The revelation of the glory of God, reflecting off the face of Moses, was an accompanying sign of the divine source of the message that God gave him on the mountain. The emanating glory from the face of the Lord Jesus Christ was not a reflected glory. Jesus is the very revelation of the glory of God in the flesh.

There is something breathtakingly wonderful when we stand at the top of a peak of a mountain and overlook the valleys and rivers below. We feel as though we are able to take in more of the glory of God in creation when we behold such grandiose scenes. As a boy, I distinctly remember hearing people speak of having “mountaintop experiences.” Whether we realize it or not, the feeling of having some significant elevated religious experience is in some sense owing to the role that mountains played in the revelation of God in redemptive history. Whether it was the Garden of Eden—which God set atop a mountain to be a temple-dwelling place (Ezekiel 28:13-14)—, the Ark (a prototypical Temple with the typical new creation within) settling on Mount Ararat, Abraham offering up Isaac on Mount Moriah, God calling Moses at Mt. Horeb, God preparing Moses at Mt. Sinai, Solomon building the Temple on the Mount in Jerusalem, Elijah contending with the prophets of Baal at Mt. Carmel or God revealing Himself to Elijah in the sound of silence on Mt. Horeb, mountain themes permeate the great revelations of God in the Old Covenant era.

A significant number of mountaintop experiences also structure the life and ministry of Jesus. At the outset of His ministry, the Savior went up on the Mount of Olives in order to give the divinely inspired exposition of the law of the Kingdom of God (Matt. 5-7). As he prepared to draw near to Jerusalem, Jesus revealed His own divine glory to his disciples in his transfiguration on the mount (Luke 9:23-34); and, finally, in his death on the cross, Christ fulfilled all the eternal purposes of God in redemptive history on Mount Calvary. In all of these instances, the Holy Spirit intended to direct our minds back to previous mountaintop experiences throughout redemptive history.

In his epistles, the Apostle Paul explains the intricacies of God’s covenantal dealings by means of an overarching biblical theology of the mountain motif. In both Galatians 4:21-31 and Hebrews 12:18-29, the Apostle drew out a series of significant contrasts between Mt. Sinai and Mt. Zion. In Hebrews, he explained that believers have come to “what may not be touched” (Heb. 12:18)—to “Mount Zion…the heavenly Jerusalem” (Heb. 12:22). That final contrast between the earthly, temporal mountain, Sinai, and the heavenly, eternal mountain, Zion, is one to which we must constantly turn our attention. It is a contrast between the Law and the Gospel. There is something towering about these two mountains in redemptive history. To grasp their symbolic significance is to grasp the greatest mysteries in theology.

In 2 Corinthians 3, Paul focuses his readers minds on the experience of Moses at Sinai and the experience of believers through the ministry of the Gospel in the New Covenant (2 Cor. 3:7-8). There, he contrasts glory that shone on the face of Moses with the glory of God manifest in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 4:6). Geerhardus Vos explained this when he wrote:

“This excellence of the Old Covenant found a symbolic expression in the light upon the face of Moses after his tarrying with God upon the mount, a light so intense that the children of Israel could not steadfastly look upon its radiance. Paul’s purpose, however, is not to emphasize what the two dispensations have in common, but that in which the New surpasses the Old.”

No one can read 2 Corinthians 3-4 without catching the contrast between the experience of Moses on Mount Sinai and the revelation of the glory of Jesus in the New Covenant. The experience of the Savior at the Mount of Transfiguration is perhaps the most instructive in this regard, since it is replete with echoes of Sinai. The similarities are striking—a glory cloud (Exodus 24:15-16; Luke 9:34); a voice from heaven (Exodus 24:16; Luke 9:35), a manifestation of glory in the face of a mediator (Exodus 34:29-35; Luke 9:29, 32) and references to the tabernacle (Exodus 26; 33:7-11; Luke 9:33). Yet, the transfiguration of Jesus carries with it a strong contrast with the experience that Moses had when he came down the Mount after having been in the presence of God.

The Transfiguration cannot be understood fully until we consider it against the background of the revelation of God to Moses at Sinai. Both the comparisons and the contrasts between the two mediators on these two mountains instantly grab our attention.

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