Q. What offices does Christ fulfill as our Redeemer?
A. Christ, as our Redeemer, fulfills the offices of a prophet, priest, and king in His states of humiliation and exaltation.
Commentary
Scripture sets Christ before us in many ways, and the catechism gathers His saving work under three offices: a prophet, priest, and king. These three offices answer the threefold need of fallen sinners. We are ignorant and need a prophet to teach us; we are guilty and need a priest to atone for us and intercede for us; we are helpless and enslaved and need a king to rule, defend, and deliver us. No one office alone would meet our whole misery, but in Christ all three are joined, so that He is a complete Redeemer for the whole of our ruin. Under the old covenant, prophets, priests, and kings were anointed to their work and foreshadowed Him; in Christ, the Anointed One, the offices they pictured find their fullness.
The catechism adds that Christ exercises these offices in His states of humiliation and exaltation. He did not lay them down when His earthly work was finished. As prophet, He taught on earth and now teaches His church by His Word and Spirit. As priest, He offered Himself once for sin on the cross and now lives to intercede for His people at the Father’s right hand. As king, He was mocked with a crown of thorns in His humiliation and now reigns over all things in His exaltation, “a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek” (Hebrews 5:6). The same Christ who was humbled to death is the Christ now exalted, and He carries out all three offices in both states for the salvation of those given to Him.
This office of mediator belongs to Christ alone and can be shared with no other. He needs no fellow prophets to complete His revelation, no other priests to add to His sacrifice, no rival kings to share His throne. To look to any other for what these offices supply, whether a human priesthood to mediate forgiveness or any earthly authority to claim the conscience that belongs to Christ, is to wrong the sufficiency of our Redeemer. The Christ who saves us is prophet, priest, and king, and in Him every need of His people is fully met.
Scripture Proofs
“As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill” (Psalm 2:6).
“Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you’” (Acts 3:22).
“As he says also in another place, ‘You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek’” (Hebrews 5:6).
2nd London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689
8.9: This office of mediator between God and man is proper only to Christ, who is the prophet, priest, and king of the church of God; and may not be either in whole, or any part thereof, transferred from Him to any other.