; and make a crown, and set it on the head of Joshua, the son of Jehozadak, the high priest. (12) And say to him, ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts, “Behold, the man whose name is the Branch: for he shall branch out from his place, and he shall build the temple of the LORD. (13) It is he who shall build the temple of the LORD and shall bear royal honor, and shall sit and rule on his throne. And there shall be a priest on his throne, and the counsel of peace shall be between them both.”’
It seemed in your article, you interpret “between them both” as between Father and Son. Obviously, everything the Trinity does is covenantal, since He is a covenantal God who makes promises and keeps them, and our faith, in large part, is getting this through our heads so that we trust Him when appearance of things tries to persuade us that He does not keep promises or that He changes in some way. It would seem normal for there to be agreement or understanding between the Father and the Son and their respective roles between their Persons. That does not seem to be what the context is about.
I’m thinking the context here may point more to the “both” being the Offices of Priest and King. The individual sinful man, fallen in Adam, is not safely capable of being both religious and civil head at the same time. In fact, among God’s covenant people, it seemed to be steeply downhill, if not from Samuel and David, at least from Jehoiada and Josiah. This is a hot button for us historians who can’t help noticing on every hand, that the Church in America has dropped the king part. Christ being king is certainly acknowledged for His theoretical title and identity and His royal status confined to heaven. But as far as active involvement, at the present time, in the affairs of men on earth– that is either ignored or denied in aggressive terms.
This Zechariah passage immediately brought to my mind the Ezekiel section on priest-king offices:
Eze 21:25-27 And you, O profane wicked one, prince of Israel, whose day has come, the time of your final punishment, (26) thus says the Lord GOD: Remove the turban and take off the crown. Things shall not remain as they are. Exalt that which is low, and bring low that which is exalted. (27) A ruin, ruin, ruin I will make it. This also shall not be, until he comes, the one to whom judgment belongs, and I will give it to him.
I believe the context here is that priest-princes, and king-princes, along with their people, had become so idolatrous and corrupt that God was bringing the Babylonians on them for destruction of people, wall, and temple. Turban represented the priestly authority in all its long growth in religious apostasy; the crown represented the kingly authority and all its long growth in rejecting God’s law and ruling by men’s own authority (dictator or “multitude” of Ex. 23).
God is announcing a change in covenant coming. Historically, after the Babylonian captivity, we never see kings ruling over Israel in the arrangement of Saul to Zedekiah. Instead we see governors ruling under an emperor, which is more the norm for all human history since God the Son has always been emperor, judge, and lawgiver over all nations and political bodies of men in every age (See Ps. 94-100. Neither did the priesthood -- from the days of Josiah on, ever regain much pure and righteous influence in Israel, from what little I know of the period.
Instead the focus was to be on the Messiah to come, to which each of the Prophet, Priest, and Kingly offices had always pointed. In other words: King and Priest among God’s covenant people will never be the same “until Shiloh come”. That phrase the ESV marks as “until tribute comes to him”, my NASB admits may mean. “to Him to whom it belongs”. And that brings to mind one of the earliest prophecies of the seed of Judah:
Gen 49:10 The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.
In a generation where the prevailing idolatry is worship of the Creature in the form of national civil government, it is hard to overestimate the importance of balancing our teaching within the Family and Church, and our witness to those outside those immediate circles. In the last 10 years I have just noticed this huge omission in the Gospel as Churches in America understand it. Gospel is almost exclusively substitutionary atonement of Christ’s death on the cross, in our place and for our benefit, that we might be made righteousness in Him, and enjoy blessed fellowship with the Trinity for eternity in heaven when we die.
This is certainly a grace-filled provision from Christ’s finished work, and essential to our partial transformation and spiritual fellowship in this life of gradual sanctification. However, this deals mostly with Christ’s priestly office in being the fulfillment of the OT patterns of sacrifice, temple, and priesthood, dietary, and hygiene laws. When the redemptive work was done on the cross, when He could cry “it is finished”, His priestly work was done to the point He was able to “sit down”. There remains His ministry of Intercession and advocacy for the saints during this time of history, but the focus now has shifted to the other office.
