What Are the Three Offices of Christ? - Doctrine Matters with Kevin DeYoung

Summary

Summary of "What Are the Three Offices of Christ?" Episode of Doctrine Matters with Kevin DeYoung

Doctrine Matters is a weekly podcast hosted by Kevin DeYoung, a pastor, bestselling author, and associate professor of systematic theology at Crossway. In the episode titled "What Are the Three Offices of Christ?" released on July 29, 2025, DeYoung delves into a fundamental aspect of Christology by exploring the threefold office of Christ: Prophet, Priest, and King. This comprehensive summary captures the key discussions, insights, and theological conclusions presented in the episode.

Introduction to the Three Offices of Christ

Kevin DeYoung begins the episode by introducing the concept of the threefold office of Christ, a framework established since the time of John Calvin. He explains that Jesus fulfills three distinct roles—Prophet, Priest, and King—mirroring the three types of office bearers in the Old Testament who were anointed with oil: prophets, priests, and kings.

Kevin DeYoung [00:03]: "Christos Masiach Messiah means anointed one. And in the Old Testament, three types of office bearers were anointed with oil, sometimes prophets, priests and kings. Those are the three offices that Christ fulfills in his ministry."

He emphasizes that "Christ" is not a surname but a title meaning "Anointed One." Unlike human figures like Joseph or Mary, Jesus is uniquely anointed with the Holy Spirit in a way that goes beyond the Old Testament practice of oil anointing (John 3:34).

Christ as Prophet

Fulfillment of the Prophetic Office

DeYoung outlines the prophetic office as both a passive and active function. Prophets receive divine revelation and actively communicate God's message to the people. He highlights that prophecy encompasses foretelling (prediction) and forth-telling (declaring God's will).

Kevin DeYoung [Transcript Segment]: "So the role of the prophet was very broad. He warned, he admonished, he also comforted, he encouraged. He called for repentance. He gave assurance of grace. He made known God's will."

Jesus fulfills this prophetic role infallibly and continuously, unlike Old Testament prophets whose messages were authoritative but not without human limitation.

Kevin DeYoung [Timestamp Unspecified]: "Christ exercises the prophetic office infallibly. He has total authority, unerring speech."

Authority and Ongoing Ministry

DeYoung stresses that Jesus' prophetic ministry is ongoing through the Holy Spirit, who continues to teach and guide the Church.

Kevin DeYoung [00:03 – Various]: "He continues in the office of prophet by revealing by his Spirit and His word now to the church the things that God has revealed."

He references Deuteronomy 18, portraying Jesus as the prophet God’s people have awaited, fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecies not merely as another prophet but as the ultimate and authoritative one.

Christ as Priest

Mediator Between God and Man

Moving to the priestly office, DeYoung explains that priests serve as mediators, representing the people before God. He differentiates between the Aaronic priesthood and the priesthood of Melchizedek, as detailed in the Book of Hebrews.

Kevin DeYoung [Timestamp Unspecified]: "Jesus comes from a different line. He is a priest after the order of Melchizedek, this strange, mysterious figure who appears out of nowhere in the opening chapters of Genesis."

Atonement and Intercession

Christ's priestly role encompasses both the atonement for sins and ongoing intercession on behalf of believers. DeYoung clarifies that while Jesus' sacrificial death fulfilled the need for atonement ("It is finished"), His role as high priest continues through His intercession in heaven.

Kevin DeYoung [00:03 – Various]: "He prays for us. His presence in heaven is part of that mediatorial work. Christ is in heaven also in a judicial capacity as an advocate with the Father."

Sympathetic High Priest

He underscores the significance of Christ being a "sympathetic high priest," capable of understanding human suffering yet transcending mere emotional resonance to actively intercede for believers.

Kevin DeYoung [Transcript Segment]: "He is able to draw near and to help us. ... it's what the feeling prompts. And in Christ, it means that he is one who can understand and therefore is a high priest to help us."

Christ as King

Sovereign Authority

DeYoung explores the kingly office of Christ, portraying Him as the supreme ruler over His Church and the entire universe. He asserts that there is no earthly authority that rivals Christ’s sovereignty.

Kevin DeYoung [Timestamp Unspecified]: "Jesus Christ is the only king and head of his church, which is to say there is no earthly magistrate and no supreme pontiff who rules over the Church as sovereign."

