'And as He prayed, the fashion of His countenance was
altered.'--LUKE ix. 29.
This Evangelist is especially careful to record the instances of our
Lord's prayers. That is in accordance with the emphasis which he
places on Christ's manhood. In this narrative of the Transfiguration
it is to Luke that we owe our knowledge of the connection between
our Lord's prayer and the radiance of His face. It may be a question
how far such transfiguration was the constant accompaniment of our
Lord's devotion. It is to be remembered that this is the only time
at which others were present while He prayed, and perhaps it may be
that whensoever, on the mountain top or in the solitude of the
wilderness, He entered into closer communion with His heavenly
Father, that radiance shone from His face, though no eye beheld and
no tongue has recorded the glory.
But that is a mere supposition. However that may be, it would seem
that the light on Christ's face was not merely a reflection caught
from above, but it was also a rising up from within of what always
abode there, though it did not always shine through the veil of
flesh. And in so far it presents no parallel with anything in our
experience, nor any lesson for us. But to regard our Lord's
Transfiguration as only the result of the indwelling divinity
manifested is to construe only one half of the fact that we have to
deal with, and the other half does afford for us a precious lesson.
'As He prayed the fashion of His countenance was altered'; and as we
pray, and in the measure in which we truly and habitually do hold
communion, shall we, too, partake of His Transfiguration.
The old story of the light that flashed upon the face of the
Lawgiver, caught by reflection from the light of God in which He
walked, is a partial parallel to Christ's Transfiguration, and both
the one and the other incident, amongst their other lessons, do also
point to some mysterious and occult relation between the indwelling
soul and the envious veil of flesh which, under certain
circumstances, might become radiant with the manifestation of that
indwelling power.
I. The one great lesson which I seek now to enforce from this
incident is, that communion with God transfigures.
Prayer is more than petitions. It is not necessarily cast into words
at all. In its widest, which is its truest sense, it is the attitude
and exercise of devout contemplation of God and intercourse in
heart, mind, and will with Him, a communion which unites aspiration
and attainment, longing and fruition, asking and receiving, seeking
and finding, a communion which often finds itself beggared for
words, and sometimes even seems to transcend thought. How different
is such an hour of rapt communion with the living God from the
miserable notions which so many professing Christians have of
prayer, as if it were but spoken requests, more or less fervent and
sincere, for things that they want! The noblest communion of a soul
with God can never be free from the consciousness of need and
dependence. Petition must ever be an element in it, but supplication
is only a corner of prayer. Such conscious converse with God is the
very atmosphere in which the Christian soul should always live, and
if it be an experience altogether strange to us we had better ask
ourselves whether we yet know the realities of the Christian life,
or have any claim to the name. 'Truly, our fellowship is with the
Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ,' and if we have no share in
that fellowship we do not belong to the class of whom it is the mark
and possession.
Of course, such communion is not to be attained or maintained without
effort. Sense wars against it. Tasks which are duties interrupt the
enjoyment of it in its more conscious forms. The hard-working man
may well say, 'How can I, with my business cares calling--for my
undivided attention all day long, keep up such communion?' The
toiling mother may well say, 'How can I, in my little house, with my
children round me, and never a quiet minute to myself, get such?'
True, it is hard, and the highest and sweetest forms of communion
cannot be reached by us while so engaged, and therefore we all need
seasons of solitude and repose, in which, being left alone, we may
see the Great Vision, and, the clank of the engines being silenced,
we may hear the Great Voice saying, 'Come up hither.' Such seasons
the busiest have on one day in every week, and such seasons we shall
contrive to secure for ourselves daily, if we really want to be
intimate with our heavenly Friend.
And for the rest it is not impossible to have real communion with
God in the midst of anxious cares and absorbing duties; it is
possible to be like the nightingales, that sing loudest in the trees
by the dusty roadsides, possible to be in the very midst of anxiety
and worldly work, and yet to keep our hearts in heaven and in touch
with God. We do not need many words for communion, but we do need to
make efforts to keep ourselves near Him in desire and aspiration,
and we need jealous and constant watchfulness over our motives for
work, and our temper and aim in it, that neither the work nor our
way of doing it may draw us away. There will be breaches in the
continuity of our conscious communion, but there need not be any in
the reality of our touch with God. For He can be with us, 'like some
sweet, beguiling melody, so sweet we know not we are listening to
it.' There may be a real contact of the spirit with Him, though it
would be hard at the moment to put it into words.
