Here is a glimpse of Jesus in all His divine splendor, and it is an awesome sight the disciples are sure never to forget. The disciples often didn’t see. Now, as an antidote to their spiritual blindness, Jesus appears before them in the most dazzling white they would ever see. After that, how could they possibly ever again miss the point?
As I ponder this story, I wonder how the disciples could ever describe what they saw on that mountain. I also wonder how they could ever keep silent about it. But Jesus gave them strict orders to keep quiet about what they had seen. They even rebuked Jesus for mentioning the cross.
It’s interesting, though. Jesus threw in that phrase about rising from the dead. He had said earlier, when He called Peter “Satan,” that He would die and would rise from the dead; and they just couldn’t figure out what it meant. They didn’t understand. They talked about it for a little while, but when you don’t know what else to do, what do you do? You change the subject.
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They asked Jesus, in essence, “What’s this about Elijah coming first?” Jesus replied to them that Elijah does come first; and one like Elijah has already come, and he will suffer and be rejected. John the Baptist came and prepared the way for the Messiah, and you know what happened to him. The things that happened to him are not unique to him but are representative of the kind of things that happen to those who deny themselves, take up their cross and follow Him.
What is glory? Words don’t do it justice. It is the crucified and risen Messiah enduring agony for us. He could despise the cross, focusing on the glory that awaited Him on the other side of that event. Look to the radiant, shining, glowing Christ. That’s glory.
What does that really mean for us?
Second Corinthians 3:18 (NIV) says, “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