Functions of Christ's Kingship

He identifies three primary functions of Christ’s kingly office, aligning with the Westminster Larger Catechism:

Governance of the Church: Christ establishes and oversees the Church’s mission and growth.
Salvation and Sustenance: He saves and sustains His elect, ensuring their spiritual well-being.
Judgment and Vengeance: He will execute justice upon those who reject God and the Gospel.

Kevin DeYoung [Timestamp Unspecified]: "He executes that kingly office, governs the Church, saves and sustains his elect, and then will take vengeance upon those who do not obey the Gospel."

Kingdom and the Church

DeYoung distinguishes between the kingdom of God and the Church, describing the latter as an "embassy" or outpost of the kingdom on earth. He emphasizes that while Christians engage with earthly cultures, their ultimate allegiance and the presence of God's kingdom are manifested within the Church.

Kevin DeYoung [Transcript Segment]: "The church is the place on earth where you are going to see the kingdom operative. ... the heaven on earth is going to be located in the church."

He references Revelation 11:15 to illustrate the ultimate fulfillment of God's kingdom, where Christ reigns eternally.

Kevin DeYoung [Transcript Segment]: "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever, both now and in the future."

Theological Implications and Practical Applications

DeYoung connects the three offices to human nature and the needs arising from the fallen state. Drawing on Francis Turretin, he outlines that humanity's ignorance, guilt, and subjugation by sin necessitate the prophetic, priestly, and kingly roles of Christ respectively.

Kevin DeYoung [Transcript Segment]: "Our misery is that we're ignorant, we're guilty and we're under the tyranny of sin and the devil. And so we need a prophet to give us a word from the Lord. We need a priest sacrifice for our guilt, and we need a good king to set us free."

He emphasizes that understanding these offices deepens the believer's appreciation of Christ's multifaceted work and underscores the comprehensive nature of His mission—addressing every aspect of human brokenness.

Conclusion

In concluding the episode, Kevin DeYoung reiterates the importance of recognizing the threefold office of Christ as foundational to Christian theology and life. He encourages listeners to view the Church as an active representation of God's kingdom on earth, empowered by Christ's ongoing prophetic teaching, priestly intercession, and sovereign kingship.

Kevin DeYoung [Closing Remarks]: "Our hope and prayer is that this has been helpful to you as you look at Scripture and try to understand the best of our theological traditions as Christians."

He invites listeners to subscribe to Doctrine Matters and explore further resources for deeper theological study.

Key Takeaways

Threefold Office: Jesus uniquely fulfills the roles of Prophet, Priest, and King, addressing humanity’s spiritual needs comprehensively.
Prophetic Office: Christ speaks God’s truth infallibly and continues to guide the Church through the Holy Spirit.
Priestly Office: Jesus’ atoning sacrifice and ongoing intercession establish Him as the mediator between God and humanity.
Kingly Office: As King, Christ governs the Church, sustains believers, and will ultimately judge the wicked.
Church and Kingdom: The Church serves as an earthly outpost of God’s kingdom, manifesting His reign through the work of Christ in His three offices.

This episode of Doctrine Matters offers a robust exploration of Christ’s three offices, providing listeners with a deeper understanding of Jesus' roles and their implications for faith and practice. Kevin DeYoung effectively ties biblical exegesis with theological tradition, making complex doctrines accessible and applicable to contemporary Christian life.

Transcript

Kevin DeYoung (0:03)

