to Jesus to converse with Him thereon;
and when they ceased speaking concerning it, they took their departure for the
abodes of the blessed. How long the conference lasted we know not, but the
subject was sufficiently suggestive of interesting topics of conversation.
There was, e.g, the surprising contrast between the death of Moses, immediate
and painless, while his eye was not dim nor his natural force abated, and the
painful and ignominious death to be endured by Jesus. Then there was the not
less remarkable contrast between the manner of Elijah's departure from the
earth--translated to heaven without tasting death at all, making a triumphant
exit out of the world in a chariot of fire, and the way by which Jesus should
enter into glory--the via dolorosa of the cross. Whence this privilege of
exemption from death, or from its bitterness, granted to the representatives of
the law and the prophets, and wherefore denied to Him who was the end both of
law and of prophecy? On these points, and others of kindred nature, the two
celestial messengers, enlightened by the clear light of heaven, may have held
intelligent and sympathetic converse with the Son of man, to the refreshment of
His weary, saddened, solitary soul.
The same evangelist who specifies the subject of
conversation on the holy mount further records that, previous to His
transfiguration, Jesus had been engaged in prayer. We may therefore see, in the
honor and glory conferred on Him there, the Father's answer to His Son's
supplications; and from the nature of the answer we may infer the subject of
prayer. It was the same as afterwards in the garden of Gethsemane. The cup of
death was present to the mind of Jesus now, as then; the cross was visible to
His spiritual eye; and He prayed for nerve to drink, for courage to endure. The
attendance of the three confidential disciples, Peter, James, and John,
significantly hints at the similarity of the two occasions. The Master took
these disciples with Him into the mount, as He afterwards took them into the
garden, that He might not be altogether destitute of company and kindly
sympathy as He walked through the valley of the shadow of death, and felt the
horror and the loneliness of the situation.
It is now clear how we must view the
transfiguration scene in relation to Jesus. It was an aid to faith and
patience, specially vouchsafed to the meek and lowly Son of man, in answer to
His prayers, to cheer Him on His sorrowful path towards Jerusalem and Calvary.
Three distinct aids to His faith were supplied in the experiences of that
wondrous night. The first was a foretaste of the glory with which He should be
rewarded after His passion, for His voluntary humiliation and obedience unto
death. For the moment He was, as it were, rapt up into heaven, where He had
been before He came into the world; for His face shone like the sun, and His
raiment was white as the pure untrodden snow on the high alpine summits of
Herman. "Be of good cheer," said that sudden flood of celestial light: "the
suffering will soon be past, and Thou shalt enter into Thine eternal joy!"
A second source of comfort to Jesus in the
experiences on the mount, was the assurance that the mystery of the cross was
understood and appreciated by saints in heaven, if not by the darkened minds of
sinful men on earth. He greatly needed such comfort; for among the men then
living, not excepting His chosen disciples, there was not one to whom He could
speak on that theme with any hope of eliciting an intelligent and sympathetic
response. Only a few days ago, He had ascertained by painful experience the
utter incapacity of the twelve, even of the most quick-witted and warm-hearted
among them, to comprehend the mystery of His passion, or even to believe in it
as a certain fact. Verily the Son of man was most lonely as He passed through
the dark valley! the very presence of stupid, unsympathetic companions serving
only to enhance the sense of solitariness. When He wanted company that could
understand His passion thoughts, He was obliged to hold converse with spirits
of just men made perfect; for, as far as mortal men were concerned, He had to
be content to finish His great work without the comfort of being understood
until it was accomplished.
The talk of the great lawgiver and of the great
prophet of Israel on the subject of His death was doubtless a real solace to
the spirit of Jesus. We know how He comforted Himself at other times with the
thought of being understood in heaven if not on earth. When heartless Pharisees
called in question His conduct in receiving sinners, He sought at once His
defense and His consolation in the blessed fact that there was joy in heaven at
least, whatever there might be among them, over one penitent sinner, more than
over ninety and nine just persons that needed no repentance. When He thought
how "little ones," the weak and helpless, were despised and trampled under foot
in this proud inhuman world, He reflected with unspeakable satisfaction that in
heaven their angels did always behold the face of His Father; yea, that in
heaven there were angels who made the care of little ones their special
business, and were therefore fully able to appreciate the doctrine of humility
and kindness which He strove to inculcate on ambitious and quarrelsome
disciples. Surely, then, we may believe that when He looked forward to His own
decease--the crowning evidence of His love for sinners--it was a comfort to His
heart to think: "Up yonder they know that I am to suffer, and comprehend the
reason why, and watch with eager interest to see how I move on with unfaltering
step, with my face steadfastly set to go to Jerusalem." And would it not be
specially comforting to have sensible evidence of this, in an actual visit from
two denizens of the upper world, deputed as it were and commissioned to express
the general mind of the whole community of glorified saints, who understood
that their presence in heaven was due to the merits of that sacrifice which He
was about to offer up in His own person on the hill of Calvary?
