The priesthood of all believers

A royal priesthood

God called Israel "a kingdom of priests" (Exodus 19:6), yet he gave the service of the sanctuary to Aaron's sons. The New Testament proclaims Christ as "a great high priest" (Hebrews 4:14) who offered himself once for all, so that now all believers "have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus" (Hebrews 10:19). Peter writes to scattered believers, all of them:

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.

1 Peter 2:9

The sacrifices believers offer do not atone for sin; Christ has done that once for all. They offer "spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 2:5): "a sacrifice of praise" (Hebrews 13:15), doing good and sharing with others (Hebrews 13:16), and their bodies as living sacrifices (Romans 12:1). Matthew Henry writes: "All true believers are a holy priesthood; sacred to God, serviceable to others, endowed with heavenly gifts and graces" Matthew Henry. A priest stands before God on behalf of others. The priesthood of all believers does not mean that each is his own priest, but that all believers are priests for one another.

Recovered at the Reformation

In the medieval church it was widely held that the clergy formed a spiritual estate and the laity a worldly one. At the Reformation, Martin Luther taught in To the Christian Nobility (1520) that all the baptised truly belong to the spiritual estate and are priests, and that a pastor differs from other Christians not in standing but only in the office entrusted to him Luther, To the Christian Nobility. In The Freedom of a Christian, the same year, he wrote that believers, united with Christ by faith, share in his kingship and priesthood Luther, The Freedom of a Christian.

Luther did not abolish the ministry. The Augsburg Confession holds that no one should publicly teach in the church or administer the sacraments unless rightly called Augsburg Confession, art. 14. In the late seventeenth century Spener urged that the teaching be put into practice, with believers teaching and admonishing one another Spener, Pia Desideria.

Where the traditions differ

The Catholic Church teaches a ‘common priesthood’ of all the baptised, and holds that the ‘ministerial priesthood’ of bishops and priests differs from it in essence and not only in degree Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Orthodox likewise confess that all the baptised are a royal priesthood while keeping the distinct place of the ordained. Among Protestants the emphasis varies. Lutherans, Reformed and Anglicans hold the priesthood of all believers together with a rightly called ministry of the word; Baptists and free churches also see in it a ground for the whole congregation deciding the church's affairs together (congregational polity). All confess that "there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5).

The teaching reaches into ordinary life. Luther held that the shoemaker and the farmer each serve their neighbour in their own work, and this became the teaching of vocation. Luther's teaching is told in the lesson Luther: the theology of the cross and justification.