15. The Prophetic Ministry of Christ
“Art Thou That Prophet?”
The Prophetic Ministry of Christ
JESUS WAS THE CROWN of Old Testament prophecy. He was Himself the perfect Prophet, for in Him all the moral precepts and ritual laws converged and united.
Among the Jews there was an eager expectation that a great prophet, as massive and commanding in personality as Moses himself, would be raised up by God in their nation. For this they had a Scriptural basis: “The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet … like unto me,” Moses had said (Deuteronomy 18:15). The priests and Levites cherished this hope, hence their question to John the Baptist, who was moving the nation by his flaming oratory. “Art thou that prophet?” (John 1:21). Peter also referred to the promise in his address in the Temple (Acts 3:22).
Later, when Jesus returned from the wilderness in the power of the Spirit, “all the city was moved, saying, Who is this? And the multitude said, This is Jesus the prophet of Nazareth” (Matthew 21:10–11). Further, Jesus called Himself a prophet.
The Prophetic Office
It is erroneous to conceive of the prophetic office as exclusively predictive, or relating solely to the foretelling of future events. In the Bible sense, the word “prophecy” is not so limited. It is preceptive as well as predictive. When the woman of Samaria called Jesus a prophet, she did so not because He predicted the future but because He told her what she had done (John 4:19, 29). Daniel fulfilled the prophetic office as completely when he interpreted Nebuchadnezzar’s dream as when he foretold the course of Gentile world supremacy.
Included in the prophetic role was the task of revealing and interpreting the will of God to men through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, since the prophet was the medium of communication between God and men. In the words of Henry De Vries, “The chief function of the prophet is to receive the thoughts of God in his human consciousness, in order to impart the same to the people. Hence the Son of God, in order to be our prophet, must first of all assume our human consciousness, i.e. become man; for thus alone can He receive and impart the divine thoughts to us.”
There are thus two elements in the ministry of the prophet: the passive function of receiving revelations of the divine will, and the active function of passing those on to the people. That may be done either in word, or in symbolical prophetic actions, as; exemplified by Ezekiel. In a word, the functions are insight and foresight.
In Old Testament times the prophet acted as the conscience of the nation, as a study of the prophetical books will demonstrate. They declaimed against the religious abuses of their day. They urged obedience to the divine law, and warned of coming judgment in no uncertain tones.
The marks of the true prophet were that he had his message direct from God: that he was indifferent as to its acceptability or otherwise; that he disregarded the consequences of delivering it, so far as his own welfare or comfort was concerned.
The prophets were “but instruments wholly dependent on Him who employed them. They were the voice, but not the speaker; the message, but not the sender; the musical instruments, but not the player.”
Christ’s Prophetic Ministry
At His baptism in Jordan our Lord received the prophetic anointing, and it was there His prophetic ministry commenced (Matthew 4:23–25). As prophet, He proclaimed the dawning of the kingdom of God, and with apocalyptic vision, He foretold its course.
As to the nature of His ministry, it was predictive. An essential element in the equipment of a prophet was that he should be able to see things in advance, should possess superhuman knowledge, the ability to see in measure the end from the beginning.
Twice our Lord repeated the statement “And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe” (John 14:29; cf. 13:19). This ability to predict manifested itself in small matters as well as great, as for example, His foresight in sending Peter to catch the fish and thus procure the tribute money (Matthew 17:27). Or in His sending the disciples to bring the ass’s colt on which He would ride into Jerusalem (Matthew 21:1–3).
Again, He foretold in detail the destruction of Jerusalem (Matthew 24:3–28; Luke 21:20–28) and of the Temple (Mark 13:2; Luke 21:5–6). He outlined the whole course of this age and the worldwide sweep of gospel witness in the remarkable eschatological chapters, Matthew 24 and 25. To Him the future was an open book. No eventuality surprised Him. The cross and its attendant circumstances did not take Him unawares, He saw in advance the whole path to the cross.
It was authoritative. In none of His predictive utterances did our Lord use the familiar prophetic formula used by all His predecessors, “Thus saith the Lord” or “The word of the Lord came unto me, saying,” but instead He employed the authoritative “I say unto you.” The word of the Lord did not come to Him; He was Himself the Word.
Those to whom Jesus preached early recognized the prophetic element in His utterances. “For he [teaches] as one having authority, and not as the scribes,” they exclaimed in mingled awe and amazement (Matthew 7:29). And why? Because as He claimed, His words were not His own but were drawn from the fountain-head of all wisdom.
In commenting on the element of authority in Christ’s teaching, W. B. Riley notes: (a) His speech was without hesitation,(b) His utterances were without equivocation—He never employed language susceptible to different constructions with intent to deceive, © His affirmations involved finality. His “I say unto you” closed the discussion. There remained no higher authority to whom appeal could be made than to the prophet par excellence. His word was the end of controversy, (d) He neither needed nor consulted counselors, (e) His declarations amounted to mandates.
It was interpretative. He was preeminently the revealer and interpreter of divine truth. “The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him” (John 1:18). He spoke of and for God, revealing the Father not only by His sinless life, but preeminently in His death (John 8:26; 14:9; 17:8).
It was confirmed. One method of fulfilling the prophetic office was the working of miracles. His mighty works authenticated His wonderful message (Matthew 8–9). Most of His miracles were in the realm of healing disease and infirmity. “Sickness is contagious with us. But Christ was an example of perfect health and His health was contagious. By its overflow He healed others. Only a touch was necessary.”
It is being continued. Another aspect of Christ’s prophetic ministry is seen in His rendering the apostles infallible in the transmission of the truth recorded in the writings of the New Testament. If “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy” (Revelation 19:10), then all the apostles’ writings affirm that what they teach is received from Jesus through His Spirit.
His prophetic office is being continued in a mediate sense through the gifts of ministry in the church in conjunction with the inspired Word (John 16:12–14; Acts 1:1). The church is a prophetic institution whose function it is to teach the world by its preaching and ordinances. The faithful ministers of the Word today are the successors of the prophets, and continue the work of the great prophet who surpassed every grace and gift distributed through those who preach Him.
“To complete the magnificence of the prophetic office,” wrote Harry Rimmer, “the work of Jesus will end with the final and complete revelation of the Father to His saints in glory. When the Body of Christ is completed by the regeneration of the last one who is to be saved by faith, the trump shall sound, the dead in Christ shall rise, and the living saints translated to meet Christ in the air. In that form He shall Himself present His Church to His Father, and shall present His Father unveiled to His Church so that we see God and know Him as He is. Magnificent, indeed is that Prophet who can fulfill all prophecy and bring God within the sphere of human comprehension.”
Hushed be the noise and the strife of the schools,
Volume and pamphlet, sermon and speech,
The lips of the wise, and the prattle of fools;
Let the Son of Man teach!
Who has the key of the future but He?
Who can unravel the knots of the skein?
We have struggled and travailed and sought to be free:
We have travailed in vain.
Bewildered, dejected, and prone to despair,
To Him, as at first, do we turn and beseech:
“Our ears are all open! Give heed to our prayer!
O Son of Man, teach!”AUTHOR UNKNOWN