'As He prayed, the fashion of His countenance was altered.' Such
communion changes and glorifies a man. The very secret of the Gospel
way of making men better is--transfiguration by the vision of God.
Yes! to be much with God is the true way to mend our characters, and
to make them like His. I do not under-value the need of effort in
order to correct faults and acquire virtues. We do not receive
sanctification as we receive justification, by simple faith. For the
latter the condition is 'Only believe,' for the former it is 'Work
out your own salvation.' No man is cured of his evil tendencies
without a great deal of hard work conscientiously directed to
curbing them.
But all the hard work, and all the honest purpose in the world, will
not do it without this other thing, the close communion with God,
and incomparably the surest way to change what in us is wrong, and
to raise what in us is low, and to illumine what in us is dark, is
to live in habitual beholding of Him who is righteousness without
flaw, and holiness supreme, and light without any darkness at all.
That will cure faults. That will pull the poison fangs out of
passions. That will do for the evil in us what the snake-charmers do
by subtle touches, turn the serpent into a rigid rod that does not
move nor sting. That will lift us up high above the trifles of life,
and dwarf all here that imposes upon us with the lie that it is
great, and precious, and permanent; and that will bring us into
loving contact with the living 'Beauty of holiness,' which will
change us into its own fair likeness.
We see illustrations of this transforming power of loving communion
in daily life. People that love each other, and live beside each
other, and are often thinking about one another, get to drop into
each other's ways of looking at things; and even sometimes you will
catch strange imitations and echoes of the face and voice, in two
persons thus knit together. And if you and I are bound to God by a
love which lasts, even when it does not speak, and which is with us
even when our hands are busy with other things, then be sure of
this, we shall get like Him whom we love. We shall be like Him even
here, for even here we shall see Him. Partial assimilation is the
condition of vision; and the vision is the condition of growing
assimilation. The eye would not see the sun unless there were a
little sun imaged on the retina. And a man that sees God gets like
the God he sees; 'for we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a
glass (or, rather, mirroring as a glass does) the glory of God, are
changed into the same image.' The image on the mirror is only on the
surface; but if my heart is mirroring God He sinks in, and abides
there, and changes me from glory to glory. So it is when we keep
near Christ, who is manifest in the flesh, that we get liker Him day
by day, and the fashion of our countenances will be altered.
Now there is a test for our Christianity. Does my religion alter me?
If it does not, what right or reason have I to believe that it is
genuine at all? Is there a process of purifying going on in my
inward nature? Am I getting any more like Jesus Christ than I was
ten years ago? I say I live with Him and by Him. If I do I shall
become like Him. Do not work at the hopeless task of purifying
yourselves without His help, but go and stay in the sun if you want
to get warm. Lo as the bleachers do, spread the foul cloth on the
green grass, below the blazing sunshine, and that will take all the
dirt out. Believing and loving, and holding fast by Jesus Christ in
true communion, we, too, become like Him we love.
II. Another thought is suggested by these words--namely, that this
transfiguring will become very visible in the life if it be really
in our inmost selves.
Even in the most literal sense of the words it will be so. Did you
never see anybody whose face was changed by holier and nobler
purposes coming into their lives? I have seen more than one or two
whose features became as the face of an angel as they grew more and
more unselfish, and more and more full of that which, in the most
literal sense of the words, was in them the beauty of holiness. The
devil writes his mark upon people's faces. The world and the flesh
do so. Go into the streets and look at the people that you meet.
Care, envy, grasping griping avarice, discontent, unrest, blotches
of animalism, and many other prints of black fingers are plain
enough on many a face. And on the other hand, if a man or a woman
get into their hearts the refining influences of God's grace and
love by living near the Master, very soon the beauty of expression
which is born of consecration and unselfishness, the irradiation of
lofty emotions, the tenderness caught from Him, will not be lacking,
and some eyes that look upon them will recognise the family
likeness.
