Christ as Prophet – Some Lessons

Thomas Boston

1. The ministry is continually necessary. Christ has gone into heaven and will continue there until the time of the restitution of all things. But by His ministers and ambassadors He daily instructs us, and for that purpose He has fixed them in the Church by a lasting arrangement, which shall remain to the end of the world (Mt 28:18-20). This is a valuable privilege which we ought to prize highly and learn from carefully. This alone is sufficient to counterbalance the greatest outward affliction that people can meet in the world; therefore we have that promise: “Though the Lord give you the bread of adversity, and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers (Is 30:20).

2. The most ignorant may be taught, seeing Christ executes the office of Teacher. He can teach the most stupid and give them an understanding to know the truths of the gospel. Therefore ignorance can be no excuse for gospel-hearers, to whom Christ offers Himself as a Teacher. Let the most ignorant among you apply to Him and He will teach you more than the most accomplished philosophers could ever attain by all the use they may make of natural light.

3. The weakest Christians need not be discouraged by the dullness and lack of ability that they find in themselves, for Christ can easily reveal to babes what is hidden from the wise and prudent; thus the Psalmist says, “The testimonies of the Lord are sure, making wise the simple”. Indeed the Lord delights to choose such as you are, so that His grace may appear more conspicuous in your weakness (1 Cor 1:26,27). Well then, weak but serious Christian, do not be discouraged because you are not so quick in your apprehensions of things as others about you. Many of your neighbours may know more in other things than you do, but you are able to learn as much as is necessary for the salvation of your soul. And you shall certainly know this if Christ is your Teacher, and that is sufficient to make you happy for ever.

Indeed some people may far excel you in the knowledge of other things, but if you know Jesus Christ, and the truth as it is in Him, one drop of your knowledge is more valuable and desirable than a whole sea of their natural knowledge. One precious truth sucked from the breast of Christ by faith and prayer is infinitely better than ten thousand dry ideas hewn out by torturing the understanding.

1. Prayer is a proper means for increasing knowledge. Prayer is the golden key that unlocks that sacred treasure. When Daniel was to expound the secret

¹Taken, with editing, from Boston’s Works, vol 1.

in the King’s dream, about which the Chaldean magicians had racked their brains to no purpose, he addressed God by prayer (Dan 2:17,18). You see there what success he had, for the secret was revealed to him. Luther was wont to say that three things made a divine: “meditation, temptation and prayer”. And a holy man in England was wont to study on his knees. Indeed those truths which are got by prayer leave an unusual sweetness upon the heart. In the use of means you should have your eyes towards Christ, praying that He would open your understandings and enlighten your minds with saving knowledge. This was David’s practice (see Ps 119:18,33,34).

1. Learn from this how you should receive the Word. Do not be strangers to your Bibles, but read them – with reverence, faith and love – as Christ’s word to you. Make conscience of attending the preaching of the Word, catechising, and the dispensing of the sacraments. Set yourselves to drink up the doctrine of Christ from Himself as your Teacher. If people believed that Christ was exercising His prophetic office among them in that way, they would not dare to treat these ordinances as they do.

2. See here the abomination of the Quakers and others who separate the Spirit from the Word. To these may be added those who take up principles, not from the Word, but from dreams, visions, voices and impressions. And much more those who do so on their own light fancies, without serious examination of them by the Word. The practices of all such people are an abomination to the Lord; they act in direct opposition to Christ, as the great Teacher sent from God, and consequently the light that is in them is darkness.

3. See also the abomination of those who profess Christianity but are formal and legal, who know nothing of religion except: Do, do. They do not have a due sense of their own emptiness and darkness in spiritual things, and how to make use of Christ as a Prophet; so they content themselves with the Word without the Spirit, and what they can hammer out of it on their own anvil – separating the Word from the Spirit. Thus they live ignorant of the Spirit enlightening the Word and clearing up Scripture truths to them – which can only be had when the soul goes out of itself and its own wisdom to Christ, in a way of believing and depending on Him for influences of light and knowledge. This is the ruin of many in our day.

4. Woe to them that have the teaching of the Word without the Spirit. Do men not think when they hear so much and are not illuminated by the Spirit? Christ may be a Prophet to others, but He cannot be one to such people. Let them seriously consider that awful passage: “If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost, in whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them (2 Cor 4:3,4).