His Prophetic function, also, was largely finished after He spent the 40 days talking about the subject of the exercise of the 3rd office for the extended future (kingdom of God).
Act 1:3 He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.
From His baptism to His Ascension, He was hearing the message to deliver from His Father, and sharing that counsel with men: fulfilling the pattern shown by all the prophets of the Old Testament.
Exo 4:14-16 Then the anger of the LORD was kindled against Moses and he said, “Is there not Aaron, your brother, the Levite? I know that he can speak well. Behold, he is coming out to meet you, and when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart. (15) You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth and will teach you both what to do. (16) He shall speak for you to the people, and he shall be your mouth, and you shall be as God to him.
After Christ’s ascension and the completion of the Canon of Scripture, Christ’s active prophetic office is complete. You can argue that He goes on speaking and communicating to all believers through the teaching of the Bible, yet that is more under the ministry of the person of the Holy Spirit.
The logical fit, is that His Kingly office is the main office at play, now during the Holy Spirit’s age of taking of Christ’s things, and showing it to the apostles and all believers who embrace and follow their teaching ever after. In our particular nation, we inherited an active belief in the ascended Christ being active and real head over all the kings and civil rulers of the earth. Thus, among the first Christians immigrating to this continent, were many who carried on the Protestant Reformation’s conviction that the Pope was not God-on-earth, nor was the king God-on-earth, but that Jesus was sovereign over all church affairs, through the communication of His Book, and that Jesus was sovereign over all civil affairs through the principles communicated in His Book.
Before it was further corrupted by the humanistic principles of the “enlightenment”, men reasoned, that if Jesus was the “judge of the living and the dead”, being the current and final judge of all men, the active provider of blessing and curse for knife-edge of human time, as well as throughout all eternity, they He would rule by His own Law when He judges. Since He is a God who does not change, the law He judges by (the expression of His character), will not change either, although the cultural temporal context may speak of the case-law application less in terms of oxen and donkeys, and more in terms of mini-vans and tractors.
Since this is true, and universally recognized, we should make the application that all force applied by one human against another in exercise of taking away man’s life, freedom, and property as law-enforcement – will be judged by Christ’s own law. It is absolutely crucial that when the President, policemen, and the courts are taking away man’s life – they are not murdering – but carrying out God’s justice which Jesus will judge with approval. If men kill a supposed criminal, whom God’s word never called a capital criminal – are not the law-enforcement participants murdering? Of course, they are not killing an innocent man, because none of us is innocent of sin. The real question, is are they killing someone whom God has classified to us (in His settled communication) as a committing a crime whose defined punishment should be death at the heads of his neighbors – or not.
Then, come to find out, that the word our New Testaments translate as Gospel, would not have meant- or just meant – the substitutionary atonement for our salvation from sin and the regeneration by the Holy Spirit. It was a word with civil meaning in the Greek/Roman worldview at the time. It was the announcement of the ascension of a new emperor over the empire, and an obligatory celebration of all the real or supposed blessings and salvations that would encompass.
Much more need be developed on this, and this article is my attempt.
https://www.keepandshare.com/discuss/44603/gospel-s-greater-half?i=148077
Our national civil religion, which we don’t even think of as a religion, gives all authority in earth to the Majority (and in reality, to the elite manipulators who evangelize and disciple that Majority in man-centered and man-glorifying “salvations”). Yet our creed has always proclaimed the opposite. Yet the churches of America, if they don’t avoid economics and crime and punishment entirely, deny the case-law applications that should be training us how to apply God’s universally-acclaimed law to the specifics of human life during our own generation.
Please, come be a part of that aspect of the Reformation.
LeperWatchman@yahoo.com
