For we have not made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, following cleverly imagined fables, but having been eyewitnesses of *his* majesty.
Peter writes to believers who had seen their promised King rejected and crucified, and he rests their hope on something he saw with his own eyes. Everything in the verse turns on that: the kingdom is real, because three men saw it in advance.
A hope that seems to have failed is easily re-explained as a picture. One writer asks whether Peter's readers felt that pull.
Peter was writing to people who had cherished the hope of Messiah's kingdom from their fathers' days, and who had lived to see Him rejected and crucified. Were they tempted then to wonder about the prophecies of His glorious and actual kingdom, covering both earth and heaven? Were they only figures of speech — glowing, poetic descriptions of what was after all just a spiritual and invisible state in heaven?
Peter's answer is an event on a mountain — the transfiguration — and where the Gospels place it matters.
In each Gospel that tells of it, the transfiguration comes right after a promise. Some standing there would not taste death before they saw the kingdom of the Son of Man. And Peter, when speaking of this scene, declares that it was a display of the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He says that the sight of His majesty confirmed the word of prophecy to them, so that they knew what they were talking about... It was a sample of the glory in which He would later come, given to confirm the faith of His disciples in view of His death, which He had just announced to them.
Peter names power and coming. One writer matches those two words, and the glory, to the three Gospel accounts.
If we turn to Mark 9, we find the Lord saying in verse 1, "there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power." In Matthew 16:28 it is, "until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom." Third, in Luke 9:30-31, we find Moses and Elijah, "who appeared in glory". Peter speaks of these three marks — the power, the coming and the glory of the Lord — referring to the three different characters of the transfiguration in the Gospels.
Peter's word for eyewitness is not the usual one.
Here our apostle testifies to it as one of the chosen three who actually saw the glory and heard the Father's voice about the Son. He uses a word found in the New Testament only in Peter. The word can carry a wide meaning, but it says more than "eyewitness". The Greeks used it for those admitted to the highest level of their secret religious rites.
Peter had known Christ in weakness. On the mountain he saw the same Person in power.
He had spoken of things seen as well as things heard. The apostles Peter, John and James were together eyewitnesses of the majesty of Christ, the three of them forming a complete witness to His glory. They had known Christ in weakness and humiliation; they saw Him too in His power and majesty. The scene on the mount of transfiguration was a foretaste of His coming, for His coming will be in power and majesty. That power will change our bodies of humiliation into conformity to His body of glory. It is the power by which He is able even to subject all things to Himself (Philippians 3:21).
The charge Peter denied is still made. Now it is aimed at the prophets.
Look around the Christian world and ask people! Ah, they say, there is no prophecy. They say the book of Isaiah must be cut into three or four parts to get rid of the idea of prophecy. In the second part it names a man like King Cyrus, and nobody, they claim, can speak about a person in advance. It is impossible; there is no prophecy. Cleverly devised myths! they say.
Certainty about that glory changes how this world looks.
When faith grasps the glory of Christ in the world to come, all the glitter and brightness of this world will fade into darkness. We will then value it at its true worth.
- Seen, not spun. Peter answers the doubt with an event, not an argument.
- Seen in sample. The transfiguration showed the coming glory in miniature. It steadied the disciples right after the Lord announced His death.
- Seen in three marks. Power, coming and glory match the three Gospel accounts of that one scene.
- Seen by three. Peter, James and John saw it together, and three witnesses make the testimony complete.
- Seen, therefore settled. What Peter saw makes the promise sure. A heart sure of that glory stops overvaluing this world's glitter.
For he received from God [the] Father honour and glory, such a voice being uttered to him by the excellent glory This is my beloved Son, in whom *I* have found my delight;
Peter points back to a mountain, where a voice out of the light named Jesus as the beloved Son. The verse raises three questions: who spoke, what Jesus received, and why it still matters.
Peter does not say the Lord's own glory broke out. He says the Lord received something.
It was not the glory that belongs to Him in Himself. The point was not glory shining out of Him, but glory given to Him. "He received honor and glory from God the Father."
Moses gave the law. Elijah called Israel back to it. Both were great men, and on the mountain someone tried to place them on a level with the Son.
It was the Father's voice out of the excellent glory. "He was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, 'This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.'" The Father then showed His jealousy for the honour of His Son. He would not allow anyone to put the law-giver or the law-restorer on that level. They were servants, to be honoured in the place He gave them. But His beloved Son! — there were His delights. Christ went down in infinite love to suffer as man, and as man to be exalted. Yet in His Father's eyes the glory of the eternal Son was precious beyond all human thought.
Peter piles up phrases: from God the Father, from the excellent glory, from heaven. Each phrase names the same source from a different side. The scene also stands against the way men treated Him.
Men heaped dishonour and shame on Christ. In contrast, He received honour and glory from God the Father. All others have come short of the glory. In contrast, here was One whom "the excellent glory" greeted as the beloved Son of the Father. The voice the Apostle heard came from heaven, and all heaven agrees with the Father's delight in Christ. The whole scene lets us into the secret of heaven's delight in Christ, and of how precious the Son is to the Father.
The Father's words announce nothing that started that day. (The ESV reads "with whom I am well pleased"; older translations render it "in whom I found my delight.")
Soon His departure in Jerusalem would prove that the city He wept over saw no beauty in Him to desire. It hid its face from Him, the way people turn away from someone, and treated Him as struck down by God and afflicted. But here the voice out of the glory declares, This is my beloved Son in whom I found My delight. So it had been in eternity before creation. So it was when the world was made by Him, in all the dealings of providence, in the secret working of grace with people, and in the public government of Israel under the law.
Peter did not tell this story only as a memory. He used it as proof about the future.
Peter, speaking of this scene in 2 Peter 1:16, says it was a display of the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He says that the sight of His majesty confirmed the word of prophecy to them… It was a sample of the glory in which He will come later. It was given to confirm the faith of His disciples, who now faced the death He had just announced to them.
The disciples did not watch the cloud from outside. They went into it, and that changes what this verse offers us.
Peter tells us that this voice came from the excellent glory… Now Peter and the others had entered into the cloud. So we get the wonderful fact that saints have the privilege of standing in the glory the voice comes from, and there, in that glory, sharing the delight of the Father in His beloved Son. We are called not only to the fellowship of God's Son, Jesus Christ, but to have fellowship with the Father. God the Father admits us to share His satisfaction in His beloved Son.
- Received. The Father gave Him honour and glory. This was not His own glory breaking out.
- Source. It came from God the Father, from the excellent glory, and from heaven — one delight stated three ways.
- Contrast. Men gave Him shame. The Father gave Him honour, and would not let even Moses or Elijah rank beside Him.
- Duration. The delight the Father declared on the mountain is not new. It reaches back before creation and runs through all His dealings since.
- Reach. The disciples entered the very cloud the voice came from. So the scene ends with an invitation: share the Father's satisfaction in His Son.