The climb had taken most of the day. Peter, James and John had followed Jesus up the slopes of a high mountain, away from the crowds and the arguments, until the villages below looked like scattered stones. Luke tells us that Jesus went up “to pray,” and that the three disciples, worn out by the climb, were heavy with sleep.
Then something woke them. The face of Jesus had changed. Matthew says “his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light” (Matthew 17:2). The familiar carpenter from Nazareth, whose dusty feet they had watched for months on the roads of Galilee, was blazing with a glory that came from within Him. And He was not alone. Two men were standing with Him, talking. The disciples somehow knew who they were: Moses, through whom God had given the law, and Elijah, the great prophet who had called Israel back to God. Luke even tells us what they were discussing. They “spake of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem” (Luke 9:31).
Peter did what Peter often did. He spoke before he understood. “Lord, it is good for us to be here: if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias” (Matthew 17:4). Mark adds a kindly note of explanation: “For he wist not what to say; for they were sore afraid” (Mark 9:6).
It sounded like an act of honour. Three shelters for three great men. The Law, the Prophets and the Messiah, side by side on the mountain, each with his own tent.
But before Peter had finished speaking, a bright cloud came down over them, and a voice spoke out of it. “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him” (Matthew 17:5). The disciples fell on their faces in terror. And then they felt a hand on their shoulders. Jesus had come over and touched them. “Arise, and be not afraid.” When they lifted their eyes, Matthew says, “they saw no man, save Jesus only” (Matthew 17:8).
Moses was gone. Elijah was gone. Jesus only.
Hear ye him
That scene holds the answer to one of the most important questions a Bible reader can ask. When we want to know what God is like, where do we look last and longest? Whose voice settles the matter?
The Father answered that question Himself on the mountain. Peter wanted to set Jesus alongside Moses and Elijah as one great voice among others. The Father did not dishonour Moses or Elijah. They had both been faithful servants, and they had just been speaking with Jesus about His coming death. But the Father would not allow them to share the tent. This is my beloved Son. Hear ye him.
Years later, Peter still remembered that moment. Writing near the end of his life, he said:
For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount.
“We were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” Peter had learned the lesson of the mountain. The law and the prophets were true, but they were witnesses. The Son is the One they were witnessing to.
Moses himself had said so. Centuries before, he told Israel, “The LORD thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken” (Deuteronomy 18:15). Unto him ye shall hearken. The Father’s words on the mountain, “hear ye him,” echo that promise. Moses was not being pushed aside. He was being proved right. The Prophet he had spoken about had come, and the Father was pointing at Him.
This is what it means to say that Jesus is the final interpretation of God. All Scripture is inspired, and every part of it reveals God truly. But all of it reaches its climax in the Son. When we want to understand God’s heart, His character, His holiness and His love, we look at Jesus. The rest of Scripture keeps speaking, and we hear it in His light.
God has spoken in His Son
The letter to the Hebrews opens with a sentence that says the same thing in the language of theology:
God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.
Look at the contrast. In the past, God spoke “at sundry times and in divers manners.” That is, He spoke in many portions and in many ways: through dreams to Joseph, from a burning bush to Moses, in a still small voice to Elijah, through the poetry of David, the visions of Ezekiel and the tears of Jeremiah. All of it was truly God speaking. But it came in pieces, over many centuries, through many human voices.
“Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son.” The Son is the fulness toward which every portion was moving. The prophets brought God’s word. The Son is God’s Word.
Then the writer tells us why. The Son is “the brightness of his glory.” The word suggests radiance, the light that streams out of a source. You do not see the sun by staring at it directly. You see it by its light. In the same way, the glory of God that no man can look upon and live (Exodus 33:20) has streamed out into our world in the person of Jesus.
The Son is also “the express image of his person.” The Greek word here is charaktēr, which described the exact impression made by a seal pressed into wax or a die stamped onto a coin. Every line of the seal appears in the impression. Jesus is the exact imprint of the being of God. What God is, He shows.
