Christ’s regal and sacerdotal activity find their ultimate fulfillment in his prophetic office. Christ’s prophetic office does not merely encompass his teachings prior to his crucifixion, but is finally and most supremely fulfilled in his actualization of the testament of the gospel. The saving testament of the gospel is the message of his salvific cross and empty tomb. The cross and the empty tomb are the supreme act of revelation of the Triune God. St. Paul tells us that the omega-point of God’s revelatory activity, and the center of all proper Christian teaching, is the death and resurrection of Christ: “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). Martin Luther echoed this in his slogan: “The cross alone is our theology” (crux sola est nostra theologia).1 In his Epistle to the Romans, the Apostle summarized the content of the revelation of the cross as: “[Christ] was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (Rom. 4:25).
Although the message of the cross’s ultimate telos is salvation, in Scripture salvation never comes apart from a corresponding act of judgment. Hence, the cross is not only a revelation of grace, but it is the means by which “[God] will destroy the wisdom of the wise [and] the intelligence of the intelligent” (1 Cor. 1:19). Jesus is “The stone that the builders rejected [that] has become the cornerstone” (Matt. 21:42). Hence, the crucifixion and empty tomb not only reveal the hidden plan of redemption, but also expose the true depths of human sin. The New Testament emphasizes that the exposure of the true depths of human sin in the cross occurs on two horizons: coram Deo (i.e., the divine-human relationship) and coram mundo (i.e., the human-human relationship).
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