5. Receive Christ as a Prophet and learn thus to make use of Him daily. Renounce your own wisdom and receive instruction from the mouth of this divine Teacher, who teaches to profit. Be of a meek disposition, willing to be taught by God, for “the meek will He teach His way”. And, for the Lord’s sake, do not refuse to listen to the voice of this great Prophet; otherwise it will be your ruin. Consider the awful testimony in the verse: “It shall come to pass, that every soul that will not hear that Prophet, shall be destroyed from among the people” (Acts 3:23). Hear Him then and beware “lest that come upon you which is spoken in the prophets, Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish” (Acts 13:40,41).

6. Would you know if God has taught you? I offer the following marks:

(1.) Christ’s teachings are very humbling to the soul. Human knowledge puffs up, but divine knowledge abases and casts down. It empties a man of all conceit of his own worth and fills him with low and abasing thoughts of himself. So it was with Job: “I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth Thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (43:5,6). The same light of the Spirit which shows us the glorious greatness and majesty of God and His other shining perfections reveals, at the same time, the vileness, baseness, emptiness and utter unworthiness of man, even of the best and holiest of men, as in the case of Isaiah: “Woe is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts”. When Paul got a saving sight of Christ, he called himself the least of all saints, and the chief of sinners. Were you ever deeply humbled before the Lord and made to see your own emptiness and vileness? Those who are puffed up with pride and self-conceit are strangers to the teaching of Christ.

(2.) The teachings of Christ deeply impress the heart. They fully reach the soul of a sinner: “I will speak comfortably unto her”; (or, as in the original, “I will speak to her heart” (Hos 2:14)). When Christ shows to men the great evil and danger of sin, He so touches and convinces the soul that no creature comforts can yield any pleasure but prove completely tasteless; they have no more pleasure than the white of an egg. And when He speaks peace to the soul and intimates the pardon of sin, He so comforts and refreshes it that no afflictions or pressures, however heavy and uneasy, have any weight or bitterness in them at all. One drop of consolation from heaven sweetens a whole sea of trouble upon earth, and fills the soul with joy unspeakable and full of glory. Says the Psalmist: “In the multitude of my thoughts within me, Thy comforts delight my soul”.

(3.) The teachings of Christ are sanctifying and renewing; they change and reform the heart: “If so be that ye have heard Him, and have been taught

by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; and be renewed in the spirit of your mind” (Eph 4:21-23). You see here that holiness and purity are the effect of divine teaching – holiness both external and internal, negative and positive. All the discoveries of God which Christ makes to the soul have an assimilating quality, changing it into His likeness (2 Cor 3:18).

(4.) All Christ’s teachings are practical, resulting in cheerful obedience. Idle ideas and useless speculations are not learned from Christ. As His creating words were always attended with effect, so are His teaching words. As when He said, “Let there be light, and there was light”; so when He says to a soul, Be thou humbled, it is effectually humbled. So it was in the case of Job: “Behold, I am vile, what shall I answer Thee? I will lay mine hand upon my mouth. Once have I spoken, but I will not answer: yea, twice, but I will proceed no further” (40:4,5). And when God says, Be thou comforted, comfort immediately follows. “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you: and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem” (Is 66:13).

(5.) Christ’s teachings are always agreeable to the written Word. The Spirit of Christ and the word of Christ never disagree, as He said, “The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” (Jn 14:26). When He speaks to the heart of a sinner, whether in a way of conviction, instruction, or consolation, He either makes use of the express words of Scripture, or speaks to the heart in a language every way agreeable thereunto. Thus the written Word becomes the standard to try all doctrine by: “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them” (Is 8:20). Whatever differs from the Scriptures of truth must not be considered what God has given by inspiration, but a deluding insinuation of the devil.

(6.) You will have a great love to your teacher and will be able to say with David, “Whom have I in heaven but Thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides Thee” (Ps 73:25).

As the natural light is pleasant to the eyes, so is truth to the understanding, unless some moral disease render its approach unacceptable.

Error can never nourish the soul. Error, even when mingled with truth, is like poison in our food. It is suffering much to be dreaded and avoided, to preach what is not true; of what God has never commanded to preach.

God should be worshipped with the fixed attention of the mind and with fervency of spirit. Spiritual worship is interrupted by nothing so much as the wandering of our thoughts.

Archibald Alexander

Protestant ViewThe Pope and the USA

AWM