1. The glory that Christ there appeared in was so divine and admirably excellent, and had such a bright and evident appearance of divinity, such an admirable and ineffable semblance of the infinitely glorious perfection of God, his awful majesty, his purity, and infinitely sweet grace and love, as evidently denoted him to be a divine person. The apostle says, “He received from the Father, honor and glory:” the term is doubled and varied thus to signify the exceeding excellency of the glory.
There was doubtless an inward sight, or lively sense of heart, of Christ’s spiritual glory that accompanied Peter’s sight of the visible glory of Christ. There was an ineffable beauty, majesty, and brightness in his countenance, that held forth and naturally represented the excellencies of his mind, his holiness, his heavenly meekness, and grace, and love, and that majesty that spake his union with the Deity, and by the influence of the Spirit of God accompanying, excited in Peter, and the other two that were with him, a great sense of those perfections, and their immense excellency, adorableness, and sweetness. And the Spirit of God doubtless accompanied the word of God, that Peter and the other then heard, so that that word was spiritually understood, and believed; so that Christ’s glory then was manifested to the disciples three ways: by the rays of light, it was exhibited to their eyes; by the voice, it was declared to their ears; and by the Spirit, to their souls. The last was the most convincing and certain evidence to them of Christ’s divinity.
This glory of Christ, that the apostles then saw, both the outward glory and the spiritual glory, that the outward glory had a semblance of, did most remarkably appear to be such as exceedingly became the only-begotten, dearly beloved, and infinitely lovely Son of God. Therefore, the apostle John, who was another eye-witness of it, speaking probably with special reference to this, John i. 14. says, “We beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” It exhibited not only the divine greatness in the majesty of which the apostle Peter in this place especially speaks, but the divine grace and love in the sweetness of it.
2. This glory that appeared in the person of Christ, did exactly resemble that excellent glory, that the apostle speaks of, out of which the voice came, ver. 17. For there was there in the mount an external glory, as a visible symbol of the presence of God the Father, and by which he was represented; as well as an external glory in God the Son, viz. that bright cloud that overshadowed them. There was a glory in that cloud that the apostle calls an excellent glory. When it is said in the evangelists that a bright cloud overshadowed them, it is not meant such a light or white cloud as shines by a cast of light upon it from some shining body, such as are some clouds by the bright reflection of the sun’s light; but a cloud bright by an internal light shining out of it, which light the apostle calls an excellent glory. It probably was an ineffably sweet, excellent sort of light, perfectly differing from and far exceeding the light of the sun. All light is sweet, but this seems to have been immensely more sweet than any other that ever they had; impressing some idea which we cannot conceive, having never seen it, as we can conceive of nothing of light more than we have seen ; we could have conceived of no such light as the light of the sun, had not we seen it, nor of any colour, blue, red, green, purple, nor any other. God doubtless can excite other ideas of light in our minds besides any of those that we have had, and far exceeding them; a light affording sweetness and pleasure to the sight, far exceeding all pleasure of the grosser and inferior senses. Therefore, Peter the apostle, that writes this epistle, was exceedingly delighted with it in the time of it, which made him say, “It is good for us to be here;” and made him talk of building tabernacles, and thinking of spending the rest of his days there; and he still (though now old and near his end, verses 13, 14.) retains a lively sense of the exquisite gloriousness and pleasantness of that light, when he expresses himself as he does here, calling it the excellent glory. And there probably was an exact resemblance between the glory that the disciples saw in Christ’s face, and that which they saw in this cloud, which declared him to be the Son of God; for they saw him to be his express image.
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