And notice what else Hebrews says about Him in the same breath. He made the worlds. He upholds all things by the word of His power. He purged our sins. He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. This is no mere teacher who happens to have attractive ideas about God. He shares the divine identity in a way no prophet or angel ever has. That is why His revelation is final. The greatest prophet could only report what God had said. The Son reveals God from within.
No man hath seen God at any time
John makes the same point at the end of the prologue to his Gospel:
And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace. For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.
“No man hath seen God at any time.” Moses had asked to see God’s glory and was allowed to see only His back (Exodus 33:23). Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up, but in a vision and veiled by the wings of seraphim. Every Old Testament glimpse of God was partial.
“The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” Think about that phrase, in the bosom of the Father. It describes the closest possible intimacy, the place where a child leans against his father’s chest. Jesus came from the Father’s heart, and everything He knew of God He knew from there.
And He has “declared” Him. The Greek word is exēgēsato, from which we get the English word exegesis, the careful explanation of a text. John is saying that Jesus is the exegesis of God. He is God explained. If you want to know what the invisible God is like, you do not have to assemble a picture from scattered fragments and guesses. Look at the Son. He is the Father’s own interpretation of Himself.
Notice also verse 17: “For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” John is not insulting the law. It was given, and it was a gift. But grace and truth came in a person. Earlier John said that the Word was “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). In Jesus those two qualities are never in competition. Some of us want kindness without correction. Others want to speak hard truths without compassion. The Son refuses both distortions. He welcomed sinners and confronted hypocrites. He wept over Jerusalem and warned it of judgement. If we want to know God, we must receive the whole Christ, not only the parts we prefer.
He that hath seen me
On the night before the cross, one of the disciples asked a question that many hearts still carry:
If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him. Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then , Shew us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.
Philip wanted one more thing. He had walked with Jesus for three years. He had seen the water turned to wine, the five thousand fed and the blind man given his sight. And still he said, “Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us.” Show us the real God, behind You. Then we will be satisfied.
You can hear the sorrow in Jesus’ reply. “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father.”
There is no other Father hidden behind Jesus. There is no stern, unsmiling God waiting in the back room while the kind Son meets people at the door. When Jesus touched the leper, that was the Father touching him. When Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus, that was the Father weeping. When Jesus welcomed little children and forgave the woman caught in adultery and fed the hungry crowd, that was the Father. “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30).
Some years ago I counselled a woman whose earthly father had been a harsh man. He was a respected elder in his church, but at home he was cold, quick to punish and slow to praise. She told me she found it easy to pray to Jesus and very difficult to pray to the Father. In her mind, Jesus understood her, but the Father was waiting to condemn. Without noticing it, she had divided God in two, giving the kindness to the Son and the harshness to the Father.
She did not need a lecture about using the correct name in prayer. She needed to hear what Jesus told Philip. The compassion she trusted in Jesus was the compassion of the Father. Far from shielding her from God, Jesus was showing her what God is like.
This matters for how we understand the cross, too. Some preaching unintentionally presents the cross as a loving Son rescuing us from an angry Father who had no wish to save. Scripture never puts it that way. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son” (John 3:16). “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Paul says “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19). The Father sent the Son in love, and the Son came willingly in love. There is no rivalry in the Godhead. The cross reveals one heart.
PunchlineThere is no other Father hidden behind Jesus. When you have seen the Son, His compassion, His holiness and His cross, you have seen the Father.
The image of the invisible God
Paul gives us one of the highest descriptions of Christ in all of Scripture in his letter to the Colossians:
Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell.
The church at Colossae was being troubled by teaching that offered a fuller spiritual experience than Christ alone. It involved philosophy, special observances and the worship of angels (Colossians 2:8, 18). Paul’s response was to show them how great Jesus already is.
“Who is the image of the invisible God.” The word image is eikōn, a visible representation of something. God is invisible. Christ is His visible image.
