And as they descended from the mountain, he charged them that they should relate to no one what they had seen, unless when the Son of man should be risen from among [the] dead.
Three disciples come down the mountain where they have just seen Jesus in glory, and He tells them to say nothing. But the silence has an end date. That date held a truth they had never heard before.
The glory the three saw was a preview of the kingdom, shown to chosen witnesses. The ban on speaking about it had an end. Once it lifted, the vision would count for far more than it could that day.
The kingdom would be brought in with power when its time had come. The Transfiguration was the witness and visible picture of that to the chosen witnesses who were with Him on the Mount. As they came down He forbade them to tell what they had seen until He was risen from the dead. Then it would be an immense confirmation to their faith and testimony. (2 Peter 1:16-18)
One writer links the silence to the rejection that had already happened. The sight on the mountain was not material for a public campaign.
It was no longer a question of testifying to the kingdom of Christ. This was rejected. The vision was for the disciples, to strengthen their faith in Jesus. The Lord was occupying Himself with the souls of believers, not with the world... For now it was of no use to speak of these things any further. That had to wait until the Holy Spirit was given, until the Lord was risen from the dead, and power came from on high to make these things a fresh starting-point.
The next verse shows the three puzzling over the words. Their difficulty was not resurrection in general. Older translations read "risen from among the dead," and that one word changes everything.
This truth was new to them. Resurrection of the dead was a doctrine every orthodox Jew knew (Heb. 6:2). Resurrection from the dead was quite new to them all. This last is Christian doctrine, tied to the truth of the two resurrections, which the Lord first spoke of (John 5:28-29). Some will rise to life; others will rise to judgment, to be judged at the last and condemned for ever (Rev. 20:5, 11-15).
Another writer marks where that teaching first appears in the Bible, and where it reaches believers.
Both Testaments teach the resurrection of the dead. But resurrection from the dead is New Testament revelation alone. Mark 9:9 teaches it first, and Luke 20:35 then confirms that it applies to believers.
The Pharisees and Sadducees, two Jewish groups of that day, already argued about whether the dead rise. But God raising one man out from among the dead, while others stay in death, says something about that Man.
It was not the bare fact of resurrection. The Pharisees already believed in resurrection itself, though the Sadducees rejected it. But resurrection from among the dead was another thing altogether, and that is what the Lord was presenting here. Keep these things among yourselves, He says, until the Son of Man is risen from among the dead. God would raise Him up from among the dead as the great open token of His own delight and pleasure in that blessed Servant.
At this stage the Lord speaks only of His own rising. What it would mean for His people came later.
This is now the Christian form of resurrection, with the Lord Himself as the firstfruits and pattern. But no such application is made yet; only the Son of Man is to rise alone on the third day. It is a foundation of our faith that He has done this.
They did what He said, and they kept doing it while the meaning stayed out of reach.
The three disciples were plainly not ready for this glory. They must first see their Lord crucified. Without this, neither they nor we can properly value His glory... They clearly obeyed His instruction, but seemed bewildered about what the rising from among the dead should mean. No doubt they thought this had some spiritual explanation, for they had no idea it could be literally true.
- Silence — the ban on telling the vision had a date on it: they were to say nothing until the Son of Man had risen.
- Suffering — the kingdom had been refused, and the three had yet to see their Lord crucified. The vision now served their faith, not the world.
- Seal — rising from among the dead was God's open token of His delight in His Servant. The phrase was so new that the disciples could not work it out.
- Sample — Christ rises alone as the firstfruits and pattern; what it means for believers comes later in Scripture, not here.
- Speak — once He was risen, the sealed vision became strong testimony. That is how Peter later used it (2 Peter 1:16-18).
And they kept that saying, questioning among themselves, what rising from among [the] dead was.
Three disciples had just seen Jesus transfigured on the mountain. On the way down He told them to say nothing until the Son of Man had risen from the dead — and that phrase puzzled them.
Their difficulty sat in one small Greek word: ek, "out of." Older English translations blurred it.
The disciples were familiar with the Pharisees' idea of resurrection of the dead. But resurrection from among the dead, or first resurrection, was a riddle to them. The Lord Himself was to be its "firstfruits" (1 Corinthians 15:20). The King James Version did not bring out the force of the preposition ek here.
These men were not sceptics about life after death.
Standard Jewish belief held the resurrection of the dead (John 11:24; Hebrews 6:2). But to rise from the dead, while others stayed under its power, was completely new to them — as it still is to many now.
They did not have to wait long for their answer:
The Lord did not enlighten them at that time, but they did not have long to wait for an answer. The Lord rose, and the angel at the tomb announced that "He has risen from the dead" (Matthew 28:7). He had risen, but all the dead had not. Resurrection of the dead is a truth which concerns all who die. Resurrection from the dead is the proper and sure hope of saints who die.
If God raises some out from among the dead, the rest are still there. The disciples could not take that in.
They knew about resurrection; the whole party of the Pharisees believed in it. But here was a power that delivered people out of the condition in which man, and even the saints, lay. It implied too that others were still left in that condition when God used that power. Of this they were completely ignorant. That there was a resurrection in which God would raise up all the dead at the last day, they had no doubt. But they understood nothing of this: that the Son of Man was the resurrection and the life. Here was the last Adam in absolute triumph over death, the Son of God having life in Himself, shown by His resurrection from among the dead.
The question was never whether the dead rise. It was about His rising first, and what that says about Him.
