They saw His glory
But Peter and those with him were heavy with sleep; and when they were fully awake, they saw His glory (Luke 9:32).
For He received from God the Father honour and glory when such a voice came to Him from the Excellent Glory: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” And we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain (2 Peter 1:17-18).
As Peter comes to the end of his life, we see His closeness to the Lord. He had learnt so much as he humbly followed the Saviour in faith. The Gospels record the brightness of his faith, alongside his mistakes and failures. But ultimately his life was a triumph of grace, characterised by those simple final words of the Lord to him, “You follow me” (John 21:22). Grace transformed Peter into a true shepherd who cared for the Flock of God. His final words to us at the end of this book are, “But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and forever. Amen” (2 Peter 3:18).
Peter understood the power of grace. Grace saves us, and by it, we grow in the knowledge of Christ as our Lord and as our Saviour. On a rooftop in Joppa, in Acts 10, Peter said to the Lord, “Not so Lord” (v. 14). My father often used to say to me, “Don’t contradict!” It took some time for Peter to learn this lesson, and his contradictions led him into very deep waters. It was the grace of God to the Gentiles, that retaught him not to contradict, but to live in humility and simple obedience to the Lord who loved him, and that love extended to everyone.
Peter also wanted us to grow in the knowledge of Jesus as the Saviour. When we think of the Saviour, we tend to look backwards. But the Lord never ceases to be our Saviour. We well know He saves us from the penalty, the power and the presence of sin, and we need to live in the reality of these truths.
Peter ends with the glory of the Lord: at the end of his life he recounts the Father’s delight in His Son. In the first chapter of his second letter he relates the occasion when he, James and John were with the Lord on the Mount of Transfiguration and “they saw His glory” (Luke 9:32): he remembers that he and his friends “were with Him on the holy mountain”.
When we remember the Lord, by faith, we see the glory of His deity, His manhood, His ministry, His sufferings and His death. We also see the glory of His resurrection and ascension. By faith we see Him now crowned with glory and honour. And in hope, we look on to His millennial glory, and His glory in the eternal day. In this way, we respond in the power of the Spirit in worship. By remembering Christ’s love, we are reminded of the day when we shall be with Him to behold His glory: “Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24).
