After six days Jesus took Peter, James, and his brother John and led them up on a high mountain by themselves. He was transformed in front of them, and His face shone like the sun. Even His clothes became as white as the light. Suddenly, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him.
Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it’s good for us to be here! If You want, I will make three tabernacles here: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”
While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said:
This is My beloved Son.
I take delight in Him.
Listen to Him!When the disciples heard it, they fell facedown and were terrified. Then Jesus came up, touched them, and said, “Get up; don’t be afraid.” When they looked up they saw no one except Him — Jesus alone. (Matthew 17:1-8)
And so we have reached the end of Jesus’s great act of self-disclosure in the north. On the threshold of the pagan, gentile world, in the gateway of ancient Israel’s idolatry and the very mouth of hell, he called upon Peter to declare him “Son of God,” confirmed the truth of those words, and revealed his intention to call a people to himself and build them up like a temple on a great rock, endued with the power to teach truth and manifest God’s kingdom realities on earth.
Moreover, for the first time he openly revealed his intention to suffer, be killed, and be raised from the dead on the third day. He summoned his disciples to follow him and promised that he would himself reward them as the judge in the eschatological day of the Lord, “when the Son of Man comes with his angels in the glory of his Father” (Matthew 16:28).
All these concepts and words, somewhat familiar to us now, constitute a constellation so dizzying it’s no wonder that all the disciples could do was marvel at it — or, in Peter’s case, strenuously protest.
Nevertheless all these claims finally ended, and Jesus led his disciples away from Caesarea Philippi, back south into Galilee, a journey of six days. Church tradition holds that he led them to the base of Mount Tabor, about 11 miles from the Sea of Galilee.
Objectively, Tabor isn’t a tall mountain, but it sits strikingly alone in a valley (the valley of Armageddon, in fact) in a way that makes it seem to tower above its surroundings. Pine forests blanket its slopes. On the eighth day (as Luke specifies), Jesus pulled three of his disciples apart from the others and beckoned them to follow him up into those shady, fragrant heights. Tradition suggests it was early in the morning.
Called, Taken, and Led
I’m personally struck by the English phrasing in this call: “Jesus took Peter, James, and his brother John and led them up on a high mountain by themselves.”
The double verb feels true to life: we sometimes experience being “taken” by Jesus, suddenly chosen, picked, plucked out of our comfortable surroundings. But “taking” isn’t the whole story; after he takes, he leads. There’s still a choice on their part to follow.
In one sense the entire life of grace is encapsulated in this one call: God takes the initiative, he chooses, he elects. But we still have a response to make. We must allow ourselves to be led. We must put one foot in front of the other, even if the mountain feels high.
And this leading is to a lonely place. They are going somewhere “by themselves.” The KJV renders it, poetically, “bringeth them up into a high mountain apart.”
This too is something many can relate to. So much of the Christian life is spent in community. We are surrounded by other believers, by communities of faith. But sometimes the Lord calls us away, alone or with just one or two others. Sometimes the way feels steep and the destination lonely.
But after all, Jesus was leading the way. The language of “leading,” and the way the scene unfolds, suggested they weren’t walking alongside him. He was out in front a little ways. (As a hiker who for some reason perpetually trails behind my walking companions, I know this view well.) He was marking out the way for them as they straggled along behind.
Transfigured Before Them
Passing through the pines and arriving at the summit, Jesus perhaps disappeared from view for a moment — but in the next, no one could possibly miss him. As the disciples caught up and laid eyes fully on the Lord who had led the way, he was “transformed” — the Holman uses this in place of the less familiar but more liturgical “transfigured” — before them.
His clothes became dazzling white. His face shone like the sun. And suddenly it wasn’t Jesus alone filling their astonished gaze. Moses and Elijah were with him, talking with him.
To my knowledge, no one has ever been able to give an exact explanation of what happened here. Did Jesus change, or were the disciples’ eyes simply opened to something that had always been true but they had never been able to see?
In his commentary on Matthew, D.A. Carson says that difficult questions arise in connection with this passage “because the story has so many nuances,” so many allusions to other passages of Scripture, both new and old, so many potential theological suggestions and typological forebears. Indeed it does — light, clouds, and mountaintops; Moses and Elijah and their roles in the history of the people of God; the past, the future, the mindboggling present.
The connections are so many that I don’t want to attempt to draw them all out. One effect of this story, now as then, is to leave us in awe. Overexplaining might kill that sacred hush.
So just one allusion, if I may. Moses met with God in a mountain, overshadowed by a cloud, and when he came down his face shone with reflected glory. But here Jesus is not reflecting anything. His face shines like the sun; he is the source of the glory. He is not a new Moses, speaking with God. He is the God with whom Moses speaks.
Peter had been privileged to receive revelation straight from the Father about who Jesus really was. He believed that Jesus was the Son of God. But did he ever imagine that his eyes would see anything like this?
Out of the Bright Cloud
Mark tells us that Peter didn’t know what to say, so he spoke, a malady that some of us still suffer from today. He suggested that the disciples make three tents, one for each of the heavenly beings before them — the Law, the Prophets, and the Son of God.