“The firstborn of every creature.” This phrase has sometimes been misused to suggest that Christ was the first thing God created. The very next sentence rules that out: “For by him were all things created.” He cannot be one of the created things if He created all of them. In the Bible, firstborn often speaks of rank and inheritance more than birth order. God says of David’s royal line, “Also I will make him my firstborn, higher than the kings of the earth” (Psalm 89:27). Christ holds the place of the firstborn over all creation because it was made by Him and for Him.
Then Paul turns from creation to redemption. He is “the head of the body, the church.” He is “the firstborn from the dead,” the first to rise in resurrection life. And “it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell.” In the next chapter Paul says it even more plainly: “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9).
All the fulness. Nothing of God is missing from Christ. Nobody who has Him needs to go looking for a better or deeper revelation somewhere else. Every new teaching that promises more of God than Jesus gives should be met with Paul’s question: what could you possibly add to the One in whom all the fulness of the Godhead dwells?
Reading the hard pages in His light
NuggetWhat does all this mean when we come to passages in the Old Testament that trouble us? There are two mistakes we must avoid.
The first mistake is to dismiss the difficult passage. Some people say, in effect, “That was the Old Testament God. Jesus has shown us a better one.” That is a very old error, and the church rejected it long ago. The God of Sinai and the Father of Jesus Christ are the same God. Hebrews, written to show the superiority of Christ, still says, “For our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29), quoting Deuteronomy. Jesus Himself said, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil” (Matthew 5:17). We cannot use Jesus to throw away the Scriptures He loved and affirmed.
The second mistake is to read the hard passage as though Jesus had never come, building our picture of God from that text alone and then wondering why He seems so different from the Lord of the Gospels.
The better way is to keep the passage’s full authority while reading it in the light of Christ. Let me give you an example that troubles many readers:
And when they came to Nachon’s threshingfloor, Uzzah put forth his hand to the ark of God, and took hold of it; for the oxen shook it . And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Uzzah; and God smote him there for his error; and there he died by the ark of God.
Uzzah reached out to steady the ark when the oxen stumbled, and he died. It seems harsh. He was only trying to help.
Read the passage carefully first. The ark had been placed “upon a new cart” (2 Samuel 6:3), the way the Philistines had once moved it. But the law had given clear instructions: the ark was to be carried on poles by the Levites of the family of Kohath, who “shall not touch any holy thing, lest they die” (Numbers 4:15). Israel had treated the holiest object in the nation like a piece of cargo. When David tried again three months later, he said, “the LORD our God made a breach upon us, for that we sought him not after the due order” (1 Chronicles 15:13). The passage is teaching that God’s holiness is real and is not to be handled casually. That lesson remains true. We should not soften it.
Now set that scene beside an encounter in the Gospels:
And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down to him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean. And as soon as he had spoken, immediately the leprosy departed from him, and he was cleansed.
Under the law, a leper was unclean. He had to live “without the camp” and cry “Unclean, unclean” whenever anyone came near (Leviticus 13:45-46). Anyone who touched him became unclean. But Jesus “put forth his hand, and touched him.” And instead of Jesus becoming unclean, the leper became clean.
Here is the holiness of God, the same holiness that struck Uzzah, walking into the world in human flesh. It has not become less holy. But now, in Jesus, holiness comes near to the unclean and heals them. Uzzah’s story tells us we cannot handle the holy God carelessly. The leper’s story tells us that the holy God has come to touch us. And the cross tells us how both can be true: the Holy One took our uncleanness on Himself, so that we might be made clean.
That is what it means to read the hard pages in the light of Christ. We do not explain them away. We let them teach us what they teach, and then we follow them to the place they lead: the Son, in whom holiness and mercy meet. Some passages will remain difficult even after careful study, and it is honest to admit that. But a faithful reader can hold a question open while trusting the God revealed in Jesus.
This is exactly how Jesus taught His own disciples to read. On the evening of His resurrection, He walked with two of them on the road to Emmaus. They were confused and grieving, because the events of that week had not fitted their picture of what God would do. Jesus did not hand them a new Bible. He opened the one they already had. “And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). Later they said to each other, “Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?” (Luke 24:32).
