One Hundred Percent Pure
“And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart, And was transfigured before them: and His raiment was white as the light.” Matthew 17:1-2
In the southern portion of the United States where I reside, we do not get a lot of snow, but occasionally, usually in January or February, we will at least see some flurries. In 1993, I believe that was the year, we had a blizzard in March. We received one foot of snow, thunder, and howling, blowing snow so thick that you could barely see out the window across the yard. Being a life long resident, at least so far, of the south, I and most of my relatives and friends, had never seen such a snowfall. The schools were closed for an entire week, and the snow lingered on the ground for over two weeks. The day after the snowfall, when the sun came out and shown on that thick, white layer of the frozen tundra, it was beautiful. It was so clean and pure. It covered everything including the brown winter Bermuda grass, the stark, bare trees, and even any junk cars that were parked in driveways or along the roadways.
There was a day during Jesus’ time on earth when three of His disciples were privileged to see Him in His glory, a glory which I suppose was even brighter than the snow that day in March as the sun cast its beams of brilliant light upon it, nearly blinding anyone who looked across the pure white layer of fresh fallen snow. Six days after Jesus had spoken to His disciples concerning future events which would take place shortly, He took Peter, James and John with Him and ascended a nearby high mountain. Jesus loved all of His disciples, but I think Jesus saw potential in these three to be great leaders and preachers of the gospel. These three disciples are the ones whom we read about after Jesus’ ascension back to the Father. The other disciples were just as important to Jesus, but, for some reason, we do not hear much about their work.
Jesus, Peter, James, and John climbed the mountain together. When Jesus desired solitude and/or a quiet place to commune with His Father or speak with His disciples, He either went to a desert, a garden, or up on a mountain. There is something about a mountain that renders serenity, yet grandeur at the same time. When they reached the top, Jesus was “transfigured” before them, meaning His humanly appearance was transformed into His divine image. Luke 9:29 tells us that this transfiguration occurred while Jesus was praying to His Father. We don’t know what He was praying at that time, but in John 17:5, He asked His Father to glorify Him with God’s own glory, the same glory that He had even before creation. Jesus’ face was so bright that I imagine the disciples could barely look upon Him. The brightness was not a reflection like that displayed on Moses’ face when he came down from Mt. Sinai with the tablets of stone containing the Ten Commandments (Exodus 34:29), but was the very light of God shining from within.
Mark 9:3 describes Jesus’ clothing as being “exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can whiten them”. I can’t help but think about my Dad who worked for a dry cleaners for many years. Sometimes he would bring home an article of someone’s clothing that had a stain which had not been removed by the dry cleaning process, and he would work with it, sometimes being successful at removing the stain and sometimes not. There are some stains that cannot be removed by man, such as the stain of sin, which can only be removed by the blood of Christ.
The whiteness of Jesus’ clothes represented His purity. All those who receive Him as Lord and Savior will one day wear garments that are just as pure with no trace of the stain of sin, because His followers will be one hundred percent pure. It is hard for me to imagine being completely free from sin because of this sin-cursed world in which we live. We are all born with that sin nature that we inherited from Adam and Eve. That fact is very evident. Watch a young child and observe how selfish he or she is. We have to teach our children to behave because they will not behave naturally. We are prideful, stubborn, self-centered, and envious by nature. Sometimes I wonder why God even bothered to give us an opportunity through the death of His Son to become pure as the driven snow. He chose to do so, though, because of His love and mercy for His creation. And that is enough to praise Him for all eternity.