But that may be said to be mere fancy. Perhaps it is, or perhaps
there is truth in it deeper and more far-reaching than we know.
Perhaps the life fashions the body, and the 'body of our glory' may
be moulded in immortal loveliness by the perfect Christ-derived life
within it. But be that as it may, the main point to be observed here
is rather this. If we have the real, transforming influence of
communion with Jesus Christ in our hearts, it will certainly rise to
the surface, and show itself in our lives. As oil poured into water
will come to the top, so that inward transforming will not continue
hidden within, 'The king's daughter is all-glorious _within_,
but also 'her _clothing_ is of wrought gold.' The inward life,
beautiful because knit to Him, will have corresponding with it and
flowing from it an outward life of manifest holy beauty.
'His name shall be in their foreheads,' stamped there, where
everybody can see it. Is that where you and I carry Christ's name?
It is well that it should be in our hearts, it is hypocrisy that it
should be in our foreheads unless it is in our hearts first. But if
it be in the latter it will surely be in the former.
Now, dear friends, there is a simple and sure touchstone for us all.
Do not talk about communion with Christ being the life of your
religion, unless the people that have to do with you, your brothers
and sisters, or fathers and mothers, your wives and children, your
servants or your masters, would endorse it and say 'Yes! I take
knowledge of him, he has been with Jesus.' Do you think that it is
easier for anybody to believe in, and to love God, 'whom he hath not
seen' because of you, 'his brother whom he hath seen'? The Christ in
the heart will be the Christ in the face and in the life.
Alas! why is it that so little of this radiance caught from heaven
shines from us? There is but one answer. It is because our communion
with God in Christ is so infrequent, hurried, and superficial. We
should be like those luminous boxes which we sometimes see, shining
in the dark with light absorbed from the day; but, like them, we
need to be exposed to the light and to lie in it if we are to be
light. 'Now are ye light in the Lord,' and only as we abide in Him
by continuous communion shall we resemble Him or reflect Him.
III. The perfection of communion will be the perfection of visible
transformation.
Possibly the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ had an element of
prophecy in it, and pointed onwards to the order of things when His
glorified humanity should be enthroned on the throne of the
universe, and have left the limitations of flesh with the folded
grave-clothes in the empty sepulchre. As the two majestic forms of
the Lawgiver and the Prophet shared His glory on Hermon, and held
converse with Him there, so we may see in that mysterious group
wrapped in the bright cloud the hint of a hope which was destined to
grow to clearness and certainty. Christ's glorified bodily humanity
is the type to which all His followers will be conformed. Gazing on
Him they shall be like Him, and will grow liker as they gaze.
Through eternal ages the double process will go on, and they shall
become ever more assimilated, and therefore capable of truer,
completer vision, and ever seeing Him more fully as He is, and
therefore progressively changed into more perfect resemblance. Nor
will that blessed change into advancing glory be shut up in their
hearts nor lack beholders. For in that realm of truth and reality
all that is within will be visible, our life will no longer fall
beneath our aspirations, nor practice be at variance with the
longings and convictions of our best selves. Then the Christlike
spirit will possess a body which is its glad and perfect servant,
and through which its beauty will shine undimmed. 'When Christ, who
is our life, shall be manifested, then shall we also be manifested
with Him in glory.'
'IN THE HOLY MOUNT'
'And, behold, there talked with Him two men, which
were Moses and Elias: 31. Who appeared in glory, and
spake of His decease which He should accomplish at
Jerusalem.'--LUKE ix. 30, 31.
The mysterious incident which is commonly called the Transfiguration
contained three distinct portions, each having its own special
significance and lesson. The first was that supernatural change in
the face and garments of our Lord from which the whole incident
derives its name. The second was the appearance by His side of these
two mighty dead participating in the strange lustre in which He
walked, and communing with Him of His death. And the last was the
descent of the bright cloud, visible as bright even amidst the
blazing sunshine on the lone hillside, and the mysterious attesting
Voice that spoke from out of its depths.
