The threefold office of the believer is a wonderful gift of grace. It is how we conduct our pilgrimage in the world. Husbands and fathers should exercise that threefold office, but so should wives, mothers, and singles.

We need to clearly distinguish between Christ, the prophet, priest, and king, and our participation, by grace alone through faith alone by virtue of our union with Christ, in that threefold office.

In questions 31 and 32 of the Heidelberg Catechism, we read,

31. Why is He called Christ, that is Anointed?

Because He is ordained of God the Father and anointed with the Holy Spirit to be our chief Prophet and Teacher, who has fully revealed to us the secret counsel and will of God concerning our redemption; and our only High Priest, who by the one sacrifice of His body, has redeemed us, and ever lives to make intercession for us with the Father; and our eternal King, who governs us by His Word and Spirit and defends and preserves us in the redemption obtained for us.

32. But why are you called a Christian?

Because by faith I am a member of Christ and thus a partaker of His anointing, in order that I also may confess His Name, may present myself a living sacrifice of thankfulness to Him, and that with a free conscience I may fight against sin and the devil in this life, and hereafter in eternity reign with Him over all creatures (Heidelberg Catechism [1563]).

Where do we find Christ as Prophet, Priest, and King in Scripture?

Even before the fall, God the Son installed the federal head of all humanity and his wife, Adam and Eve, to be king and queen over creation:

Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.(Gen. 1:26)

Adam was, as theologian John Murray reminded us, God’s vice gerent (not vice-regent). A vice gerent is one who exercises “delegated power on behalf of a sovereign ruler” (Oxford American Dictionary). Adam was to speak God’s Word, especially in the coming conflict with the Evil One. God established Eden as a kind of holy temple, to be kept pure in the worship-service of God. When the Evil One encroached, Adam was to defend the temple against Satan. As king, beyond the creational dominion (given to both of them), he especially was to exercise his royal office in defeating the great Enemy of our souls. He was meant to take a sword and lop off the serpent’s head. We know how he failed. That Eve was a queen is an inference. Kings have queens. The command to exercise dominion in creation, as a matter of nature, was given to “them.” That is not to say that there was not a creational order, as a matter of administration (not ontology); there was. Yet, is what we are observing in Adam’s royal office an assertion of patriarchalism rather than mere administrative headship?

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