The same Scriptures that had confused them now set their hearts on fire, because the risen Christ had become the key. That is still His work. When you come to a page you do not understand, you are not left alone with it. Ask the Lord who opened the Scriptures on the Emmaus road to open them to you, and read on until you see Him.
When the final word shapes how we speak of God
PunchlineIf Jesus is the final interpretation of God, then He must also be the test of how we represent God to others.
A preacher may use many biblical words while cultivating people’s fear of him. A parent may speak about God’s authority while refusing ever to listen to a child. A leader may quote Scripture to protect his own position. Religious language cannot make intimidation resemble Christ. Jesus said, “learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart” (Matthew 11:29). If the God we describe looks nothing like that, we are describing someone else.
This also guards us against selective use of Jesus. The Christ of the Gospels is not a soft figure who never confronts anyone. He drove the money-changers from the temple. He pronounced woes on hypocrites who “omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith” (Matthew 23:23). He spoke of judgement more often than many preachers do. We do not get to choose a few comforting stories and ignore the rest. The final interpretation of God includes both His welcome and His warnings, and both come from the same heart.
So where correction is needed, give it truthfully. Where someone is vulnerable, never exploit that vulnerability to secure loyalty. Where forgiveness is offered, make its ground in Christ clear. The people we teach should come away knowing the Father whom Jesus revealed, and not merely knowing more about us.
It begins in our own reading. Spend time in the Gospels. Watch Jesus closely. Notice what He says, what He does, whom He touches, whom He rebukes and why. Read the Gospels alongside the apostles’ teaching about His death, resurrection and reign. Let Him correct the picture of God you have carried, whether that picture came from fear, from an unexamined tradition, or from your own preferences.
When the three disciples came down the mountain, they were quiet. Jesus told them not to speak about the vision “until the Son of man be risen again from the dead” (Matthew 17:9). They would not fully understand it until after the cross and the empty tomb. But something had been settled on that mountain that none of them would forget.
Peter had wanted three tents. The Father gave him one Son. Peter had wanted to keep Moses and Elijah on the same level as Jesus. The Father lifted Jesus above them, and then Moses and Elijah were gone. When the disciples lifted their faces from the ground, the first thing they felt was the touch of a hand, and the first words they heard were “Arise, and be not afraid.” And when they looked up, they saw no man, save Jesus only.
That is where your reading of Scripture should end every time, whatever book you have been in. Read Moses with honour. Read Elijah and all the prophets with care. Let the Psalms teach you to pray and the Proverbs teach you wisdom. And then lift up your eyes and look for Jesus only. The Father has spoken from the cloud. This is My beloved Son. Hear ye Him.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- Have you ever, like Peter, placed Jesus alongside other voices as one authority among many? What voices compete with His in your understanding of God?
- How does the description of Jesus in Hebrews 1:3 as the “express image” of God’s person affect the way you picture God?
- Do you find it easier to approach Jesus than the Father? How does John 14:9 speak to that?
- Think of an Old Testament passage that troubles you. What would it look like to keep its authority while reading it in the light of Christ?
- If someone learned about God only by watching how you speak and act, what kind of God would they imagine?
This Week
This week, read one Gospel encounter each day and watch Jesus closely: Mark 1:40-45, Luke 7:36-50, John 8:1-11, Mark 10:13-16 and Matthew 23:23-28. After each one, write a single sentence beginning, “Today I saw that the Father is...” At the end of the week, read your sentences together and compare them with the picture of God you carried before. Bring any differences to Him in prayer.
A Prayer
Father, thank You for speaking to me by Your Son. Thank You that Jesus is the brightness of Your glory and the express image of Your person, and that when I see Him, I see You. Forgive me for the times I have formed my picture of You from fear, from hurtful experience, or from passages read apart from Christ. Correct my understanding by His light. Teach me to hear Him above every other voice, to honour all Your word, and to represent You faithfully to others. When I lift up my eyes, let me see Jesus only. Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.