I leave untouched altogether the first and the last of these three
portions, and desire briefly to fix our attention on this central
one. Now it is to be observed that whilst all the three Synoptic
Evangelists tell us of the Transfiguration, of the appearance of
Moses and Elias, and of the Cloud and the Voice, only Luke knows,
or at least records, and therefore alone probably knows, what it was
that they spoke of. Peter and James and John, the only human
witnesses, were lying dazed and drunken with sleep, whilst Christ's
countenance was changed; and during all the earlier portion at all
events of His converse with Moses and Elias. And it was only when
these were about to depart that the mortals awoke from their
slumber. So they probably neither heard the voices nor knew their
theme, and it was reserved for this Evangelist to tell us the
precious truth that the thing about which Lawgiver, Prophet, and the
Greater than both spake in that mysterious communion was none other
than the Cross.
I think, then, that if we look at this incident from the point of
view which our Evangelist enables us to take, we shall get large and
important lessons as to the significance of the death of Jesus
Christ, in many aspects, and in reference to very many different
persons. I see at least four of these. This incident teaches us what
Christ's death was to Himself; what it was in reference to previous
revelation; what it was in reference to past generations; and what
it may be in reference to His servants' death. And upon these four
points I desire briefly to touch now.
I. First, then, I see here teaching as to what the death of the Lord
Jesus Christ was in reference to Himself.
What was it that brought these men--the one who had passed in a
whirlwind to heaven, and the other who had been led by a mysterious
death to slumber in an unknown grave--what was it that brought these
men to stand there upon the side of the slopes of Hermon? It was not
to teach Christ of the impending Cross. For, not to touch upon other
points, eight days before this mysterious interview He had foretold
it in the minutest details to His disciples. It was not for the sake
of Peter and James and John, lying coiled in slumber there, that
they broke the bands of death, and came back from 'that bourne from
which no traveller returns,' but it was for Christ, or for
themselves, or perhaps for both, that they stood there.
You remember that in Gethsemane 'there appeared an angel from heaven
strengthening Him.' And one of the old devout painters has
marvellously embraced the deepest meaning of that vision when he has
painted for us the strengthening angel displaying in the heavens the
Cross on which He must die, as if the holding of it up before Him as
the divine will gave the strength that He needed. And I think in
some analogous way we are to regard the mission and message to Jesus
of these two men in our text. We know that clear before Him, all His
life long, there stood the certainty of the Cross. We know that He
came, not merely to teach, to minister, to bless, to guide, but that
He came to give His life a ransom for many. But we know, too, that
from about this point of time in His life the Cross stood more
distinctly, if that may be, before Him; or at all events, that it
pressed more upon His vision and upon His spirit. And doubtless
after that time when He spoke to the disciples so plainly and
clearly of what was coming upon Him, His human nature needed the
retirement of the mountain-side and prayer which preceded and
occasioned this mysterious incident. Christ shrank from His Cross
with sinless, natural, human shrinking of the flesh. That never
altered His purpose nor shook His will, but He needed, and He got,
strength from the Father, ministered once by an angel from heaven,
and ministered, as I suppose, another time by two men who looked at
death from the other side, and 'who spoke to Him of His decease
which He should accomplish at Jerusalem.'
And now it is to be noticed that the words which our Evangelist
employs are remarkable, and one of them, at least, is all but
unique. The expression translated in my text 'decease' is the same
Greek word which, untranslated, names the second book of the Old
Testament--_Exodus_. And it literally means neither more nor
less than a departure or 'going out.' It is only employed in this
one passage and in another one to which I shall have occasion to
refer presently, which is evidently based and moulded upon this one,
to signify _death_. And the employment of it, perhaps upon
these undying tongues of the sainted dead--or, at all events, in
reference to the subject of their colloquy--seems to us to suggest
that part of what they had to say to the Master and what they had to
hear from Him was that His death was His departure in an altogether
unique, solitary, and blessed sense. 'I came forth from the Father,
and I am come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go to the
Father.' Not dragged by any necessity, but of His own sovereign
will, He passes from earth to the state where He was before. And as
He stands there on the mountain with His radiant face and His white
robes, this thought as to His death brings to Him comfort and
strength, even whilst He thinks of the suffering of the Cross.
