Commentary: Priesthood: Tensions in Baptist identity, Part 5

In my last article, I argued believer’s baptism is important because of what it says about the nature and composition of the church. The same is true for another Baptist distinctive—the priesthood of all believers.

This conviction—often derived from 1 Timothy 2:5, 1 Peter 2:4-10 and Revelation1:4-6—has been a source of tremendous encouragement for Baptists throughout the centuries. But when it is misunderstood, it also can be the source of much mischief.

Defining the doctrine

Millard Erickson describes the priesthood of the believer this way:

“All persons are capable of relating to God directly. … There is no need of any special intermediary. All have redemptive access to the Lord. And what is true of the initiation of the Christian life is also true of its continuation. Each believer can discern God’s will directly” (Christian Theology, Second Edition, p. 1096).

We learn from Erickson that the doctrine has two dimensions. Christologically, the doctrine insists Jesus is the only mediator between God and humanity.

As the writer of Hebrews insists, Christ is a sufficient mediator precisely because he is the perfect sacrifice—the sinless Son offered on behalf of a sinful humanity—and because his offering was made out of complete and willing obedience to the Father.

Ecclesiologically, the doctrine asserts every person has both the right and the responsibility to come before God.

As Erickson insists, this capacity does not extend merely to an individual’s initial prayer for acceptance into God’s kingdom through faith. It also includes the believer’s ongoing engagement with God.

Erickson couches this ongoing engagement in terms of the discernment of God’s will, but for reasons we will discuss below, Stanley Grenz locates the believer’s activity as priest first and foremost in her or his intercession for other believers (Theology for the Community of God, p. 647).

This presentation of the doctrine can seem a bit two-dimensional and disjointed. But in the second volume of his Systematic Theology, James McClendon Jr. demonstrates the doctrine is neither of these things (Doctrine, p. 368.)

For McClendon, it is the direct result of Christ’s redemptive activity, resulting in “deliverance from the world of sacral authorities into the world of the good news.” Its consequences are nothing less than a radically reshaped relationship with status and power.

Jesus’ instructions in response to his disciples’ jockeying for position is not merely a commentary on effective leadership. It is an expression of the church’s essence and a call to live out its implications (Mark 10:35-45 and parallels). It even bears witness to a new set of metrics for judging human conduct (Matthew 23:1-12).

Defending the doctrine

But can the doctrine be defended from Scripture?

As I indicated above, the Christological dimension of this doctrine is beyond doubt. The old priesthood has been replaced by a single High Priest, one whose reign and service are eternal and whose sacrifice is qualitatively superior to those provided by the old sacrificial system (Hebrews 6:19-10:22).

But what about the ecclesiological dimension? 1 Peter 2:4-10 is the only text that explicitly associates believers with a priestly identity, and as Michelle Lee-Barnwall points out in Neither Complementarian Nor Egalitarian, the accent in that text is on the identity of believers as a whole, not on the identity of any individual believer (notice the phrase “royal priesthood” in vv. 5, 9).

Hence, it could be argued that Peter’s emphasis is on how the church as a whole fulfills a priestly function in its cultural context.

Grenz and McClendon, however, do not base their reflections upon the doctrine in 1 Peter. They do what the venerable apostle did, turning to the Old Testament—and especially to Exodus 19:5-6—to enrich their understanding of this core Baptist conviction.

It is true enough that God eventually instituted a priesthood within Israel, but McClendon implies this was not God’s primary intention.

Rather, Israel was to stand apart as a “holy nation” with one King, a people who by their words and by their lives pointed other nations to God. In that sense, they performed the most basic function of priests—interceding between God and humanity—and served as forerunners for those who believe in Jesus.

This is why Grenz highlights intercession as the primary—though not the exclusive—arena of priestly activity. When believers pray for one another, they are entering the very presence of God on behalf of their brothers and sisters in Christ. In so doing, they are enacting Paul’s model of the church as a spiritual family, advocating for one another out of love.

In turn, they listen for God’s voice. God can, of course, decide not to speak. None of this negates the revolutionary assertion that any person is capable of hearing from God, and God may decide he only wants to speak to the person directly affected by the church’s prayers. But the church is a family, and sometimes we are too emotionally compromised to perceive the truth.

We need a loving brother or sister to come alongside us, put his or her arms around us, and help us receive from our Father in heaven what we otherwise may not have the strength to bear.

Concerns, questions and contributions

Despite the ways religion has changed in the West over the past 2,000 years, the priesthood of all believers still can feel like an oddly fitting suit of clothing for some.

There is comfort in assuming our spiritual welfare is someone else’s problem. More importantly, it is frightening to think God has entrusted the teenaged metalhead or the back-row gossip with the responsibility of representing Christ to the world.

Our fears about this doctrine are not entirely unfounded.

As Karen Bullock points out in her Pinson Lecture, the priesthood of all believers is not a license to do whatever we want, and it is not a claim that individual people are sufficient to the task of reconciling themselves with God or living a God-honoring life. She has to issue these warnings because people sometimes have construed the doctrine in these ways.

Nevertheless, we should not underestimate the importance of the priesthood of all believers.

It coheres nicely with the presupposition all humans are created in the image of God, and it reminds us Christ had a particular preference for children and other outsiders—people who lacked the credentials to wield spiritual, moral or political authority but who received the message of the coming kingdom with faith, hope, joy and love.

The truth is all of us are the supposedly misguided teenager or the annoying old person. We all are the recipients of that shake of the head that says, “Lord, I think you’ve lost your mind this time.”

And yet, Christ not only receives us into his kingdom, but also appoints us as his priests. We are entrusted with the sacred responsibilities of bringing our broken, distorted selves to God for forgiveness and healing, of weeping in his presence on behalf of our brothers and sisters in Christ, and of sharing his good news with those—both inside and outside the church—who need to hear it.

Of course, there always will be questions related to this doctrine. For example, how should it affect our understanding of the pastoral office?

And there always will be those who wield it as a defense against accountability.

But when properly understood, the priesthood of all believers is one of the Bible’s most profound affirmations of human dignity, and it can encourage us to hang in there when the fight for godliness seems utterly without purpose, benefit or end.

Wade Berry is pastor of Second Baptist Church in Ranger and has been resident fellow in New Testament and Greek at B.H. Carroll Theological Seminary. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.