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248 How Are the Christian Scriptures Confirmed by the Peculiar Glory of God?
the shadow of Jesus’s superior glory, they do not lose their authority, but
rather gain confirmation from the Son of God. Peter says that we are to
look to the truth and the glory they reveal as to “a lamp shining in a dark
place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”
Christ has not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets (Moses
and Elijah), but to fulfill them. On the Mount of Transfiguration, he
pre-fulfills their promises of ultimate hope. In this way, these Scriptures
come to burn with all the more brightness as a lamp for our dark world.
For one brief moment, the transfiguration broke the pattern of the
incarnation. It pulled back the curtain on the future when the glory
of Christ would not be clothed in fragile lowliness any longer. And
that too is part of the peculiar glory of Jesus Christ—the sheer brevity
yet wonder of it. And all of it serving to make the Scriptures—the
prophetic writings, as Peter calls them—more sure. The transfiguration
itself becomes a kind of dramatization of the point of this book: it is
the peculiar glory of Jesus that awakens and wins our confidence in the
truth of Scripture.
In summary, then, the miracles of Jesus are meant to provide a good
foundation for well-grounded confidence that he is who he says he is
and that his teachings are true (John 5:36; 10:25, 36; 14:11). But the
miracles, as mere demonstrations of supernatural power, do not have
this effect. Even demons know that Jesus does such miracles (Mark
1:24). So do Jesus’s brothers. And their excitement about his miracles,
and their desire to see him do more of them for the sake of more notoriety,
is called “unbelief.”
To see the miracles of Jesus as the foundation for true and saving
faith, one must see the peculiar glory they display. “This, the first of
his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory” (John
2:11). This glory can only be seen by those whose hearts are brought
into conformity with the glory. The peculiar glory of Jesus’s miracles
is that their supernatural power is in the service of humble God-exaltation,
not crowd-pleasing self-exaltation. They are in the service of
relieving suffering, not escaping suffering. They will take Jesus to the
cross, not keep him from it (Matt. 16:21–23). Hearts that do not share
this love for the glory of God and the good of others in the humility of
self-denial will not see the glory of Jesus in his miracles.