Hello, I'm Kevin DeYoung, pastor at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, and you are listening to Doctrine Matters. We want this podcast to equip Christians with a better understanding of the rich theology that undergirds our faith. And hopefully along the way, we'll be looking at some that have even been misunderstood or maybe threatened in the church's history. We'll point out the biblical evidence, the arguments, and work together to reshape our thinking, be transformed by the renewal of our minds with scripture and reason as we think theologically together. Because, as the title of the podcast tells you, Doctrine Matters. This week, as we continue to look at Christology, I want to think about the threefold office or the three offices of Christ. Since at least the time of John Calvin, three theologians have spoken of Christ's work as fulfilling three offices. And maybe you've heard this before. If not, it's easy to remember and it's a helpful way to think about the work of Christ. Now, Christ, remember, is not the last name of Jesus. It wasn't Joseph and Mary, and their last name was Christ. Christ Christos Masiach Messiah means anointed one. And in the Old Testament, three types of office bearers were anointed with oil, sometimes prophets, priests and kings. Those are the three offices that Christ fulfills in his ministry. For example, Elisha the prophet was anointed. We see that in 1 Kings 19, Aaron the High priest and then David the king Jesus. Remember, he too was anointed not with oil, but with the Holy spirit beyond measure, John 3:34. So that anointing in the Old Testament of oil was a prefiguring of the fuller baptism of the Holy Spirit that Jesus would receive. These three offices have other theological connections. Think about Adam in the garden. You could argue that man in his original state was a kind of prophet. He was endowed with knowledge and understanding. He was a kind of priest set apart in righteousness and holiness. And he was a kind of king. He was given the charge to cultivate the garden, to exercise dominion on the earth. Francis Turretin, one of our great conversation partners throughout this series, 17th Century Theologian, argues that man in his fallen state has a threefold misery, ignorance, for which he needs a prophetic word from the Lord, guilt, for which he needs a priestly sacrifice, and tyranny, from which he needs a benevolent king to set him free. Now, we don't usually think in those terms, but I find that really helpful. In our fallen state, what do we need? What are our problems? Our misery is that we're ignorant, we're guilty and we're under the tyranny of sin and the devil. And so we need a prophet to give us a word from the Lord. We need a priest sacrifice for our guilt, and we need a good king to set us free. The prophetic office combined a passive and an active function. So the prophet, this is the passive sense, received divine revelation. Now, we see in the Bible sometimes this is in dreams, angelic visitation, verbal communication. So he was a receptive vehicle to this revelation from God actively. Then he revealed to others what God had given to him, the prophet. We obviously think of the prophet as speaking and we think of prophecy as telling the future. And that's part of it. But a helpful phrase many people have used is to think of prophecy not only as foretelling, but even more so as forth telling, telling forth what God has to say in the world. So the role of the prophet was very broad. He warned, he admonished, he also comforted, he encouraged. He called for repentance. He gave assurance of grace. He made known God's will. He spoke of blessing, he warned of curses. That's what the prophets did. And Christ fulfills this prophetic ministry. And as he does so, it's important to realize it's not just a fulfillment, that he's just another Isaiah or another Elijah. But he supersedes what prophets have done of old. For Christ exercises the prophetic office infallibly. He has total authority, unerring speech. Now, the Scriptures are inerrant and the prophetic word recorded in the Bible is inerrant. But it wasn't the case that everything a named prophet in the Bible ever said was going to be inerrant. Now record in Scripture it is. But we're saying Malachi didn't walk around in everything he said you could just bank on for his entire life. No, Jesus is unique in that way. Christ also exercises the prophetic office immediately. That is, he has an authority that is direct, personal. And he exercises this prophetic office unceasingly. So he has by the Spirit, he continues to teach the church in fulfilling these functions. He showed himself to be the prophet that God's people have been waiting for. That was the announcement in Deuteronomy 18. And so we see in his prophetic ministry, he's a teacher of the truth. He preaches the gospel, he predicts the future, and. And he continues in the office of prophet by revealing by his Spirit and His word now to the church the things that God has revealed just quickly, the other two offices we can think about priests. Now, priests in the Old Testament were mediators. If you think of prophets representing God to the people, they get a message from God. They share that with the people. Then priests represented the people to God. The Levitical priests were taken from among men and appointed by God. They were given the task of acting on behalf of men. Now, we don't want to exaggerate this because we sometimes miss that the priests were also to be teachers. We read that at times Israel suffered because they lacked a teaching priest. So it wasn't that the priest didn't have a communication function or a teaching function to the people, but when we think about the reason for the institution of the priestly office, it has to do with sacrifices. Now remember that Jesus fulfills a different line of the priesthood. There was an Aaronic from Aaron, Moses, brother, that line of priests and Hebrews makes very clear that Jesus comes from a different line. He is a priest after the order of Melchizedek, this strange, mysterious figure who appears out of nowhere in the opening chapters of Genesis. So one was associated with the Mosaic administration, that's Aaron. And then Melchizedek was associated with the Abrahamic administration. One had a derivative power and the other