Since I was a little boy I have been taught that the gifts of the Wise Men showed what he was and what he would do. Gold the gift for a King. Frankincense an offering to God. Myhrr the anointing substance for a dead body. Jesus is King and God and born to die. Here is Luther in a Church Postil for Epiphany.
See, these are the three parts in which we should praise and confess his three works which he has shown us, and will show us daily until the day of judgment. And the order too is fine: but the evangelist puts gold in the first place. For it would not be possible that he should be king over all things for our good, if he had not first reconciled us to God and assured our conscience, that with calm and peace he might rule and work in us as in his own kingdom. Accordingly he must first be priest for us. But, if he is to be priest and to reconcile us to God according to his priestly office, he must fulfill God’s righteousness for us. But there was no other satisfaction; he had to give himself to death, and in his own person overcome sin with death. So too through death he came to the priesthood, through his priesthood to the kingdom, thus receiving the myrrh before the incense, and the incense before the gold. But the Scripture at all times declares the kingdom to be first, then the priesthood, and finally his death, as Psalm 110:1-7 also does, which Psalm describes for the first time his kingdom as follows: “Jehovah saith unto my lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.” It follows then from his priesthood thus: “Jehovah hath sworn, and will not repent: Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” Finally he closes with his martyrdom thus: “He will drink of the brook in the way: Therefore will he lift up his head.” Here too he wishes to say: He will taste the myrrh, therefore he will become a priest; he is a priest, and therefore he will also be king; so that one follows from the other; one is the cause of the other, and they follow one upon another.
