Priest & King, Great Commission & Cultural Mandate

”The total life involvement of the covenant relationship provides the framework for considering the connection between the ‘great commission’ and the ‘cultural mandate.’ Entrance into God’s kingdom may occur only by repentance and faith, which requires the preaching of the Gospel. This ‘gospel,’ however, must not be conceived in the narrowest possible sense. It is the gospel of the ‘Kingdom.’ It involves discipling men to Jesus Christ. Integral to that discipling process is the awakening of an awareness of the obligations of man to the totality of God’s creation. Redeemed man, remade in God’s image, must fulfill – even surpass – the role originally determined for the first man. In such a manner, the mandate to preach the gospel and the mandate to form a culture glorifying to God merge with one another.”

O. Palmer Robertson
The Christ Of The Covenants — pg. 83

In starting we should note that, loosely speaking, the Cultural mandate is most closely associated with Jesus in his Kingly office, while the Great commission is most closely associated with Jesus in His office of High Priest. The Cultural mandate is tied to the imperatives of Scripture, while the great commission is most closely tied to the indicatives of Scripture. The Great commission is a proclamation of what the Lord Christ has done for men, as the great propitiation, while the cultural mandate is the declaration of what the Mediatorial King Jesus requires. While we note these distinctions we insist that our High Priest is King and our King is our High Priest. As our High Priest and King Jesus prays for us in the heavenlies and through His Spirit leads us, in obedience, to extend His already present Kingdom here on earth.

Something that seems to be happening within the Reformed Church is the dividing of the offices of our Liege Lord Christ. There seems to be one faction in Reformedom that so wants to insist on Jesus as High Priest that any mention of Jesus as ruling King is seen as something that doesn’t apply to us now since we are in the interregnum. These people are wrongly divorcing these two offices. At the same time there is another faction in Reformedom that is trying to confuse these two offices so that what God requires in salvation and what God gives in justification are so co-mingled that the doctrine of faith alone becomes a doctrine of faith and works alone.

There is a necessity therefore to try and understand the relationship of the believer to the offices of Jesus as King and Priest, and relationship between the Great Commission and the cultural mandate. First, we would note that even in the gospel Jesus as King commands all men everywhere to repent, while in his office as High Priest He gives what He commands to His elect.

As we consider Robertson quote above I would offer that the Cultural mandate provides the general context wherein the text of evangelism can make sense. Allow me to try and explain. Where Christians take seriously Jesus office as King in an unrestricted sense there a cultural context is created that makes it easier for the gospel to be heard by unbelievers. Think of context and text when reading a book. The context helps the reader to make sense of the text that he is immediately reading. The text itself would be nonsense if it were set in an entirely different context. In the same way when the ‘Gospel’ goes forward in a cultural context that is informed by the unrestricted Kingship of Jesus, there the text of ‘Jesus Christ as the great High Priest’ makes more sense. Where Jesus in His Kingly office is lived out there isn’t such a huge disconnect between the message of Jesus Christ crucified and the reality of a culture that is defying King Jesus at every turn. When we don’t engage in the cultural mandate we make it more difficult for people to hear the strains of the message of the great commission because we are helping to create a social order context that is in opposition to the gospel proclamation. Consequently when we disconnect the Great Commission and the Cultural Mandate what we inevitably end up creating are Christians who view their salvation as unrelated to their cultural endeavors, or who see their cultural endeavors as unrelated to their salvation. The result would be to give us both an anti-nomian Church and an anti-nomian culture.

Likewise the reverse is true. Where the offices of Jesus are confused and collapsed together, with the office of King compromising the office of Priest, we will create a Church that is legalistic and a social order that is rigid. While the previous error wants a text divorced from its context, this error wants a text undistinguished from its context. The former error leads to bifurcationism where the Church as Sacred and the social order as common are isolated from one another, while this error leads to a social order that is undifferentiated as to what is Holy and what is Holy of Holy. Jesus must be proclaimed (prophetic office) in both of His offices (Priest and King) or else we eviscerate the definition of both of those offices.

When we find the proper tension between these offices we discover that people who have been saved and brought into the Kingdom, now seek to bring that salvation wherein they have been saved into every area of life, so that those spheres may experience salvation. In obedience to King Jesus those who have been saved by Jesus as their great High Priest now bring salvation to the gardens they tend, and the children they raise, and the books they write, and the Churches they attend, and the judicial decisions they hand down, and the art they paint, and on and on. So, as individuals are saved by Jesus in His Priestly office, they bring that salvation to their corporate life in obedience to Jesus in His Kingly office, which in turn, as we noted above, provides a general cultural context where it is easier for unsaved individuals to comprehend the Gospel.

Now the objection will be that what I am contending for is a kind of naturalistic program for the Church where I deny the supernaturalistic agency of God for men to be Redeemed and instead am relying on cultural infrastructure to convert lost men.

Of course I would say this is most certainly not true! I am not saying that if we follow three easy steps people will get saved. I am saying that God appoints means to ends. That salvation, while a spiritual reality, happens inside a physical and corporeal context and that it is gnostic to suggest that we can get to the spiritual reality without considering the physical context. Men will never be saved by the proper cultural infrastructure but it is certain that their natural individual resistance to the message of Christ crucified will be accentuated and emboldened by cultural infrastructure that is built in defiance of King Jesus.

God putting the offices of Jesus together they must not be cast asunder.

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him. View all posts by jetbrane