Trevor Laurence
In the Old Testament, God led and ministered to his people through prophets, priests, and kings. Christians have long recognized that the New Testament depicts Jesus as the ultimate exemplar and fulfiller of each of these three offices.
The climactic ministry of the one Christ unites these various ministries into a coherent whole, even as the story of his single work can be narrated in terms of each office, with each of the three retellings foregrounding particular features and blessings of Christ’s coming.
The tri-dimensional narrative is compelling even in its most general terms. Jesus is the prophet who, having inhabited the divine council for all eternity, reveals the word of the Lord as the Word of the Lord. Jesus is the priest who offers a better sacrifice once and for all. Jesus is the king who rescues his people and rules over his kingdom in grace and righteousness and justice.
With this three-fold lens, we can focus in on Christ’s work from each angle with even greater specificity and begin to appreciate the events that culminate with the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost as a prophetic, priestly, and royal accomplishment.1
The Prophet of Pentecost
After leading the exodus from Egypt, the prophet Moses journeyed up Mount Sinai into the presence of God to receive God’s law and deliver God’s word to God’s people.
After Jesus’ exodus from the grave in his resurrection, Christ ascends up the heavenly Mount Zion into the presence of God to receive and deliver the Spirit to God’s people, the one who—in accordance with God’s promise—would write the law not on tablets of stone but on hearts of flesh.
Blessed with the Spirit, the believers in Jerusalem begin declaring the mighty works of God in many languages, fulfilling Joel 2:28: “I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy” (cf. Acts 2:17).
Jesus the prophet gives the Spirit and creates a family of prophets.
The Priest of Pentecost
Once a year in Israel, the high priest alone would venture beyond the curtain with a cloud of incense into the holy of holies to make atonement, cleansing Israel of her transgression and God’s house of uncleanness (Lev 16).
Jesus our great high priest ascends alone beyond the firmament-curtain separating heaven and earth, lifted up on a cloud into the heavenly holy place, and presents himself as the definitive atoning sacrifice to cleanse God’s people and make them his holy house. Jesus’ atonement ensures that his disciples may both enter and be filled with God’s holy presence.
Anointing his followers with his Spirit, he commissions them as a kingdom of priests who offer themselves as living sacrifices, baptized just as the priests of old were consecrated with washing. Filling his followers with his Spirit, he establishes his church as God’s temple, the dwelling place of his glory-Spirit.
Jesus the priest gives the Spirit and makes a family of priests who have confidence to enter the heavenly holy place even as they are the house of God on earth.
The King of Pentecost
King David subdued the enemies of Israel and gave peace to his people on every side (1 Chron 22:18). Royal Solomon, in turn, constructed the sanctuary atop Zion where God would reside in holiness among his people before building a palace for himself connected to the temple where he would reign as king beside the King. If, as has been suggested,2 Solomon’s palace was constructed to the south of the Lord’s temple (which was itself oriented toward the east), then Solomon quite literally took his seat at the right hand of God.
This motif of the mountaintop enthronement of Israel’s king recurs in the Psalms:
“As for me, I have set my King
on Zion, my holy hill.” (Ps 2:6)
The LORD says to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand,
until I make your enemies your footstool.”
The LORD sends forth from Zion
your mighty scepter.
Rule in the midst of your enemies! (Ps 110:1–2)
Jesus—the royal son of David, the king greater than Solomon—triumphantly subdues the enemies of his people, ascends his throne on Mount Zion above, builds the house of the Lord in his Spirit-filled church, and rules from his seat at the right hand of God until his enemies shall be made the footstool for his feet (cf. Acts 2:33; Heb 10:13).
What is more, at key points in the Old Testament, God himself wins a victory for his people and ascends a mountain to be enthroned in triumph and bless his kingdom.
After defeating Pharaoh and Egypt in the exodus, God revealed his presence atop Sinai—enthroned in glory—and blessed Israel with his law.
After leading Israel victoriously into Canaan, God ascended Mount Zion to take his throne in the temple, blessing his people with his presence (see Ps 68:17–18, 35).
After crossing through the waters in his baptism and defeating Satan in the wilderness, Jesus sat down on a mountain and blessed his followers with a new mountain-top word.
And after defeating the enemies of his kingdom in his death and resurrection, Jesus ascends to his throne in heaven—taking his rightful place as the vindicated king of the cosmos—and from his throne blesses his kingdom with the gift of his Spirit, the presence of God who inscribes hearts with the law.
Christ’s ascension is the royal enthronement of the conquering warrior-king, and Pentecost is his sharing of the fruits his victory. Indeed, every Christian anointed with God’s Spirit is made a royal member of God’s household, a son or daughter of the triumphant king.
Jesus the king gives the Spirit and makes a family of kings and queens, seated in the heavenly places with Christ, who will reign with him forever and ever.
A Pentecostal People
For every Christian, Pentecost is to be treasured as a gift from your prophet, priest, and king—the Lord Jesus Christ. But this is, to be sure, a transformative gift, one that wraps us up into a story as big as creation and invests us with a calling to participate with faith, hope, and love, in the purposes and offices of the risen Lord.
God grant us to live faithfully as the Spirit-empowered prophetic, priestly, royal people of our prophetic, priestly king.
Trevor Laurence is the Executive Director of the Cateclesia Institute and the author of Cursing with God: The Imprecatory Psalms and the Ethics of Christian Prayer (Baylor University Press, 2022).
Image: Titian, Pentecost
- See esp. Patrick Schreiner’s treatment of Christ’s ascension through the prism of prophet, priest, and king in The Ascension of Christ: Recovering a Neglected Doctrine (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2020).[↩]
- David Ussishkin, “King Solomon’s Palaces,” The Biblical Archaeologist 36, no. 3 (1973): 79[↩]