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also Christ GLORIFIED not Himself" (5: 4, 5). We shall find an allusion to this position
in 3: 3: "for this man was counted worthy of more GLORY than Moses, inasmuch as
He who hath builded the house hath more HONOUR than the house". Thus we find
Christ superior in honour and glory to both Moses and Aaron, and when we see Him
crowned with honour and glory we are indeed considering Him Who is the apostle
(Moses) and high priest (Aaron) of our profession.
It will be remembered that immediately following the revelation of the Lord's
approaching sufferings (Matt. 16:) comes the transfiguration (Matt. 17:). In order to
have "an entrance ministered richly into the aionian kingdom of our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ", the apostle Peter bids the believers of the dispersion remember the
transfiguration:--
"For we have not followed cunningly devised fables when we made known unto you
the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eye-witnesses of His greatness,
for He received from God the Father HONOUR and GLORY" (II Pet. 1: 16, 17).
We pointed out in Article No. 13 that the "so great salvation" of which the Lord
began to speak commences with His rejection, and is related more closely to the
testimony of the second half of Matthew's gospel than to that of the first. Those disciples
who saw the rejection of the King (Matt. 12:, 13:) could say after the transfiguration,
"We see not yet all things put under Him, but we see Jesus.....crowned with glory and
honour".
We now turn our attention to the close of verse 9, "that He by the grace of God should
taste death for every man". How are we to understand the expression "taste death"? Is it
merely a synonym for death itself? Some say so, but we are afraid of this interpretation
of so many expressions as synonyms. We feel that there must be a clear reason why this
word is used here, and therefore we turn to the Scriptures for light upon its meaning.
The word is translated in the A.V. "eat" three times, and "taste" twelve times. We
shall never plumb the profoundest depths of the Scriptures "unto perfection", but we shall
never find the Scriptures lapsing into the slightest approach to error or slovenly usage of
language. That Homer may nod is proverbial, that the Scriptures are infallible is one of
the first articles of faith. It is also the impression consistently gained by continued
searching. We are not at all surprised therefore in the case of such divinely-arranged
words to find that the first occurrence of the expression "taste of death" takes us back to
the close of Matt. 16:, immediately before the record of the transfiguration
(Matt. 16: 28). Parallel with this are Mark 9: 1 and Luke 9: 27. There is one feature
common to all these passages: immediately before the reference is the statement
concerning losing the soul for Christ's sake, and immediately after it comes the
transfiguration. Now Peter's epistles have as their theme present suffering followed by
future glory: This is the lesson also of Matt. 16:, 17:
To John 8: 52 we need not refer, for the Lord said "see death" (verse 51) and we
are not certain enough of those children of the devil (verse 44) to follow them here. That
to "taste" does not mean to "drink" Matt. 28: 34 shows and thus in the figurative