Q24 How doth Christ execute the office of a prophet?
Ans Christ executeth the office of a prophet, in revealing to us, by His Word and Spirit, the will of God for our salvation.
A prophet is one who speaks for God, who speaks God’s Word. Christ is the prophet in the highest and fullest sense. He reveals God because He is God made plain in a human life.
“The LORD your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren. Him you shall hear.” (Deuteronomy 18:15)
“All things have been delivered to Me by My Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father. Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.” (Matthew 11:27) “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).
Christ is God, the Word, or God, the Revealer. Christ reveals the Father by His Word and His Spirit. The Son is that person of the Godhead who visited the Patriarchs and who spoke through the Old Testament prophets. Then He took our full human nature and lived our life from the cradle to the grave showing us the heart and love of God the Father in a soft human light. In this life He spoke the words the Father gave Him to speak and did the deeds the Father gave Him to do. And the things the gracious Father gave Him to do and to bear were the things necessary for our salvation. The meaning or significance of what Jesus did and suffered for our salvation, of what He is doing for us now in His risen glory, He caused to be written for us in His Word.
As we read the Word the living Christ sends His Spirit into our hearts to remove the blindness sin caused there so that we can see clearly the way of salvation taught in the Bible. The living Christ opens our minds to understand from it the will of God for our salvation.
When we accept Christ on the authority of His Word we are accepting Him on His own authority. Faith is the living flash of identification of the Word as written with the voice of Him whose word it is.
He is the Good Shepherd. As He speaks through His Word and accompanies the Word by His Spirit, we hear His voice and follow Him. He is the Door, by Him we enter in and are saved and go in and out and find pasture.