“Christ’s Three-Fold Office”

John Calvin spoke of Christ’s “three-fold office”(prophet, priest, and king) as an important and useful means of understanding the person and work of Christ. Calvin devoted a chapter of his Institutes of the Christian Religion (2.15.1-6) to setting forth the biblical data which demonstrates that Jesus is God’s consummate prophet, the great high priest, and all-powerful king.

The so-called “three-fold office” was widely accepted as a helpful way to understand those bible passages which speak of Christ’s saving work in both testaments. The three-fold office was soon a prominent theme in most Protestant confessions of faith and catechisms. The Westminster Shorter Catechism speaks of the three-fold office in Q & A 23: “What offices doth Christ execute as our Redeemer?” Answer: “Christ, as our Redeemer, executeth the offices of a prophet, of a priest, and of a king, both in his estate of humiliation and exaltation.”

You may recall the “Lordship controversy” which raged within evangelicalism several decades ago—and still resurfaces from time to time. The subject of the debate was whether or not someone could “accept Jesus as their Savior” but not make him “Lord over their lives.” While one side argued that it was biblically impossible to come to saving faith in Christ without submitting to his Lordship over every area of our lives, the other side argued that this was to confuse faith with repentance, and in effect, to deny justification by faith alone.

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