A third, and the chief solace to the heart of
Jesus, was the approving voice of His heavenly Father: "This is my beloved Son,
in whom I am well pleased." That voice, uttered then, meant: "Go on Thy present
way, self-devoted to death, and shrinking not from the cross. I am pleased with
Thee, because Thou pleasest not Thyself. Pleased with Thee at all times, I am
most emphatically delighted with Thee when, in a signal manner, as lately in
the announcement made to Thy disciples, Thou dost show it to be Thy fixed
purpose to save others, and not to save Thyself."
This voice from the excellent glory was one of
three uttered by the divine Father in the hearing of His Son during His life on
earth. The first was uttered by the Jordan, after the baptism of Jesus, and was
the same as the present, save that it was spoken to Him, not concerning Him, to
others. The last was uttered at Jerusalem shortly before the crucifixion, and
was of similar import with the two preceding, but different in form. The soul
of Jesus being troubled with the near prospect of death, He prayed: "Father,
save me from this hour; but for this cause came I unto this hour. Father,
glorify Thy name." Then, we read, came there a voice from heaven, saying: "I
have both glorified it (by Thy life), and will glorify it again" (more signally
by Thy death). All three voices served one end. Elicited at crises in Christ's
history, when He manifested in peculiar intensity His devotion to the work for
which He had come into the world, and His determination to finish it, however
irksome the task might be to flesh and blood, these voices expressed, for His
encouragement and strengthening, the complacency with which His Father regarded
His self-humiliation and obedience unto death. At His baptism, He, so to speak,
confessed the sins of the whole world; and by submitting to the rite, expressed
His purpose to fulfill all righteousness as the Redeemer from sin. Therefore
the Father then, for the first time, pronounced Him His beloved Son. Shortly
before the transfiguration He had energetically repelled the suggestion of an
affectionate disciple, that He should save Himself from His anticipated doom,
as a temptation of the devil; therefore the Father renewed the declaration,
changing the second person into the third, for the sake of those disciples who
were present, and specially of Peter, who had listened to the voice of his own
heart rather than to his Master's words. Finally, a few days before His death,
He overcame a temptation of the same nature as that to which Peter had
subjected Him, springing this time out of the sinless infirmity of His own
human nature. Beginning His prayer with the expression of a wish to be saved
from the dark hour, He ended it with the petition, "Glorify Thy name."
Therefore the Father once more repeated the expression of His approval,
declaring in effect His satisfaction with the way in which His Son had
glorified His name hitherto, and His confidence that He would not fail to crown
His career of obedience by a God-glorifying death.
Such being the meaning of the vision on the mount
for Jesus, we have now to consider what lesson it taught the disciples who were
present, and through them their brethren and all Christians.
The main point in this connection is the
injunction appended to the heavenly voice: "Hear Him." This command refers
specially to the doctrine of the cross preached by Jesus to the twelve, and so
ill received by them. It was meant to be a solemn, deliberate endorsement of
all that He had said then concerning His own sufferings, and concerning the
obligation to bear their cross lying on all His followers. Peter, James, and
John were, as it were, invited to recall all that had fallen from their
Master's lips on the unwelcome topic, and assured that it was wholly true and
in accordance with the divine mind. Nay, as these disciples had received the
doctrine with murmurs of disapprobation, the voice from heaven addressed to
them was a stern word of rebuke, which said: "Murmur not, but devoutly and
obediently hear."
This rebuke was all the more needful, that the
disciples had just shown that they were still of the same mind as they had been
six days ago. Peter at least was as yet in no cross-bearing humor. When, on
wakening up to clear consciousness from the drowsy fit which had fallen on him,
that disciple observed the two strangers in the act of departing, he exclaimed:
"Master, it is good for us to be here, and let us make three tabernacles; one
for Thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias." He was minded, we perceive, to
enjoy the felicities of heaven without any preliminary process of
cross-bearing. He thought to himself: "How much better to abide up here with
the saints than down below amidst unbelieving captious Pharisees and miserable
human beings, enduring the contradiction of sinners, and battling with the
manifold ills wherewith the earth is cursed! Stay here, my Master, and you may
bid good-by to all those dark forebodings of coming sufferings, and will be
beyond the reach of malevolent priests, elders, and scribes. Stay here, on this
sun-lit, heaven-kissing hill; go no more down into the depressing, sombre
valley of humiliation. Farewell, earth and the cross: welcome, heaven and the
crown!"
