Christ’s Threefold Office

To be a mediator, to be a complete Savior, He had to be appointed by the Father to all three (Prophet, Priest, King) and equipped by the Spirit for all three offices.

The truth is that the idea of humanness already encompasses within itself this threefold dignity and activity. Human beings have a head to know, a heart to give themselves, a hand to govern and to lead; corresponding, they were in the beginning equipped by God with knowledge and understanding, with righteousness and holiness, with dominion and glory (blessedness). The sin that corrupted human beings infected all their capacities and consisted not only in ignorance, folly, error, lies, blindness, darkness but also in unrighteousness, guilt, moral degradation, and further in misery, death, and ruin. Therefore, Christ, both as the Son and as the image of God, for Himself and also as our Mediator and Savior, had to bear all three offices.

He had to be a prophet to know and disclose the truth of God. He had to be a priest, to devote Himself to God and, in our place, to offer Himself up to God. He had to be a king, to govern and protect us according to God’s will. To teach, to reconcile, and to lead; to instruct, to acquire, and to apply salvation; wisdom, righteousness, and redemption; truth, love, and power – all three are essential to the completeness of our salvation.

In Christ’s God-to-Humanity relation, He is a prophet; In His Humanity-to-God relation He is a priest; in His headship over all humanity He is a king … Scripture, consistently and simultaneously attributing all three offices to him, describes Him as our chief prophet, our only [high] priest, and our eternal king. Though a King, He rules not by the sword, but by His Word and Spirit. He is a Prophet, but His Word is power and [really] happens. He is a Priest, but lives by dying, conquers by suffering, and is all-powerful by His love. He is always all these things in conjunction, never the one without the other: mighty in speech and actions as a king and full of grace and truth in his royal rule.

Source: Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume Three: Sin and Salvation in Christ, Christ’s Humiliation, Christ’s Threefold Office p. 367-36

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Through the redemption that is in Christ (Haldane)

 

Through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.—The great blessing of justification is described above as proceeding from the free grace of God, which is the fountain from whence flow pardon, righteousness, and salvation, excluding all works, whether before or after faith. Here it is referred to the meritorious price provided by God, and that is the redemption which is in Christ Jesus For though it comes freely to man, yet it is through the redemption or purchase of the Son of God.

 The word redemption signifies a buying back, and necessarily supposes an alienation of what is redeemed. In general, it imports a deliverance effected by a price, and sometimes a deliverance by power. In this last sense it is said, “Now these are Thy servants, and Thy people, whom Thou hast redeemed by Thy great power,” Nehemiah 1:10. “I will redeem you with a stretched out arm,” Exodus 6:6; Psalm 77:15. The resurrection of the body by an act of Divine power is called a redemption, Psalm 49:15; Romans 8:23. But, more generally, redemption signifies, in Scripture, deliverance by price, as that of slaves, or prisoners, or persons condemned, when they are delivered from slavery, captivity, or death, by means of a ransom. …

In every place in Scripture where our redemption in Christ is mentioned, there is an allusion to the law of redemption among the Jews. This law is contained in Leviticus 25, where we and regulations laid down for a twofold redemption, a redemption of persons and a redemption of possessions. The redemption of possessions or inheritances is regulated, Leviticus 25:23–28, and that of persons, from verse 47 to the end of the chapter. In both these cases, none had a right to redeem but either the person himself who had made the alienation, or some other that was near of kin to him. But none of Adam’s family ever was, or ever will be, able to redeem himself or others. … From the sentence of death and the slavery of sin, it was impossible for any of them ever to have been set free, if Christ had not paid the ransom of His blood. But He, the Son of God, having from all eternity undertaken the work of redemption of those whom God gave Him, and being substituted by the everlasting covenant which God made with Him in their place, the right of redemption was vested in Him, by virtue of His covenant relation to them. And that nothing might be wanting either to constitute Him their legal kinsman–Redeemer, or to evidence Him to be so, He took on Him their nature, and in that nature paid their ransom to the last mite. Thus He performs the part of the Redeemer of His people, redeeming them from slavery and from death, and redeeming for them that inheritance which they had forfeited, and which they could not redeem for themselves.

 

forfeited, and which they could not redeem for themselves.

 

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The penalty and the precept are fulfilled in Jesus

While God pardons, He by no means clears the guilty. His people are absolved, because they are righteous; they have fulfilled the law, and suffered its penalty, in the death and obedience of Jesus Christ, with whom they are one. … The penalty and the precept are fulfilled in Jesus Christ the surety. ^{HALDANE, ROMANS}

The verb justify means to declare righteous … no legal fiction but a legal reality of the upmost significance, to be justified means to be acquitted by God from all charges that could be brought against a person because of his or her sins. ^{MOO 227}

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