Priesthood of All Believers

Introduction

Good evening AMI, for those of you who may not know me, my name is Mark Chun, I am the lead pastor at Radiance Church in San Francisco. It’s so good to be with you at this year’s AMI Summit. This has probably been one of the most difficult seasons of leadership that I can remember and it’s refreshing to be able to come together like this even if it’s only for a couple of days.

Before getting into the message, I wanted to congratulate all of the newly licensed pastors and as we have witnessed these individuals taking the next step in terms of their calling into ministry, I think it’s really appropriate that we will be looking at subject of the priesthood of all believers.

1 Peter 2:9–12 ESV

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.

Body

When we read this passage near the end of the New Testament, it really feels like it is coming out of nowhere because we haven’t explicitly heard anything about the priesthood in the gospels or even in the Pauline epistles. We know that the priests are there but they are part of the bad guys, the Sanhedrin, the religious right, if you will. But seemingly out of left field, the apostle Peter tells us that we are a chosen people and a royal priesthood. It’s seems like this is actually a pretty big deal but because there is so little explicit information about this in the New Testament, we don’t know what to do with this. For hundreds of years, the idea of the priesthood of all believers was lost in the church and fortunately it was recovered by Martin Luther during the reformation but we are again in danger of losing this important truth regarding a vital aspect of the church. As I go through this message, we’ll see that the idea of the priesthood of all believers may not be explicitly mentioned but it is found throughout the Bible.

A large part of the disconnect is the fact that much of the New Testament presupposes a working knowledge of the Old Testament. I don’t know about you but in seminary, I breezed my New Testament classes but had a lot more difficulties with my OT courses including Hebrew. But Peter being an apostle to the Jews would have presupposed that Jewish Christians would already have a working understanding of terms like chosen people, a royal priesthood, and a holy nation. These are all subjects that would have been taught in the Jewish synagogues of the time especially as it relates to the Temple and the Levitical system of sacrifices. Unfortunately, that’s kind of where people stop reading the Bible and therefore, we fail to see the relevance to the modern church.

So in the short time that we have, we want to look at two questions:

What is the Priesthood of all Believers?

What are the implications of this doctrine?

Now to be absolutely clear, Martin Luther is not the one who coined this term but he is the one who rediscovered and described this truth as the “general priesthood of all baptized believers”. This description is something that gives us a lot more clarity because it teaches us that every single Christian is initiated into the general priesthood of all believers at the point of their baptism. To be honest, I haven’t thought too much about these matters since I left seminary but during the shut down of churches across America, we all have had to think about the essential nature of the church. Three realizations I’ve made during this time:

1. I realized not all Christians actually agree on how essential the Church is to very fabric of society.

2. Many of these same Christian don’t see themselves as being essential to the Church.

3. I realized that in our church, our baptism class fails to mention that not only is baptism a symbol of new life but it is also meant as an initiation into the priesthood of all believers.

In the Old Testament, the use of water for initiation into the service of God was strictly reserved for the Levites.

Exodus 29:1 ESV

“Now this is what you shall do to them to consecrate them, that they may serve me as priests. Take one bull of the herd and two rams without blemish,

Exodus 29:4 ESV

You shall bring Aaron and his sons to the entrance of the tent of meeting and wash them with water.

Now historically, the church has mistakenly used the separation of the Levites as justification for setting the clergy apart from the general congregation and creating a bifurcated, two tiered system within the church. But clearly, that cannot be the intent of the Scriptures because as early as Exodus, we see God’s desire to have an entire kingdom of priests, a nation that is holy and completely devoted to serving Him.

Exodus 19:5–6 ESV

Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.”

Hopefully, you are beginning to see the connection between what we read in 1 Peter chapter 2 and what we are reading in Exodus 19. The words used to identify the people of God are exactly the same: God’s own possession, a royal priesthood, and a holy nation. The only difference is the fact that the passage from Exodus is describing God’s future desires for his people based on the fulfilling of certain conditions. If you obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you will become a kingdom of priests. The Levites were simply meant to be forerunners that would teach this infant nation how to become a priesthood for the living God. Like the Law, that separation between the Levites and the general population was never meant to be permanent. But as you track the history of Israel through the OT, they never come close to fulfilling those conditions and they fall woefully short of becoming a kingdom of priests.

But in 1 Peter 2 through the perfect sacrifice of Christ, those conditions are met and therefore we are now a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a treasured possession. Everyone who undergoes the sacrament of baptism is now rightfully a part of this priesthood and they should live their lives in accordance to this high calling. If you ever considered why Jesus had to submit himself to the baptism of John, a part of the reason, maybe a large part of the reason was He was beginning a new royal priesthood initiated through the cleansing of water. Elsewhere in the Gospels, there’s even more evidence of this.

Mark 2:23–26 ESV

One Sabbath he was going through the grainfields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. And the Pharisees were saying to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did, when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God, in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?”

In this well known Sabbath controversy with the Pharisees, Jesus defends what He and his disciples have done by recounting how David and his men ate the Bread of the Presence in their hunger and by the letter of the law, what they did what was technically unlawful. But the problem here is that Jesus and his disciples are not in a temple but he still uses this example to defend what He and the disciples were doing. So either, Jesus is advocating that breaking the Law of Moses was perfectly fine for David or Jesus saw himself in this story in three ways. Hank Voss, in his book Representing Christ, details these three points.

