<p>17:8&nbsp;<em>And lifting up their eyes, they saw</em>- &lsquo;Lifted up&rsquo;,&nbsp;<em>epairo</em>, is surely intended to resonate with&nbsp;<em>egeiro</em>&nbsp;[&ldquo;arise&rdquo; / &lsquo;get up&rsquo;] of :7. The picture is given of the Lord bending down and touching them, as if they are children, and urging them to rise up. Instead, they just raise up their eyes, and see only Jesus. We really are invited to play &lsquo;Bible television&rsquo; here. The scene is so imaginable. And again, the Gospel writers and speakers were emphasizing the weakness of even the three leading disciples. Peter spoke inappropriately, offering to make booths when instead God wanted him to &lsquo;hear&rsquo; His Son; their fear is likened to the fear of unspiritual Israel at the theophany on Sinai; they are scared to get up in obedience to Jesus&rsquo; touch, raising their large childlike eyes to Him instead&hellip; Indeed the record of the transfiguration really stresses the disciples&rsquo; weakness, exhibited in the face of the Kingdom glory of their Lord and the earnest encouragement of Him by more spiritual men to go through with the cross- whilst they slept.</p>
<p><em>No one, save Jesus only</em>- In the Greek as well as in translation, this is really labouring the point. The &ldquo;save / only&rdquo;,&nbsp;<em>monos</em>, is redundant- they saw &lsquo;nobody except Jesus&rsquo; is a statement which needs no further qualification, indeed grammatically it almost&nbsp;<em>cannot</em>&nbsp;be given further qualification, and reads awkwardly because of the&nbsp;<em>monos</em>, &ldquo;only&rdquo;, that is added. But the word &ldquo;only&rdquo; is added to emphasize that their focus was solely upon Him. That was the purpose of the event, and it had been achieved. Christ centeredness is the ultimate, final and total issue of our experience of Him, the Law and the prophets. The transfiguration ends with this total focus&nbsp;<em>monos</em>&nbsp;upon Christ; this was the practical effect of the theophany. John&rsquo;s Gospel doesn&rsquo;t record the transfiguration, but as so often, it is indeed alluded to. For John&rsquo;s Gospel is full of references to seeing glory, to hearing the Son. It&rsquo;s as if John presents Jesus to us a constant theophany, not one that three of the best disciples go up a mountain to see for a short period, but one which is continually before each of us, and which according to Paul&rsquo;s allusions to it, draws us into its very process. For we too are transfigured as we like the disciples behold the Lord&rsquo;s transfiguration (Rom. 12:2; 2 Cor. 3:18 s.w.).</p>