Our Reformed forebears, drawing on a perspective traceable all the way back to the fourth-century writer Eusebius of Caesarea, found it helpful to think about Christ as a Prophet, Priest, and King. The 1689 London Baptist Confession, for instance, puts it this way: “Christ, and Christ alone, is fitted to be mediator between God and man. He is the prophet, priest and king of the church of God” (8.9). Let us look more closely at these three offices…
Christ the Prophet
Christ is the Prophet whom we need to instruct us in the things of God so as to heal our blindness and ignorance. The Heidelberg Catechism calls Him ‘our chief Prophet and Teacher, who has fully revealed to us the secret counsel and will of God concerning our redemption’ (A. 31). “The Lord your God,” Moses declared in Deuteronomy 18:15, “will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren. Him you shall hear”. He is God’s Son, and God demands that we listen to Him (Matt. 17:5).
As the Prophet, Jesus is the only One who can reveal what God has been purposing in history “since the world began” and who can teach and make manifest the real meaning of the “scriptures of the prophets” (the Old Testament; see Rom. 16:25–26). We can expect to make progress in the Christian life only as we heed His instruction and teaching.
— Joel Beeke