A Priesthood of All Believers

But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light. 1 PETER 2:9

In the summer of 1520 Luther published an appeal To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation. It was written in German, for laymen, and it sold in thousands within days. In it he argued that the Roman church had built three walls around itself to prevent any reform. The first wall was the claim that the clergy are a spiritual estate, set above the laity, so that no layman may ever correct a priest or a pope. Luther knocked that wall down with a single teaching that has shaped Protestant life ever since: every baptised Christian is a priest.

One estate

The medieval church divided Christians into two estates. There was the spiritual estate — pope, bishops, priests, monks and nuns — and the temporal estate — princes, merchants, craftsmen and farmers. The first was thought to be nearer to God, holier in itself, and the proper keeper of the sacraments and the Scriptures. Luther said that this division had no ground in the Bible. All Christians, he argued, belong to the spiritual estate, because all have one baptism, one gospel, one faith, and are all alike Christians. It is baptism, not ordination, that makes a person a priest.

Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen. REVELATION 1:5–6

This did not mean that there should be no pastors. Luther was clear that, because all have the same right, no one should take the public office of preaching and administering the sacraments without being called to it by the community. The minister is not a higher kind of Christian, but a Christian set apart to serve others in a particular office, as a mayor is a citizen chosen to govern his fellow citizens. If he is removed from office, he is what he was before: a baptised believer like everyone else.

Access to God

At the heart of this teaching is a simple and glorious truth. No Christian needs a human go-between to reach God. There is one mediator, the Lord Jesus Christ, and every believer may come to the Father directly through Him.

For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. 1 TIMOTHY 2:5

Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. HEBREWS 4:16

For ordinary people in Luther’s day, this was a liberation. They could read the Bible for themselves, in German. They could pray to God in their own words, without the saints as intermediaries. They could receive the assurance of forgiveness from the promise of the gospel. They could even hear another Christian’s confession and speak Christ’s forgiveness to them. Luther valued private confession highly, but he insisted that any believer could speak the word of absolution to a troubled brother or sister.

Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. JAMES 5:16

Priests for one another

It is easy to misunderstand the priesthood of all believers as a kind of spiritual individualism: every man his own priest, needing no one. That is the opposite of what Luther meant. A priest is someone who stands before God on behalf of others. To say that every Christian is a priest is to say that every Christian is responsible for his neighbour — to pray for him, to teach him, to comfort him, to bring him God’s Word.

Luther’s Christmas sermon makes this point from the shepherds at Bethlehem. Why, he asks, were the first hearers of the gospel shepherds? His answer:

“That there were shepherds, means that no one is to hear the Gospel for himself alone, but every one is to tell it to others who are not acquainted with it.”

He goes on to say that each believer should seek to bring others to faith, so that one may be a shepherd of the other, leading him into the pasture of the gospel. Every Christian, in other words, has a ministry.

Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. GALATIANS 6:2

Every Christian also has a sacrifice to offer. Not the sacrifice of the Mass, which Luther rejected as a work offered to God, but the sacrifice of praise, and of the whole life given in service.

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. ROMANS 12:1

Where the teaching went

The priesthood of all believers set loose enormous energies. It led to the German Bible, to congregational singing, to household catechising, to the dignity of lay vocation that the next chapter describes. It gave generations of ordinary Christians the confidence to read, pray and speak about God without asking permission.

But it must also be said that Luther’s practice did not always match his principle. When the Reformation met disorder — radical preachers, iconoclasts, the Anabaptists and the Peasants’ War — he grew cautious. He insisted more and more on the ordered, called ministry, and he looked to the Christian princes to organise and oversee the new churches, which he called a temporary emergency measure. The emergency lasted for centuries. In many Lutheran lands the prince became, in effect, the head of the church, and the priesthood of believers was not always visible in parishes run by the state. Luther cannot be blamed for everything that followed, but he did not guard his own teaching as well as he might have done.

How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? ROMANS 10:14

The balance he struck in principle is still the right one. The whole church is a priesthood, and the church also needs preachers, called and sent, to proclaim the Word publicly. The two do not compete. The preacher serves the priesthood; the priesthood hears the preacher and carries the Word into every home and workplace.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Thank God that you may come to Him directly through Christ. Pray today without any sense that you need permission.

2. Name one person for whom you are a priest — someone you can pray for, teach or comfort. Do one of these things this week.

3. If someone confides a sin to you, practise speaking Christ’s forgiveness to them plainly from Scripture.

4. Honour your pastor as a fellow believer called to an office, and pray for him or her by name.

5. Ask whether you have treated your faith as a private possession. Tell the gospel to someone who does not know it.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus Christ, our one Mediator and great High Priest, You have washed us in Your blood and made us priests to Your Father.

Thank You that I may come boldly to the throne of grace, and that no one stands between me and You.

Make me a priest for others — quick to pray, ready to comfort, glad to speak Your Word.

Bless those You have called to preach, and let Your whole church show forth the praises of Him who called us into His marvellous light. Amen.