The Work of the Son and the Work of the Spirit Are Inseparable
Threefold Office of the Anointed One
One helpful way of organizing the elements of the saving work of Jesus is to consider it under three offices, Christ as prophet, priest, and king. These three offices are Old Testament categories, and in the Old Testament they were more or less distinct offices filled by different people. Consider David’s command regarding his son Solomon, to “let Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet . . . anoint him king over Israel (1 Kings 1:34).
But when Christ fulfills all three of these roles spiritually, we no longer speak of them as three offices but as a single, threefold office. John Calvin, who was the first to give extended consideration to this threefold office of Christ, introduces it this way: “In order that faith may find a firm basis for salvation in Christ, and thus rest in him, this principle must be laid down: the office enjoined upon Christ by the Father consists of three parts. For he was given to be prophet, king and priest.”1
From here, Calvin dives into an exposition of the ways in which Christ fulfills each of these roles in his one comprehensive ministry. It is a rich study. But we should pay close attention to the work of the Holy Spirit in the threefold office. Though Calvin may not always mention the Holy Spirit by name when he explains the threefold office, the Spirit is in fact the whole point. What prophet, priest, and king have in common is that they are all set apart by God and anointed to fulfill their tasks. The anointing, symbolized by the ritual application of oil, was a special endowment by the Holy Spirit on prophets, priests, and kings. Each of them was anointed, or christened, or Christ-ed, by the Spirit. And this is the key to Calvin’s choice of these three roles as the ones that find their center in Jesus who is the Christ, the uniquely anointed one. As the Christ, he perfectly carries out the purpose of christening. The anointed one has the one anointing.
The Holy Spirit
Fred Sanders
In this addition to the Short Studies in Systematic Theology series, Fred Sanders teaches readers how to hold a proper understanding of both the person and power of the Holy Spirit, exploring his role in both the Old and New Testaments.
This has layers of pneumatological meaning for us. First, it leads us to recognize that the Messiah himself would not be who he is without the presence of the Holy Spirit. The Messiah is not the same person as the Holy Spirit, but they go together. The Messiah is the person who is truly and fully and ultimately anointed by the Holy Spirit. They are very close together, as seen by the very meaning of the title. Every time we say, “Jesus Christ,” we are rehearsing the fact that Jesus (his name) is the Christ (his title, the Greek word for the Hebrew word messiah). Once again, at the very point where we focus as directly as possible on what is special about the work of the Son, we find our best instruction about the work of the Holy Spirit in, with, and under it.
Second, the presence of the Spirit in Christ means that in every aspect of Christ’s work, there is a fullness and comprehensiveness that spills out of the historical accomplishment of salvation and overflows into our present reception of it. The Heidelberg Catechism, which always has a keen eye on the spiritual application of doctrine, asks about Jesus in Question 30, “Why is he called ‘Christ,’ meaning ‘anointed’?” And its answer unfolds in a Spirit-filled threefold office:
Because he has been ordained by God the Father and has been anointed with the Holy Spirit to be our chief prophet and teacher who perfectly reveals to us the secret counsel and will of God for our deliverance; our only high priest, who has set us free by the one sacrifice of his body, and who continually pleads our cause with the Father; and our eternal king, who governs us by his Word and Spirit, and who guards us and keeps us in the freedom he has won for us.2
Without losing its grip on the historical work of Christ during his pre-Easter lifetime, the catechism shifts our attention to the ongoing work of the risen Christ in the Holy Spirit. He perfectly reveals God to us, advocates our cause, and protects us—present tense. The same Christ who acted as prophet, priest, and king in his own lifetime, “in the days of his flesh,” now acts from the right hand of the Father in the ongoing power of that threefold office, by the Spirit.
The Messiah is the person who is truly and fully and ultimately anointed by the Holy Spirit.
Third, the presence of the Spirit in Christ means that the anointing is not only for himself but also for believers by way of intentional overflowing. Calvin says, “He received anointing on behalf of his whole body that the power of the Spirit might be present in the continuing preaching of the Gospel.”3 The teach ing of the threefold office has always enabled a deeper understanding of the church as participating in the ministry of Christ. The preaching office continues his ministry as prophet; praise and intercession continue his ministry as priest; and gathering as a community within a responsible church order continues his ministry as king.
Fourth, the presence of the Spirit in Christ lifts our eyes up to the eternal communion that the Son and the Holy Spirit have with each other in the Holy Trinity. The messianic work of the Son in the power of the Spirit is itself a great manifestation of that eternal unity. Irenaeus of Lyons (130–202) did not expound on Christ’s threefold office in the Spirit, but he did draw out the implications of Christ’s very title containing the messianic mystery of God’s triunity. In fact, Irenaeus finds the whole Trinity revealed in this aspect of the Son’s work: For in the name of Christ is implied, He that anoints, He that is anointed, and the unction itself with which He is anointed. And it is the Father who anoints, but the Son who is anointed by the Spirit, who is the unction, as the Word declares by Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me,”—pointing out both the anointing Father, the anointed Son, and the unction, which is the Spirit.4
“Christ” means “anointed” means “Messiah,” and “Messiah” is definitely a historical category. But what comes to the fore in that historic, messianic work of the Son is an eternal relation between the anointing Spirit and the anointed Son. “Unction” is a title of the Holy Spirit that is eternally present in God’s own being and on that basis takes place in the work of Christ for us and our salvation.
Notes:
- John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, ed. John T. McNeill (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1960), 1.15.1.
- Heidelberg Catechism, Question 30.
- Calvin, Institutes, 1.15.2.
- Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.18.3.
This article is adapted from The Holy Spirit: An Introduction by Fred Sanders.
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