But, still further, the other word which is here employed helps us
to understand what our Lord's death was to Him; 'He should
_accomplish_' it as a thing to be fulfilled. And that involves
two ideas, the one that Christ in His death was consciously
submitting to a gladly accepted divine _must_, and was accomplishing
the purpose of Love which dwelt in the heavens and sent Him, as well
as His own purpose of love which would redeem and save. The necessity
of the death of Christ if sin is to be put away, if we are ever to have
a hope of immortality, the necessity of the death of Christ if the
mercy of God is to pour out upon a sinful and rebellious world, the
necessity of the death of Christ, if the deep purposes of the divine
heart are ever to be realised, and the yearning compassion of the
Saviour's soul is ever to reach its purpose--all lie in that great
word that 'His decease' was by Him to be 'accomplished.' This is the
fulfilling of the heart of God, this is the fulfilling of the
compassion of the Christ. It is the accomplishment of the divine
purpose from eternity.
Still further, the word, as I think, suggests another kind of
fulfilment. He was to 'accomplish' His death. That is to say, every
drop of that bitter cup, drop by drop, bitterness by bitterness,
pang by pang, desolation by desolation, He was to drink; and He
drank it. Every step of that road sown with ploughshares and live
coals He was to tread, with bleeding, blistered, slow, unshrinking
feet. And He trod it. He _accomplished_ it; hurrying over none
of the sorrow, perfunctorily doing none of the tasks. And after the
weary moments had ticked themselves away, and the six hours of
agony, when the minutes were as drops of blood falling slowly to the
ground, were passed, He inverted the cup, and it was empty, and He
said 'It is finished'; and He gave up the ghost, having
accomplished His decease in Jerusalem.'
II. Further, note in this incident what that death is in regard to
previous revelation.
I need not remind you, I suppose, that we have here the two great
representative figures of the past history of Israel--the Lawgiver,
who, according to the Old Testament, was not only the medium of
declaring the divine will, but the medium of establishing Sacrifice
as well as Law, and the Prophet, who, though no written words of his
have been preserved, and nothing of a predictive and Messianic
character seems to have dropped from His lips, yet stood as the
representative and head of the great prophetic order to which so
much of the earlier revelation was entrusted. And now here they two
stand with Christ on the mountain; and the theme about which they
spake with Him there is the theme of which the former revelation had
spoken in type and shadow, in stammering words, 'at sundry times and
in divers manners,' to the former generations--viz. the coming of
the great Sacrifice and the offering of the great Propitiation. All
the past of Israel pointed onwards to the Cross, and in that Cross
its highest word was transcended, its faintest emblems were
explained and expressed, its unsolved problems which it had raised
in order that they might be felt to be unsolved, were all answered,
and that which had been set forth but in shadow and symbol was given
to the world in reality for evermore. In Moses Law and Sacrifice,
and in Elijah the prophetic function, met by the side of Christ,
'and spake of His decease.'
Now, dear friends, let me say one word here before I pass on. There
is a great deal being said nowadays about the position of the Old
Testament, the origin of its ritual, and other critical, and, to some
extent, historical, questions. I have no doubt that we have much to
learn upon these subjects; but what I would now insist upon is this,
that all these subjects, about which people are getting so excited,
and some of them so angry, stand, and may be dealt with, altogether
apart from this central thought, that the purpose and meaning, the
end and object of the whole preliminary and progressive revelation of
God from the beginning, are to lead straight up to Jesus Christ and
to His Cross. And if we understand that, and feel that 'the testimony
of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy,' and that law and sacrifice,
commandments and altar, Sinai and Zion, the fiery words that were
spoken in the wilderness, and the perpetual burnt-offering that went
up in the Temple, had one mission--viz. to 'prepare the way of the
Lord'--we have grasped the essential truth as to the Old Revelation;
and if we do not understand that, we may be as scholarly and erudite
and original as we please, but we miss the one truth which is worth
grasping. The relation between the Old revelation and the New is this,
that Christ was pointed to by it all, and that in Himself He sums up
and surpasses and antiquates, because He fulfils, all the past.
Therefore Moses and Elijah came to witness as well as to encourage.
Their presence proclaimed that Christ was the meaning of all the
past, and the crown of the divine revelation. And they faded away,
and Jesus was found alone standing there, as He stands for ever
before all generations and all lands, the sole, the perfect, the
eternal Revealer of the heart and will of God. 'God, who at sundry
times and in divers manners spake unto the fathers by the prophets,
hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son.'
