METAMORPHOSED

METAMORPHOSED

"His raiment became white and dazzling." Luke 9:29

We have a fine word there, "dazzling." The old word was "glistering." Now, the word that really helps us, because it baffles us; is lightning. His raiment became white and lightning, flashing with splendor. His raiment took the appearance of lightning.

Now whereas the word is not in Luke, we turn to Matthew and Mark. They say He was transfigured. If we take the Greek word there, and instead of translating it, transliterate it, that is put into English letters instead of the Greek letters, what do we get? Metamorphosed. That is the actual word. He was metamorphosed. A metamorphosis is a complete change of form and of appearance. When the chrysalis becomes a butterfly, that is a metamorphosis; the same essential life was in the chrysalis, but in the butterfly the form is changed.

Now mark the significance of it. He was metamorphosed. The thing that happened was not that a light fell on Him, out of heaven, irradiating Him. Neither is it correct to say that on that mount there shone forth His Deity.  Deity has no earthly spectacular form of manifestation: What then, did happen? He came to the completion of His, human life, on the level of the earthly, and the beginning of it on the level of the heavenly. The change took place in Him, which prepared Him to leave the world, and pass out into the infinite wonder of the life that lies beyond. He was God's second Man, that is, God's man, realizing God's ideal when He said, "Let Us make man." We do not really know what God meant when He said that, until we have seen Jesus. We go back into Genesis, and read the account of the creation of man, but before we have time to see what man is man has broken the relationship, the relationship is ruptured, he is a wreck and ruin. We come down all through the Old Testament, and look at the beacon lights of personality, great men, towering men, splendid men, but not one of them is what God meant when He said "Let Us make man." We never understand what God meant, until we see this Man. Now here on the mount, if His only mission in the world is that of realizing and reveal­ing the meaning of humanity, He has done His work. There is no more to do. On the mount He came to the climax the completion of His own final individual, human life. There was no need for Him to die. He was metamorphosed. He might have left the world without dying, so far as ''s Himself was personally concerned
Death is not the Divine idea for the consummation of the earthly life of a man. Death is the wage of sin. Death is the result of rupture. If the first man had not sinned, would he have stayed for ever on the earth? Cer­tainly not. Earth is the sphere of probation. If Adam had not sinned, when his earthly career was over, he would have been transfigured, metamorphosed, and by that metamorphosis would have left the world without dying. That is what happened on the holy mount. Jesus was metamor­phosed. Here was a Man, God's Man, coming to the true ending of proba­tionary life.

Supposing He had gone out from earth, into the vast amplitudes of those worlds beyond, to which He might have passed then, what then? If, I had had the record up to this point, and no more, I should have understood the meaning of human nature, and for evermore have been filled with despair, because I am not that, and I cannot be that. But I should have seen what God meant when. He said, "Let Us make man?”