David is in the lineage of Judah therefore, he was still a part of the royal priesthood. Therefore, by the spirit of the law, it was lawful for him to eat the bread.

Jesus applies this example not within a temple but outside on a field as if He was saying, “Wherever I go, wherever I am can be considered sacred space. I am the True bread of the presence.

Everyone that was associated with David, no matter what tribe they were from was allowed to eat that bread, therefore by association with David, they are all considered priests. In the same way, everyone who is now associated with Christ, namely his disciples are also priests.

If Jesus came to start this new priesthood, this has huge implications on the standard that we hold our people to. And perhaps many in our congregations are failing to live up to basic Christian standards because they don’t know who they truly are. Right or wrong, much of my own personal sanctification as a Christians has happened because my calling as a pastor has forced me to recognize my calling as a priest. I didn’t realize that I had clumped those two separate callings together but so much of my spiritual growth is tied to this sense of calling into the priesthood. The challenge to live sacrificially is very closely tied to the priesthood. To value consecration and being set apart is another requirement for those who are serving as priests. To treasure God’s presence and the desire to minister to Him in worship is a priestly function. Unfortunately within American Christianity, the priesthood has become synonomous with the the office of pastor and unknowingly, we have created this artificial division between clergy and laity, which happens to be the general default of church history. It’s much easier to be a Christian if there are no real standards to strive for and you can just live vicariously through someone else’s faith. But Jesus is the only person that the believer can live vicariously through and when we truly live through Him, he calls every believer into the priesthood.

Now, the opposite danger does exist, where the doctrine of the priesthood of all believer is used to promote a rampant unbiblical democracy in the governance of the Church. As Pastor Keith reminds all of us who have been at Southland, the church of Southland is not a democracy, it is a benevolent dictatorship. I believe that he is half joking but what he is concerned about is the dismissal of spiritual leadership and the God-given authority of certain men and women to lead the church. And the question becomes, doesn’t the priesthood of all believers make obsolete this notion of specific individuals who called to lead. Absolutely not! In the gospels, Jesus sets Peter apart to lead the Church. In the book of Acts, Jesus makes Paul an apostle to the Gentiles. And what we see in the New Testament, that allows for the effective leading of the church while maintaining the priesthood of all believers is the distinction between the offices of the church versus the general priesthood.

If you have been in AMI long enough, you are probably familiar with the term 5-Fold Office which describes the way the early church operated at a leadership level.

Ephesians 4:11–12 ESV

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,

What we are seeing in this verses is the way that we can have effective God given leadership in the church through these 5 offices while at the same time highlighting the work of ministry that every believer is called to do as a part of the priesthood. When Paul uses terms like “work of ministry” he is evoking Old Testament language that applies to the priesthood. But what is also important for us to see is the fact that these five offices are never confused with the general priesthood. This is why we never see the apostles or the prophets or pastors referred to as priests, although technically they are, it’s only as a part of the general priesthood. But in terms of leading the church, it is the office of apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, and teacher that confers that authority to lead. It is an incredible structure that God built for the church to thrive on. Now some people might ask, well isn’t the priesthood also an office of the church and we clearly see in Ephesians 4, that it is not. But what is it then? The way that it is described in both Exodus and 1 Peter, the priesthood can be best described as a new race of people, chosen by God, to have a particular type of relationship with Him, so that we can establish a nation that would be a blessing to all the nations of the world. (I don’t mean America, we are talking about the church!)

Could you imagine how different our churches would look if every believer recognized and understood the Priesthood of Christ. I wonder if there would be more believers that would take to heart the urging of Paul to live their lives worthy of the calling that we have received. If you are convinced of your inclusion into the priesthood, suddenly verses like Romans 12:1 come to have a new meaning.

Romans 12:1 ESV

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

This is all language of the priesthood and only those who have a sense of who they are in Christ will understand the full implication of verses like these. Brothers and sister, it is then our job as leaders in the church to convince every baptised believer that they are called into this priesthood and to appeal to their senses through the word of God

Conclusion

The longest section that is devoted to the priesthood of Christ is in the book of Hebrews. In fact, the entire last half of the book is devoted to this topic. Much of this section of Hebrews remains a mystery if you don’t read it through the lens of the priesthood of all believers. These chapters begin with the truth that Jesus came to establish a new priesthood.

Hebrews 7:14–16 ESV

For it is evident that our Lord was descended from Judah, and in connection with that tribe Moses said nothing about priests. This becomes even more evident when another priest arises in the likeness of Melchizedek, who has become a priest, not on the basis of a legal requirement concerning bodily descent, but by the power of an indestructible life.

That establishes Jesus’ right to start a new priesthood not based on some human lineage that will come to an end but by the indestructible power of the Resurrection. From there every believer that follows in the lineage of Christ are now given full assurance to enter into the holy of holies as a new priesthood.

Hebrews 10:19–22 ESV

Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

Hebrews 13:15–16 ESV

Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.