Matthew 17:13

13. John the Baptist Hence the spirit of prophecy had, by the lips of Malachi, simply designated John by the name of the prophet of whom he was the antitype. Just so Christ is called our passover by the appropriation to him of the name which belonged to his type. See notes on Matthew 3:1; Matthew 11:2.

We may, in conclusion, remark that the narrative of the transfiguration is good proof of the immortality of the soul, and of an intermediate state of the soul between death and judgment. Moses is dead, yet Moses still lives. For Moses appeared living to the apostles on the mount of transfiguration.

In the scene of the Transfiguration we may find the following purposes:

1 . It presented a visible exhibition of Christ as in his glorious kingdom just at hand, namely, at his resurrection. It presented to his apostles a purer as well as sublime view of his royalty; elevating their thoughts above the notion of a mere earthly conqueror and king. It presented him as arrayed in his royal robes, when he should be fully invested by God the Father Almighty, in consequence of his sufferings, with a name which is above every name. It was, therefore, a confirmation and pledge (though not a fulfilment) of the utterance which he had given, just one week before, that even some of their own congregation should with living eyes behold him coming in his kingdom. Matthew 16:28.

2 . It presented a predictive view of Christ which should be recalled to mind after his resurrection, both to confirm to his disciples the reality of that event, and remind them not only of its verbal predictions from the Saviour’s lips, but of this visible prediction presented to their eyes. Both glories, namely, of the transfiguration and of the resurrection, were the same. And when these three disciples should see the ascending Saviour, they would well remember that they had before seen him in the same splendour on the mount.

3 . It presented a signal specimen of our own glorious resurrection in the image of the risen Christ. There is not to be the creation of a new body, as there was not in the transfiguration, by either the bringing into existence new particles of substance, or by the additional accretion of other particles already existing.

Our Lord’s body went into its resurrection or glorified state, and subsided again, without any exchange of its particles of substance. Its substance was, for the time, endowed with higher phenomenal properties. So, chemically, the charcoal becomes a diamond by simply a new arrangement, without any change of identity of the particles.

So the same body that dies, particle for particle and substance for substance, will rise again; yet changed, or transfigured, in so far as it is invested with new properties of glory and of fitness for a heavenly world.

4 . It presented Christ as the founder of the new heavenly kingdom, as harmonizing with, though superior to Moses, the founder of the old dispensation, and to Elias, the head of the prophetic order. All the illustrious of past ages stand diminished and humbled before the now glorious Son of man, this transcendent Head of the human race. Adam before the fall was his most nearly equal type; yet still inferior because he fell. Hence, when the apostles afterward went through Jerusalem, and beheld the pomp of the old ceremonial, and the pride of its priesthood, they could call to mind this lesson, and contemn the whole, as nullified by reason of the glory that excelleth.

5 . It presents to the Christian Church a symbol of the exalted nature of Jesus, as the second unfallen Adam, as the glorifying restorer of man to his primeval glory; as invested with the robe of Divinity, exalted as a Prince and a Saviour, to conform all his own to his own final glorious likeness. The Gospel of Matthew mostly presents Christ in his laborious and suffering conditions; teaching sublimely and working miraculously, indeed, yet struggling with the trials, and exhibiting the simplicity of mere humanity. But this one scene in Matthew raises Jesus above all human level, and furnishes a full basis for all the glories which the Epistles of Paul and the Revelation of St. John ascribe to his transcendent Person.

6 . The Jews, during some part of their history, conceived a theory that there were to be two Messiahs, a glorious and a suffering one. They found in Scripture prophecy such varying accounts and descriptions of the great One to come, some exhibiting him in triumph and splendour, and others showing him in humiliation and death, that they could explain the discrepancy only on the supposition of two different persons. The one they called Messiah, the Son of David, and the other Messiah, the Son of Joseph. Now Jesus, by this manifestation of his own glory, showed both to be united in himself. He was both the suffering and the glorious Messiah.

He was the Son of man and the Son of God. He descended to the humblest depths of our nature to bring us to its utmost heights.