III. Again, we have here set before us the death of Christ in its
relation to past generations.
I need not dwell upon anything that was mysterious or anomalous in
the last moments upon earth of either Moses or Elijah. I do not
suppose that there is any reference to the undoubted peculiarities
which existed in the case of both. But they came from that dim
region where the dead were waiting for the coming of the Saviour,
and by some means, we know not how, were clothed with something that
was like an immortal body, and capable of entering into this
material universe. There they stood, witnesses that Christ's death
was of interest to all those sleeping generations in the past. We
know not anything, or scarcely anything, of the condition of the
sainted dead who died before Christ came. But this is clear, that
these two came from the land where silent expectancy had ruled, and
came perhaps to carry back to their brethren the tidings that the
hour was ready to strike, and that soon amongst them there would
stand the Eternal Life.
But, be that as it may, does not that group on the mountain-side
teach us this, that the Cross of Jesus Christ had a backward as well
as a forward power, and that for all the generations who had died,
'not having received the promises, but having seen them and saluted
them from afar,' the influence of that Sacrifice had opened the
gates of the Kingdom where they were gathered in hope, even as it
opens for us, and all subsequent generations, the gates of the
paradise of God?
I know not whether there be truth in the ancient idea that when the
Master died He passed into that _Hades_ where were assembled
the disembodied spirits of the righteous dead, and led captivity
captive, taking them with Him into a loftier Paradise. But this I am
sure of, that Christ's Cross has always been the means and channel
whereby forgiveness and hope and heaven have been given to men, and
that the old dream of the devout painter which he has breathed upon
the walls of the convent in Florence is true in spirit whatever it
may be in letter, that the Christ who died went down into the dark
regions, burst the bars and broke the gates of iron, and crushed the
demon porter beneath the shattered portal, and that out of the dark
rock-hewn caverns there came streaming the crowds of the sainted
dead, with Adam at their head, and many another who had seen His day
afar off and been glad, stretching out eager hands to grasp the
life-giving hand of the Redeemer that had come to them too.
Moses and Elias were the 'first-fruits of them that slept,' and
there were others, when the bodies of the saints rose from the grave
and appeared in the Holy City unto many. And their presence, and the
presence of these two there, typified for us the great fact that the
Cross of Christ is the redemption of pre-Christian as well as of
Christian ages; and that He is the Lord both of the dead and of the
living.
IV. And so, lastly, this incident may suggest also what that death
of Jesus Christ may be in reference to the deaths of His servants.
I do not find that thought in the words of our text, but in the
reference to them which is made in the second epistle attributed to
Peter, who was present at the Transfiguration. There is a very
remarkable passage in that Epistle, in the context of which there
are distinct verbal allusions to the narrative of the Transfiguration,
and in it the writer employs the same word to describe his own death
which is employed here. It is the only other instance in Scripture
of its use in that sense. And so I draw this simple lesson; that
mighty death which was accomplished upon Calvary, which is the crown
and summit of all Revelation, beyond which God has nothing that He
can say or do to make men sure of His heart and recipients of
forgiveness, which was the channel of pardon for all past ages, and
the hope of the sainted dead--that death may turn for us our departure
into its own likeness. For us, too, all the grimness, all the darkness,
all the terror, may pass away, and it may become simply a change of
place, and a going home to God. If we believe that Jesus died, we
believe that He has thereby smoothed and softened and lessened our
death into a sleep in Him.
Nor need we forget the special meaning of the word. If we have set
our hopes upon Christ, and, as sinful men and women, have cast the
burden of our sins, and the weight of our salvation, on His strong
arm, then life will be blessed, and death, when it comes, will be a
true Exodus, the going out of the slaves from the land of bondage,
and passing through the divided sea, not into a weary wilderness,
but into the light of the love and the blessedness of the land where
our Brother is King, and where we shall share His reign.
I have been speaking to you of what Christ's death is in many
regions of the universe, in many eras of time. My brother, what is
Christ's death to you? Can you say, 'The life that I live in the
flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave
Himself for me?'