The Transfiguration of Jesus Christ

When Jesus was transfigured before the disciples, His divine glory was unveiled before their eyes. Today, R.C. Sproul describes this moment as a glimpse into the glorious vision of God that awaits all of His redeemed people.

Jesus takes Peter, James, and John and goes up to a high mountain apart from the people. And the Scriptures tell us He was transfigured before them. The word in the Greek is a form of the verb _metamorphoō, _from which we get the English word _metamorphosis_. And you learned that word _metamorphosis_ in school when you learned about the change, the dramatic change that takes place between a caterpillar when it becomes a butterfly. It undergoes a change of form. And the Greek word for “form” is _morphos_. And a metamorphosis is a transfiguration. The prefix_ trans_ means “across.” We go transcontinental, we go from one part of the land to the other. And if we go transatlantic, we go across to Europe. The prefix _trans _means “over” or “across.” And what happens here is that the person of Jesus moves. In terms of what is visible to the eyes of His disciples, there is a transformation, a movement from one perspective to another, where for all His earthly life, the incarnate Logos, the second person of the Trinity, has His glory hidden and veiled in the cloak of Jesus’ humanity. And now, all of a sudden, before the eyes of the disciples, they see the bursting forth of the full deity of Christ. Now, let’s notice the details that Mark gives us. His clothes became shining, exceedingly white like snow, such as no launderer on earth can whiten them. And so, when they describe the appearance of Jesus, they talk about the change in His face and the change in His clothes. When we look at the rest of the Synoptic reports of this event in the life of Jesus, they tell us that the face of Jesus shone with the brilliance and the intensity of the sun. Now, where else in Scripture do we read of someone’s face shining with a blinding intensity? Obviously, when we look back in the Old Testament, in the life of Moses. We remember when Moses was on the mountain with God, and he begged God for the ultimate blessed beatific vision. What he says to God: “God, please show me Your glory.” And God denied it. He said: “Moses, remember, no one can see My face and live. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll carve a niche in the rock, and I’ll place you in the safety of the rock. And I will pass by and let you get an instantaneous glimpse of My backward parts”—literally, in the Hebrew, “the hindquarters of Yahweh”—“but My face shall not be seen.” And so the Lord passed by. And when Moses got this momentary glimpse of the backward glance of the glory of God, that experience was so intense, the glory of God even in the backward motion was so radiant, so refulgent, that when Moses gazed on this, his own face began to shine like the sun. Do you remember that? But beloved, when Moses’ face shone with such intensity, it was the shining of the face of a creature who had been in the presence of God and whose face was now reflecting the radiance of God. That is to say, the light in the face of Moses was a reflected light. Moses’ face was not the source of the light, but rather, the light of God was rebounding in the face of the creature. But that’s not what happens here on the Mount of Transfiguration. This intense brightness like the sun that transforms Jesus so that even His garments become whiter than snow, whiter than any fuller or any launderer possibly make it, indicates not a reflection but the source of the light that the disciples are now seeing is coming from within Christ Himself.