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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters, on this Transfiguration Sunday, the text comes from the Epistle reading of St. Paul. You may be seated. What you heard read in your ears in the Gospel reading happens only twice in all of Scripture, where the voice of the Father speaks from heaven and says, “This is my beloved Son.” The only two places in all of Scripture. One of the places is today’s Gospel reading. The other place is at the other end of the season of Epiphany, the first Sunday of Epiphany. The first Sunday of Epiphany always is the celebration or commemoration of the baptism of our Lord Jesus. This is the only other place in all of Scripture where the voice from heaven cries out about the Son who has just been baptized, that this is my beloved Son.
It’s beautiful bookends to the season of Epiphany. And you would think, because it’s such a dramatic and clear, concise statement of the identity and person of this flesh and blood Jesus who is also Son of God, besides being Son of Man, that this alone should be the trump card to get anyone who is not a believer to become a believer. But that’s a problem that you and I both have as believers. Here’s why. Most of us who have grown up in the church cannot intellectually remember a time when we were not believers. We’ve always known that we believed in Jesus. There wasn’t like one moment we didn’t, and then one moment we did. Some of you may have had that experience.
But the vast majority of us who struggle with this one concept that I’m going to present in a moment are you and I who have grown up in the church and have always known that Jesus is our Savior since our baptism. Because of that, it sometimes leaves us quite flummoxed, confused, and hard to understand why an unbeliever couldn’t look at that statement that the Father spoke from heaven about His Son Jesus, and see that there were more than one witness to hear it and see it, and that they don’t believe. This is your God.
And that’s because we have fooled ourselves into thinking that they think the same way as you think. And they don’t. The text is very clear in Paul’s letter. They have a veil over their face and their hearts. They do not see things the way you see things, meaning believe things. So it’s not a matter of getting the best argument from science or math or physics or from Scripture and think we can lay it down and say, that’s going to convert them. Because if that’s it, then we don’t need the Holy Spirit. We just need good rational arguments.
But in Paul’s letter, he makes it very clear. It’s all about the power of the Spirit through the word of truth. This veil of which all the world who does not believe is a pernicious veil. It is not something that we think is a mild thing. It is a great thing. Your struggle with this veil is that it still at times clouds your eyes from seeing the Savior. Because all of you here, like I, struggle with the sin that still dwells within us. It is why we lose our patience. It is why we do not handle things in a kind way. It is why we are not loving and forgiving. It is why we rebel.
It is why all of those things that you and I do not like when we look inside of ourselves. There is one man who Scripture has allowed to be a believer who understands one moment not believing in Jesus. The veil is completely over his head as an adult, and then the next moment, the veil has been lifted, and literally scales have fallen from his eyes. That’s the Apostle St. Paul. On his road to Damascus, when he was blinded by God, and Ananias baptized him then, scales fell from his eyes when he came to faith, symbolic of the veil being lifted. Now he sees with eyes of faith.
It is the same thing in you. It just happened to you at a different chronological moment in your life than it did in St. Paul’s or many other people’s. It is the same exact thing. You just don’t have memory like I don’t have memory of that moment. But it still nevertheless happened because what you and I do remember, we remember the struggle with which we are continually in because of our flesh. That we remember. That we don’t like to remember.
That’s the connection. There isn’t an argument to prove Jesus to anyone; it is God’s work through His Holy Spirit, through that word of truth. St. Paul, in this epistle reading, makes it very clear when he says, “Now, the Lord is the Spirit,” meaning the Holy Spirit, and “where the Spirit of the Lord is,” meaning where the Holy Spirit is, “there is freedom.” Freedom. Freedom from what? Freedom from guilt? Well, yes. Freedom from sin? Yes. Freedom from the condemnation that hangs around your and my neck that was lifted at our baptism.
Freedom from the inheritance of hell and rather the inheritance of heaven being our freedom from sin’s guilt and condemnation where we see it condemned and foisted upon the sinless Son of God. Now, St. Paul, when he talks about this freedom being given through the Holy Spirit, working through the word of truth, it’s not something that St. Paul invented in this epistle. St. Paul took this concept of freedom from his Lord Jesus and your Lord Jesus when in the eighth chapter of John, the thirty-first and thirty-second verses, my wife’s confirmation verse, and maybe yours, Jesus says, “If you abide in my word, you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
Free. That’s where Paul got it from. In fact, he goes on in that same verse, “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” Free from the veil. Free from blindness like Paul. Free to see who God really is in Christ Jesus and not what we make Him out to be in our heart or in our mind, but what God has revealed and only what God has revealed. This is the truth of Jesus Christ, the beloved Son, revealed through the Holy Spirit to create faith.