The Gospels don’t tell us exactly what he was thinking when he said this, and I suspect he didn’t really know either.
But he hardly had time to get the words out. While he was still speaking, “a bright cloud overshadowed them.” Here the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire from Moses’s day combine; here the consuming fire Moses saw on the mountain and the fire that fell from heaven in Elijah’s day remain suspended, illuminating the cloud.
There’s a suggestion here, in this mix of fire and water, of baptism — by water and by the Holy Ghost. Whatever else it means, it is the presence of God.
A voice spoke out of the cloud. The Message translates the words, “This is my Son, marked by my love, focus of my delight.”
“I take delight in Him,” the Holman declares; many older versions say, “in whom I am well-pleased.”
The words all mean the same thing, and nearly every English version ends with the same thundering crescendo:
Listen to Him!
Listen to Him!
The great prophet of the Messiah, Isaiah, delivered an oracle whose words underlie this moment on the mountain.
“This is My Servant; I strengthen Him,
this is My Chosen One; I delight in Him.
I have put My Spirit on Him;
He will bring justice to the nations.
He will not cry out or shout
or make His voice heard in the streets.
He will not break a bruised reed,
and He will not put out a smoldering wick;
He will faithfully bring justice.
He will not grow weak or be discouraged
until He has established justice on earth.
The islands will wait for His instruction.”This is what God, Yahweh, says …
“I will keep You and appoint You
to be a covenant for the people
and a light to the nations,
in order to open blind eyes,
to bring out prisoners from the dungeon,
and those sitting in darkness from the prison house.
(Isaiah 42:1-5a, 6-7)
Remember that only a week before, Jesus had told his disciples that he would suffer, die, and be raised from the dead. He had strongly rebuked Peter for opposing this plan, suggesting that the roots of such opposition were satanic. There was so much glory in what he had revealed to his disciples in Caesarea Philippi and promised them about the future. But there was also darkness in it, darkness and confusion and fear.
And all of that darkness, all of that fear, would grow so much worse when the events had actually begun.
So for these three, specially chosen from among the twelve, Jesus pulled back the veil. He allowed them to see a glimpse — just a glimpse — of the eternal realities that surrounded them, like Elisha once opened the eyes of his servant to see armies of angels encamped around Israel.
Most of all he allowed them to see himself: fully alive, shining like the sun, speaking with the dead and the deathless, both of whom live in his presence.
The bright cloud, which always in Israel’s history had signified God’s manifest presence, his shekinah, and the voice speaking from heaven only further confirm it all. True to Isaiah’s prophecy, gentle Jesus did not cry out or shout to make himself heard, but the Father spoke on his behalf.
“We were eyewitnesses of his majesty,” Peter wrote years later. “For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory … we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain” (2 Peter 1:17, ESV).
John, too, remembered: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
They saw. They heard. The voice of God interrupted Peter’s confusion and showed him the way: “Listen to him.” Let those words sink into all of our hearts. Let them bring light to every confused path, every steep hill, every lonely climb. “Listen to him.” The answers are out there. They are closer than we think. And we don’t need to listen to any other voice.
Just listen.
Listen to him.
Moses, who once heard God calling out of a burning bush, and Elijah, who climbed a lonely mountain of his own only to find God’s mysterious presence expressed in a still, small voice, would urge us to do the same.
The Beginning and End of All Fear
When Moses heard the word of God, he took off his shoes. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out to meet the presence in the sound. When the disciples heard it, “they fell facedown and were terrified.”
Matthew tells us, “Then Jesus came up, touched them, and said, ‘Get up; don’t be afraid.’ When they looked up they saw no one except Him—Jesus alone.”
Overwhelmed by their experience, the disciples were gripped with fear. But then it all died away. Jesus, their Jesus, their friend, came and touched them and told them they didn’t need to be afraid.
There is a fear appropriate to the presence of God. But this is the great mystery—that Jesus, who shines with the glory of God, also touches us with a human hand and speaks with a human voice, and what he says is, “Do not be afraid.”
Many teachers have seen in the Transfiguration a foreshadowing of the resurrection. The disciples were being shown the reason they didn’t need to fear, even when Jesus went down into darkness: they were being shown a light no darkness could possibly overcome, a life so powerful it would make death helpless. John, perhaps looking back on the Mount of Transfiguration, wrote to his followers that in Jesus “the life was made manifest, and we have seen it” (1 John 1:2, ESV).
But more even than the power shown on the mountain is the love declared. In this greatest of all moments of revelation, when God is seen and heard, what he says is this:
This is my beloved Son.
I take delight in Him.
The disciples had heard these exact words before — at Jesus’s baptism, marking the beginning of his public ministry and yes, as later believers would realize, foreshadowing his death and resurrection. Love held Jesus then, and love held him on the eve of his crucifixion.
To Peter’s doubting, fearing heart, it’s as though the Father said, “Don’t be afraid, Peter. Love holds Christ, and love holds you.”
So quiet your heart. Listen to him. Don’t be afraid. This love — this delight — of God — this is the end of all fear.
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This is Part 255 in a series on the Gospel of Matthew, which you can access here. Unless otherwise marked, quotes are from the Holman Christian Standard Bible.
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