They were not questioning the rising of the dead; every Jew understood that. Their question was about His rising from among the dead. His being taken out from among the dead was the mark of God's special favour, and the firstfruits and pattern of those who will also be taken out in this way.
His resurrection does not stand alone. Two places in Luke's Gospel point the same way:
Here, of course, it was the resurrection of Christ Himself that was in question. But He was the firstfruits of His own, so His resurrection was both the pledge and the pattern of theirs. In Luke 14:14 we find the expression "the resurrection of the just." In another chapter (20:35) the Lord speaks of those "who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead." The phrase He uses plainly means a partial resurrection: those who get this resurrection will leave others behind them in their graves.
They kept quiet without grasping what He meant. Understanding came later, through help they did not yet have.
The Lord made all this known to the disciples, as verse 9 shows, with a view to the time when His death and resurrection would be complete. Only then would they understand it all, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, and able to use it with real effect in testimony. At that moment they did not even understand what rising from among the dead really meant, as the next verse shows. The rising of the dead would not have puzzled them in any special way. It was this rising "out of," or "from among," the dead — which first took place in Christ — that raised such questions.
Their bewilderment is not treated by these writers as a failure peculiar to the twelve. Kelly notes that the same phrase still passes over many heads:
If they knew the Scriptures and God's power of resurrection, as the Sadducees did not, certainly the rising from among the dead was as new to them as it is still little understood by many disciples.
- One preposition. Their whole difficulty hangs on "out from among." Older translations left that small word flat.
- Old truth. Jews expected a resurrection of the dead at the last day, and these men never doubted it.
- New truth. Rising out from among the dead means God raises some and leaves others in their graves — a power they had never heard of.
- First one out. God raised Christ first, marking His special favour on Him and making Him the firstfruits and pattern of His own.
- Later light. They obeyed while still puzzled. The meaning came when He rose, and the Holy Spirit taught them.
And they asked him saying, Why do the scribes say that Elias must first have come?
The disciples have just come down from the mountain, where they saw Elijah standing beside Christ in glory. Now they raise the objection the religious teachers pressed against Jesus: the prophets said Elijah must come first, so how can the Messiah be here already?
The disciples had kept this problem to themselves. The glory they had just seen loosened their tongues.
The prophets had said that Elijah must first come. The scribes insisted on this. Struck with the glory that plainly confirmed the claims of Christ, the disciples speak to Him of this difficulty. Seeing the glory convinced them, and that conviction made them admit the difficulty they had kept silent about before, not daring to bring it forward. But now the proof is strong enough to embolden them to face the difficulty.
Note what they do with it: they bring it to Him. One writer contrasts this with the puzzle they had kept among themselves a moment earlier.
The disciples, however, have another difficulty about which they do speak to the Lord.
Jesus does not answer by correcting the scribes' doctrine. He grants it — and then adds the half they had left out.
Our Lord does not dispute the truth the scribes pressed. But He points out His own coming shame and suffering before He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels. In the same way He shows a similar application of Elijah's case in the person of John the Baptist, while Elijah's own coming still awaits its fulfilment in a future day. To faith the forerunner has already come, as well as the Lord Himself. Unbelief must feel both later on.
The problem was never the Elijah prophecy itself. It lay in how they read the prophets.
The difficulty arose from the fact that while they accepted the Scriptures that spoke of Christ coming in glory, they overlooked those that spoke of His coming to suffer as the Son of Man.
The teachers whose words the disciples repeated had made the same mistake.
The scribes ignored the sufferings of Christ and therefore could not understand the glory that should follow.
Scripture describes two arrivals of the Messiah. Once you see that, the scribes' teaching and Christ's presence no longer clash.
The difficulty was tied to the truth of the two comings, which the disciples did not yet understand. The Lord came in humiliation. He will come again in power and glory. A forerunner came before the first coming. A forerunner will appear before the second... The scribes were right about the coming of Elijah. He will come, and restore all things. But no one has yet seen anything like that here on earth. John the Baptist, who came in the spirit and power of Elijah, did not do that.
John the Baptist himself showed the difference. It lies in which Scriptures he claimed and which he did not.
Before Christ appeared in this way, which tested the Jews as to their responsibility, God had not failed to give them a testimony according to the spirit and power of Elijah; and they had treated him badly, just as they pleased... So John also said that he was not Elijah, and he quotes Isaiah 40, which speaks of the testimony; but he never quotes Malachi 4, which relates to Elijah in person.
There is a warning here about how doubts get planted. The scribes said nothing false.
The scribes had the Scriptures at their command, and they presented what the Scriptures contained, as ready scribes — here, perhaps, to object against the truth. What they said here was the truth. The apostles quickly bring it back to this doubt and difficulty. The glory impressed them, but it did not fill them. And this was natural, because the difficulty was already in their minds — Satan was using a truth, note this, to create a difficulty. And how easily that difficulty could be used, when people did not understand the glory and mystery of God in the suffering of His exalted Son!
- Glory loosens the tongue. The disciples had held this question back. Seeing Christ's glory gave them courage to bring it to Him.
- Glory without the suffering. The scribes' error was not what they taught but what they left out. The Son of Man must suffer first, and without that, the glory to follow made no sense to them.
- Glory twice over. Two comings answer the puzzle. Christ came in humiliation and will come in power, and each coming has its own forerunner.
- Glory announced twice. John the Baptist came in the spirit and power of Elijah. The Elijah who restores all things is still to come, and John never claimed that prophecy for himself.
- Glory divides faith from unbelief. Faith already recognises both the forerunner and the Lord. A true statement, used the wrong way, breeds doubt.