On Adam

John Calvin stated, “The office which [Christ] received from the Father consists of three parts. For he was appointed… Prophet, King, and Priest.” [1] My question is: was Adam originally created to fulfill these three offices?  I think so and here are some thoughts about the first Adam being a prophet, priest, and king (and in a future post, I’ll discuss the connection between husbands and wives).

Adam was created in the image of God (i.e., the image of Christ) (Gen. 1:26-27; Jn. 14:9; Rom. 8:29).  Adam was created to simultaneously fulfill the offices of prophet, priest, and king in an Edenic temple.[2] The Fall into sin resulted in both the image and the offices being twisted and distorted. Thus, Adam failed in keeping the three-fold offices of prophet, priest, and king (see below).

Office	Definition	What Adam did	What he should have done
Prophet	One who speaks God’s words to His people	“…she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate… The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate” (Gen. 3:6, 12; cf. Deut. 18:15-22).	Spoke these words of God to Eve:“You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:16-17)
Priest	One who serves God in His place and intercedes for His people	Adam did not guard the Edenic temple from the serpent entering and tempting His wife.	“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it (or serve it) and keep it (or guard it)”[2] (Gen. 2:15).
King	One who rules/leads God’s people and provides a defense	Adam allowed the serpent to have dominion over him and Eve, rather than having dominion over it as the Lord had commanded.	“And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth” (Gen. 1:26; cf. Gen. 1:28).

But Christ came as the second Adam and perfectly kept the three offices. More on that in a future post.

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[1] John Calvin, The Institutes of Christian Religion, book 2, c. 15:1.

[2] “Adam was placed in the garden to “cultivate and keep it” (Gen. 2:15). Taken alone, “cultivation” has obvious agricultural meaning. But this pair of terms (“cultivate/keep” also translated “serve/guard”) is used elsewhere in the OT to describe the work of the priest (Num. 3:7–8; 8:25–26; 18:5–6; 1 Chr. 23:32; Ezek. 44:14). Thus “the task of Adam in Genesis 2:15 included more than mere spadework in the dirt of a garden. It is apparently that priestly obligations in Israel’s later temple included the duty of ‘guarding’ unclean things from entering (cf. Num. 3:6–7, 32, 38; 18:1–7), and this appears to be relevant for Adam, especially in view of the unclean creature lurking on the perimeter of the Garden and who then enters”. Craig Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God, 69.