Mark 9:3 Commentary and Bible Study

The Lord has gone up to pray, Luke tells us, and, as he prays, this transformation occurs. ‘His face did shine as the sun’, we read in Matthew. ‘And his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow, so as no fuller [launderer] on earth can white them.’ His clothes became radiant and brighter than any natural process could produce. Some say it was midnight in order that his clothing should shine in this way, but there is no need to say that. There must have been some daylight about for the disciples to see a process of change taking place. Luke’s Gospel says his appearance was like flashing lightening – the word translated ‘glistening’ in the KJV – that is to say, a continuing flash of lightening, that lasts for the duration of the transfiguration but with some undulation. ‘Who coverest thyself with light as a garment’ is the description of the Lord in Psalm 104, and in Daniel chapter 7, ‘the ancient of days has garments white as snow.’ The Hebrew word is very powerful, bright and shining. The disciples knew this was divinity; he is God. They believed that already but they now they saw it and they were filled with fear and awe and at one stage, when the voice came from heaven, they fell with their faces to the ground.Luke also says that they were heavy with sleep, but there is not necessarily any contradiction. That comment may refer to the state of the disciples before or after, not at the time, because in Matthew and Luke it clearly implies he was transfigured before them, as though they actually saw it happen. Why did the transfiguration take place, a change in Christ’s appearance that made visible his glory which was normally hidden? We can give a number of reasons. It was a seal and a sign of his words, his prophetic words, that he would suffer many things and be killed and rise again the third day. Now as if to seal it on the minds of the three disciples, his glorious appearance and manifestation of his divine glory, and so it was to establish and their minds firmly that he is God. Well Peter had not long since said so. Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. He was the first to make that clear profession, but now it is really sealed before him and confirmed. But Peter had also contradicted the Lord Jesus. Can you imagine what he must be feeling like? ‘I told him he was wrong. What have I said? what have I done, that I ever reproved him for his teaching?’ What they saw unquestionably girded them through the arrest and the crucifixion of Christ. They would have been shattered completely by those things but a core of the disciples had seen him and they would be convinced of him and his divinity all the way through.But then it teaches them to look to the eternal kingdom of Christ and not this present earth. As soon as he had projected his death and resurrection, Peter had said, ‘These things be far from the Lord. You cannot die. This cannot happen to one as glorious as you, the Messiah, the Son of God.’ The disciples had in their minds the idea that he would be an earthly Messiah, ruling an earthly kingdom, but the transfiguration helps them to see that they are to look to something much more glorious. He will be raised again and there will be a future glorious heavenly kingdom, and that is what they must look forward to; that is what they must focus their eyes on.