had power in himself. One was temporal and a finite value, their Aaronic priesthood, the other eternal and of infinite value. So the two differ, Aaron and Melchizedek, in terms of their persons, their institution, their efficacy, their perfection, their duration. That's the point that Hebrews is trying to make, that Christ's work as a priest consists, as in Melchizedek, as a priest, after that line in two, atonement and intercession. We'll look at atonement in much more detail in subsequent weeks. That's the work of Christ on the cross to pay for sins. But let us not forget the ongoing work. So yes, Jesus said, it is finished. There is nothing left to do in order to turn away the wrath of God. Justice has been satisfied. But we should not think that then Christ's priestly work has been superseded or it has come to an end. No, no, no. The nature of Christ's ongoing intercession speaks to his continuing work as a priest. So he prays for us. His presence in heaven is part of that mediatorial work. Christ is in heaven also in a judicial capacity as an advocate with the Father, to turn away the accusations of our devilish accuser. So the suffering and death of Christ. Here's what one theologian says. Turretan were preparatory and antecedent to his intercession. So yes, there is an aspect of that priestly work that is completed, the suffering part on earth, but intercession is that part of his priesthood to be performed in heaven. And he continues to apply that work. He is, as Hebrews says, a sympathetic high priest. That is one who is able to draw near and to help us. It's interesting, those two places, Hebrews 2 and Hebrews 4, emphasizing the sympathy of Christ is not merely a kind of emotional resonance, but it's that he can help, that he knows what it's like to have suffered as a man, to. So the good news. We don't want to make this a therapeutic Christ, that the good news is just, well, Jesus hurts and you hurt. I mean, you think about that for a moment. If you're, you know, get diagnosed with cancer and the doctor says, well, I feel so bad, I am going to inject myself. If you could do this with the same cancer, and I'm going to come into the bed next to you, as I also suffer from cancer, you would think maybe at a moment you would think, well, this is some kind of compassion that he's willing to suffer. But then you would realize, what is this really helping me? This doesn't help me in my cancer to know that you're in the hospital bed next to me and you're also suffering from cancer. So the help and why we talk about sympathy is that the sympathy drives someone to then do something to help. It isn't a mere therapeutic. I feel exactly what you feel. It's not the feeling so much. It's what the feeling prompts. And in Christ, it means that he is one who can understand and therefore is a high priest to help us. And then finally think about the office of king, prophet, priest, and king. Jesus Christ is the only king and head of his church, which is to say there is no earthly magistrate and no supreme pontiff who rules over the Church as sovereign. Not in a derivative sense even Christ is king. There's no room on the throne for any other. He exercises this kingly office we can think about in three ways. By establishing and governing the Church, by saving and sustaining his elect people, and by taking vengeance upon those who do not know God and do not obey the Gospel. That's just summarizing what the Westminster Larger Catechism says, three ways. He executes that kingly office, governs the Church, saves and sustains his elect, and then will take vengeance upon those who do not obey the Gospel. He rules as a king. If we can give some l words here, it is a kingdom of law. A kingdom of love, and it is a kingdom of lordly recompense. Those three things and we should say something here about the relationship between the kingdom and the church. In many older documents they are treated as synonymous, and I have some sympathy for that. But it's probably best to see them as overlapping but slightly different categories, or at least they're trying to speak to related truths. So we can think of the church as a kind of outpost or embassy of the kingdom. An embassy is a national outpost dwelling in a foreign land. The embassy wants to dwell peacefully in that foreign land, but it exists to advance the interests of another country. And so the church, to think about that dwelling on earth, various nations around the world wants to be a good citizen within this foreign land, but it exists ultimately to advance the interests of another kingdom, of a heavenly kingdom. Kingdom so the church and this is where older writers were onto something to think about the kingdom and the church in similar terms. The church is the place on earth where you are going to see the kingdom operative. You're going to see the king believed in and honored the heaven on earth, because that's heaven breaking into earth is the kingdom coming down. And and we are going to see that among God's people in the church. This is why any earthly plans utopian visions for nations or lands. Yes, we want to affect culture as much as we can as Christians, but the heaven on earth is going to be located in the church. That's what God promises to effect. He doesn't promise that on this side of his coming again that we are going to see this earth be heavenly, but rather we will have these heavenly outposts in the church. So the church looks forward to the eternal life where God's redemptive presence can be enjoyed. Think of Revelation 11:15, a line made famous by Handel's Messiah. The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever, both now and in the future. The kingdom comes when and where the King is known. Thanks for listening to Doctrine Matters with me. Kevin DeYoung Our hope and prayer is that this has been helpful to you as you look at Scripture and try to understand the best of our theological traditions tradition as Christians. Please consider subscribing to doctor Matters through Spotify, Apple Music or however you listen to your podcasts. And if you'd like to learn more about this week's doctrine, you can ask your pastor for good resources or check out my year long mini Systematic Theology book Daily Doctrine, which is available in print or audio@crossway.org until next week. Thanks for being with us.