So we have this powerful hope in a very powerful truth that powerfully removes our veil. But wait, there’s more. And this is what I want you to remember in this text. It is how the transfiguration has any meaning to your life. It is not some abstract event that, okay, that happened, that’s cool, move on to the next thing. It has application to your spiritual life, and Paul, in the Corinthian text, ties it together.
Paul writes in the Corinthian text of this morning, “And we all, with unveiled face,” meaning as believers, “beholding the glory of the Lord… are being transformed into the same image as the Lord Jesus from one degree of glory to another.” Think about that for a moment. That God is transforming you from one degree of glory to another to look like the image of Jesus. No, you’re not going to have all of a sudden the beard and walk around in the Middle East with the robe. But to look like what is yours in Christ Jesus… Look like His righteousness. Look like His holiness. Look like His perfection given to you.
Paul is using these words to describe God at work in you. It’s clearly pictured in the Gospel reading. He did not just have this transfiguration happen as some little party event that we go, “Oh cool, let me celebrate.” It is a picture of your glory. The problem is, it’s not. When Jesus walked down from the mountain, did the glory of His face and body continue to shine? Yes or no? No. Why? He had not yet risen from the dead. But you cannot rise from the dead unless you first die. So you will not see the glory of which Paul is speaking. It is merely an article of your faith if you believe it. I believe it. It’s my hope. A certain hope. Because it’s very testimonial to God working in me as He’s working in you.
It doesn’t look like it, and it sure as shoot and match don’t feel like it. But if He is transforming us from one degree to another, this transformation of degrees is seen only by one person— the Lord God Jesus Christ. He knows He’s doing this work in you. Our problem is we’re so much more far aware, intellectually and emotionally, of all the veils that are still clinging to us, aren’t we? Cancer kicks our rear because we allow it to control us. Disease, problems, illness, sickness, we allow it to control us. We forget who’s in charge.
Depression and anxiety and OCD, and all kinds of addictions, and you name it. It is Satan’s way of trying to say, see, so much for God’s declaration that you’re being transformed from one degree to another. Yet Paul, through this text, is telling you the exact opposite. In spite of what you feel on the inside or see with your eyes or experience in your heart and flesh, God is saying He’s transforming you from one degree of glory to another.
Your Father is at work in you. Bank on it. That brings hope. That’s why I meant there’s more. This is hope. Sometimes a parent can think, Am I getting through to my child? Are they going to get it? And you wonder and question. And sometimes, if God is gracious enough to allow this, sometimes He lets you see something in your child’s life that makes you go, wow, they did get it. Amazing. Just like it was said of you by your parents. Well, in the same way, except far more profound, is God giving you that same picture here.
When you say, “God’s forgiveness is all that I have and I cannot live without it,” the Father says, “They’re getting it. They’re getting it.” His Spirit is at work in you. So another example. As an earthly son bears the physical image of his earthly father, so you as a heavenly child of God bear the image of your heavenly Father. Remember? Which is not a physical image but a spiritual image.
It was the image that was given to Adam and Eve at creation, before sin came into the world, when they were created in the image of God. Which does not mean a physical appearance but means that they were created perfect, righteous, holy. This is what God is doing in you every single day. This is why you’re here today and every Sunday— to continually be transformed by His Word, which isn’t always understood or seen, but by faith, we know it is true. Paul, in Corinthians 15, his first letter, talks about this in a great summary statement. Listen. “Just as we who have borne the image of the man of dust,” meaning Adam, “So we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven,” Jesus Christ.
That’s what Transfiguration Sunday, one of the many things it’s about—a reminder to you of what’s happening to you now and will be complete upon your death. So what did the voice from heaven say about the beloved son? But this is my beloved Son. Listen to Him. Listen to the truth His servant St. Paul is proclaiming to you this morning. Let it be what gives you hope in this world. Because we’ve got nothing else. Our conscience is bound. But it’s bound to nothing in this world, but only to the Word of God, which Paul has clearly proclaimed to us, and Christ Jesus has clearly fulfilled it for us.
Listen to Him. In the name of Jesus. Amen. The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
