Life of Christ 88
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| The Transfiguration, Gustave Dore, 1885 |
I wrote, last time, of
that signal event in the life of our Lord known as the Transfiguration. Peter,
James, and John were taken by Jesus to the top of Mount Hermon and there, as He
prayed, the veil of His flesh that covered His essential deity and majesty
dimmed, and Who He really was shone forth in glory. Jesus had allowed them to
see this so that they might remember it, and be strengthened by that memory in
the dark days to come. Our story this time takes place as they walk back off of
Mount Hermon, literally coming down from a mountain top experience (Mark
9.9-13).
Jesus was accompanied in
His Transfiguration by the Heaven sent pair of Moses and Elijah. The
conversation amongst the three of them had been about Jesus' soon coming
atoning death. This subject has now come up repeatedly on this week long trip
into the mountains north of Galilee, and Peter, James, and John are discussing
this whole idea as they walk back down the mountain. 'And they kept that saying
with themselves, questioning one with another what the rising from the dead
should mean' (Mark 9.10).
To us, reading this
story from the perspective of 2000 years of church history, the concept of
Jesus' resurrection is both precious and patently obvious. It was necessary in
order for Him to defeat sin and death. It was necessary in order for a Second
Coming to make sense. A belief in it is absolutely essential for salvation.
From our vantage point, we can even see hints of it in the Old Testament. 'For
thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to
see corruption' (Psalm 16.10).
Though obvious to us,
the fact of the Messiah's resurrection was certainly not obvious to the Jews of
Jesus' day. In fact, it hadn't even occurred to anybody then. The Jews of His
day believed, for the most, in a resurrection, yes, but it was a general
resurrection of all dead people at the Last Day. In other words, the concept of
a messiah who died, and then was personally and physically resurrected from the
dead was a completely new idea. It was also one they were having great trouble
understanding, and this is what they were discussing amongst themselves as they
walked down the mountain after the Transfiguration.
One of the puzzling
aspects to this, for these three Apostles, was that they knew the Old Testament
prophecies which predicted the coming of Elijah prior to the Messiah being revealed
in the glory of His kingdom (Malachi 3.1, 4.5). Elijah appears, and then the
Messiah is King. We must keep in mind that Peter, James, and John had,
literally, just seen Elijah up there on top of that mountain. And yet, just as
emphatically as that literal appearance of Elijah, Jesus keeps pointing them,
not to a rosy end with a coronation, but to a depressing disaster of an
execution. 'And they asked him, saying, Why say the scribes that Elias must
first come?' (Mark 9.11).
Jesus' answer was to tell
them that Elijah had indeed come first, in type, in the form of John the
Baptist, whom Scripture tells us clearly was Jesus' forerunner sent to prepare
the people of Israel for her coming messiah (Matthew 17.10-13). And even in His
own answer He points them, not only to John the Baptist, but also yet again to
His own death. Elijah, in the form of the Baptist, had come. They killed him.
'Likewise shall the Son of man suffer of them'.
One of the things I
pre-determined before starting this series on the life of Christ was that I was
just going to let it take me wherever it would. Consequently, I've felt a few
times like I'm repeating myself, and saying the same thing over and over again.
The truth is that I have been, but the other truth is that I have been because
Jesus did. I believe that when God repeats Himself in the Scripture He does so
in order to emphasize something, and in that light there are certain things
that Jesus must have meant to emphasize for they come up again and again. One
of these is the necessity of His atoning death and the primacy of the
resurrection.
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| Agnus Dei, Francisco de Zurbaran, 1650 |
Would the Apostles ever
come to realize this? To that I answer a resounding yes. Peter, preaching 50
days after Jesus' death, 47 days after His resurrection, and a week after His
ascension, said it this way in his great sermon at Pentecost:
Acts 2.22 Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of
Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs,
which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know:
23 Him, being delivered by the determinate
counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have
crucified and slain:
24 Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the
pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it.
25 For David speaketh concerning him, I foresaw
the Lord always before my face, for he is on my right hand, that I should not
be moved:
26 Therefore did my heart rejoice, and my tongue
was glad; moreover also my flesh shall rest in hope:
27 Because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell,
neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.
The atoning death of
Jesus Christ on the cross as our substitute was absolutely necessary.
Furthermore, it was planned from the very beginning. Not only that, but the
fact that He would then rise from the dead, ascend to Heaven, and return at
some future date to claim the kingdom denied to Him in His first advent was
likewise planned from the very beginning.
Our salvation isn't the
result of an accident. It isn't Plan B. It was the gracious design of a
merciful and loving God from the very dawn of time.
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