We sometimes talk about a president taking office, or leaving office, office meaning a particular role of authority.

In the same way, theologians sometimes speak about the offices of Christ, particular roles of authority that Christ fulfills.

In fact, Jesus is often spoken of as holding a threefold office.

If you want to be really flashy, the theological Latin is munus triplex.

So, what are the three offices of authority that Jesus Christ holds?

They are prophet, priest, and king.

Jesus' title Christ itself points towards this.

Christ means anointed one, and in the Old Testament prophets were anointed with oil.

Priests were anointed with oil, and kings were anointed with oil too.

So the Christ, the anointed one, was the one anointed for this unique threefold office of prophet, priest, and king.

No one in the Old Testament held these three offices together, but Christ does.

The idea of the threefold office goes all the way back to the 4th century writer Eusebius of Cisarea,

and it was fleshed out later by John Calvin, another reformed theologians.

They pointed out that these three offices, prophet, priest, and king, were a kind of connective tissue,

linking the history of Israel and the Old Testament with the work of Christ in the New Testament.

Just as God's people in the Old Testament had their prophets, priests, and kings,

so in the New Testament God's people finally meet their ultimate prophet, priest, and king, Jesus Christ.

He's the summit of a long line of prophets, priests, and kings,

even the very best of whom were flawed and fallible, and none of whom were all three at once.

But Jesus was the fulfillment.

Prophet, priest, and king, par excellence, as the French would say.

The earlier prophets, priests, and kings, were mere shadows.

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