We do not forget, while thus paraphrasing Peter's
foolish speech, that when he uttered it he was dazed with sleep and the
splendors of the midnight scene. Yet, when due allowance has been made for
this, it remains true that the idle suggestion was an index of the disciple's
present mind. Peter was drunken, though not with wine; but what men say, even
when drunken, is characteristic. There was a sober meaning in his senseless
speech about the tabernacle. He really meant that the celestial visitants
should remain, and not go away, as they were in the act of doing when he
spoke.[13.4] This appears from the conversation which took place between Jesus
and the three disciples while descending the mountain.[13.5] Peter and his two
companions asked their Master: "Why then say the scribes that Elias must first
come?" The question referred, we think, not to the injunction laid on the
disciples by Jesus just before, "Tell the vision to no man until the Son of man
be risen again from the dead," but rather to the fugitive, fleeting character
of the whole scene on the mountain. The three brethren were not only
disappointed, but perplexed, that the two celestials had been so like angels in
the shortness of their stay and the suddenness of their departure. They had
accepted the current notion about the advent of Elias before, and in order to,
the restoration of the kingdom; and they fondly hoped that this was he come at
last in company with Moses, heralding the approaching glory, as the advent of
swallows from tropical climes is a sign that summer is nigh, and that winter
with its storms and rigors is over and gone. In truth, while their Master was
preaching the cross they had been dreaming of crowns. We shall find them
continuing so to dream till the very end.
"Hear ye Him:"--this voice was not meant for the
three disciples alone, or even for the twelve, but for all professed followers
of Christ as well as for them. It says to every Christian: "Hear Jesus, and
strive to understand Him while He speaks of the mystery of His sufferings and
the glory that should follow--those themes which even angels desire to look
into. Hear Him when He proclaims cross-bearing as a duty incumbent on all
disciples, and listen not to self-indulgent suggestions of flesh and blood, or
the temptations of Satan counseling thee to make self-interest or
self-preservation thy chief end. Hear Him, yet again, and weary not of the
world, nor seek to lay down thy burden before the time. Dream not of
tabernacles where thou mayest dwell secure, like a hermit in the wild, having
no share in all that is done beneath the circuit of the sun. Do thy part
manfully, and in due season thou shalt have, not a tent, but a temple to dwell
in: an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
It is true, indeed, that we who are in this
tabernacle of the body, in this world of sorrow, cannot but groan now and then,
being burdened. This is our infirmity, and in itself it is not sinful; neither
is it wrong to heave an occasional sigh, and utter a passing wish that the time
of cross-bearing were over. Even the holy Jesus felt at times this weariness of
life. An expression of something like impatience escaped His lips at this very
season. When He came down from the mount and learned what was going on at its
base, He exclaimed, with reference at once to the unbelief of the scribes who
were present, to the weak faith of the disciples, and to the miseries of
mankind suffering the consequences of the curse: "O faithless and perverse
generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you?" Even
the loving Redeemer of man felt tempted to be weary in well-doing--weary of
encountering the contradiction of sinners and of bearing with the spiritual
weakness of disciples. Such weariness therefore, as a momentary feeling, is not
necessarily sinful: it may rather be a part of our cross. But it must not be
indulged in or yielded to. Jesus did not give Himself up to the feeling. Though
He complained of the generation amidst which He lived, He did not cease from
His labors of love for its benefit. Having relieved His heart by this utterance
of a reproachful exclamation, He gave orders that the poor lunatic should be
brought to Him that he might be healed. Then, when He had wrought this new
miracle of mercy, He patiently explained to His own disciples the cause of
their impotence to cope successfully with the maladies of men, and taught them
how they might attain the power of casting out all sorts of devils, even those
whose hold of their victims was most obstinate, viz. by faith and prayer.[13.6]
So He continued laboring in helping the miserable and instructing the ignorant,
till the hour came when He could truly say, "It is finished."
This document (last modifiedSeptember 17, 1997) from Believerscafe.com
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