The Priesthood of All Believers—by Jeff Meyers

I'm beginning to get some constructive criticism of my book, “The Lord’s Service.” This is encouraging to me. People are reading it and thinking about what I say. That's great. I welcome constructive criticism. It helps me improve on my argument and when necessary correct my thinking where I have made a mistake. As Augustine said in the opening pages of his book On the Trinity:

"...far rather would I be censured by anyone whatsoever, than be praised by either the erring or the flatterer. For the lover of truth need fear no one's censure. For he that censures, must be either an enemy or a friend. And if an enemy reviles, he must be borne with: but a friend, if he errs, must be taught; if he teaches, listened to."

Let me begin with one rather serious misunderstanding concerning how the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers relates to what I have written about the biblical order of corporate worship. Perhaps I need to go back and clarify myself so as not to give the wrong impression. Here is a somewhat typical objection: Meyers's book denies the priesthood of all believers and elevates the pastor as some sort of priestly mediator between God and man. And having a set liturgy like Meyers suggests violates the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers because it forces people to worship with words and actions chosen by the pastor.

Answer: I'm sorry if anything I've written has given someone the impression that I have set aside the Reformers' teaching on the priesthood of all believers. That was never my intention. I've actually addressed this in two places in my book. Unfortunately what often happens is people get only so far in their reading and they jump to conclusions without finishing the book. I can understand that. It's a large book. I don't deny the priesthood of all believers and it is not my intention to set up the pastor as a rival to Jesus, the one mediator between God and man.

I will take a few posts to deal with this misunderstanding.

First, what does the priesthood of all believers mean? Why did the Reformers insist on it? The Reformers to a man, especially Luther and Calvin, sought to correct the late medieval distortions of worship by restoring congregational participation. The late medieval mass was hardly a congregational worship service at all. The service was said in Latin, which very few laymen understood. There was virtually no congregational participation in the service beyond watching the visual “performance” by the priest at the altar. The bread, (supposedly) transformed into Christ’s real body, held up for the people to adore, was the climax of the mass. The people almost never partook of the Communion elements; only the priest ate and drank. There were no congregational prayers or singing or recitation of the creeds. The congregation merely watched and listened. They were largely passive. As individuals they may have performed private devotions completely independent of what the priest was doing up front, but as a community they did not participate in the liturgy.

To the Reformers this was a gross distortion of biblical and early church (second-third century) worship practices. One of their greatest achievements was to restore intelligent, unified participation by the Body of Christ in worship. They transformed the people from uncomprehending observers of the worship of the sacrificing priests into an active royal priesthood. This is what they meant by the priesthood of all believers. Everyone in the church ought to participate in the worship service.

Calvin, echoing the early church fathers, insisted that “each Christian bears the exalted title of sacrificer,” and therefore has a rightful place in the offering of praise and prayer in the liturgy. It is not the priest alone who has access into the heavenly sanctuary, but rather every member of the Body of Christ has heavenly access into God’s throne room on the Lord’s Day. In the New Covenant there are no degrees of nearness (as there were in the Old Covenant), but every worshiper is a “saint,” that is, one who has sanctuary access.

This is the meaning of the great Reformation principle of the priesthood of all believers. The principle manifestation and evidence of the reality of this fundamental truth takes place during corporate worship as the whole congregation participates in offering to God prayer and praise. The congregation prays, praises, and communes with God. The pastor does not worship for them as a proxy; the people worship as the pastor leads them. Churches of the Reformation did not believe that the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers implied that diminishment of the role of the pastor. Quite the opposite. Now because of the increased participation of the people, the pastors role became even more central, for it was through the pastor the Word and Sacraments were received by the people. The pastors were not called to incomprehensible private masses, but serve the people of God with the gifts of God, his Word and Sacrament. For the Reformers the priesthood of all believers demanded a corporate liturgy!

One value of a thoughtfully considered liturgy is that it enforces the idea that we are worshiping as the church, not as individuals or home groups. We are the Ship of Orthodoxy, not 350 separate rafts in a lagoon. The priesthood of all believers does not mean we don't need the help of anyone else to worship; rather, it means that we all help one another approach the Lord through prayer, singing, hearing, and feeding at his Table.

In many evangelical circles individualism is a great temptation. An individual may soar into the heavenlies and, oblivious to everything and everyone around him, dance and shout to his heart’s content. However, when we gather as the church, we can never be oblivious to those around us (1 Cor. 14). A home group may sing, testify, confess, sing some more, laugh, break for coffee, and come back together for teaching; but when we gather as the local church, we must remember we are in God’s Throne Room, not our living room. This is not coffee with our buddies but a royal audience with the King of the Universe. This is of particular relevance because so many Christians today approach church worship as an extension of their prayer closets.

Thus, the Reformers restored many of the pre-medieval practices of the post-Apostolic church. They intentionally sought to recover what has been called “Old Catholic” forms of worship while bypassing the distortions of medieval Roman Catholic liturgical rites. The Reformers restored frequent Communion. They all sought to reintroduce weekly Communion at every Lord’s Day worship service. They all effectively revived preaching and teaching so that the people could be instructed by God’s Word every week. They all brought the recitation of the creeds by the congregation back into the worship service. They all rediscovered the inspired Psalms as the prayer book and hymnbook of the Church. And they restored the pastor to the role in which he was ordained to serve, not as a sacrificer, but as the representative of Christ for the Bride of Christ.

Moreover, congregational singing was resurrected and became one of the hallmarks of Reformation worship. Calvin discusses music and singing under the heading of prayer. The people were taught to sing the Psalms in corporate worship, since the Psalter is the inspired prayer book of the Bible. All the Reformers wrote model liturgies and prayers for use in the churches. This revival of congregational prayer was based squarely on the priesthood of all believers, which demanded that the people participate in the prayers and not just listen to them. In fact, the liturgies of the Reformers were much more fixed than we modern Americans would feel comfortable with. The point I am trying to make here, though, is that congregational praying of pre-composed prayers, either spoken or sung, has a long and venerable history in Reformation churches and ought not to be jettisoned merely because they are not familiar forms to twenty-first century American Evangelical Protestants. Using "set" prayers is not a violation of the priesthood of all believers.

The fact that the church as a whole is a priesthood (1 Pet. 2:5, 9) is not exactly the same thing as saying that each and every believer is his own priest, which is often what the “priesthood of all believers” is mistakenly thought to denote. Lesslie Newbigin is right about this:

The difference between the priesthood of the one who is authorized to preside at the Eucharist and the priesthood in which all share through their incorporation into the body of Christ is not an ontological one but a relational one, not the difference between two different kinds of priesthood, but a difference of role within the ordering of the body . . . . the primary priesthood is that of Christ himself. Into this priesthood all the baptized are incorporated by their baptism and are called to exercise it in the power of the Holy Spirit. This priesthood is exercised by the baptized in the course of their daily life in the world. The one who is described as ‘a minister’ is part of this same priesthood and is called to a special responsibility to cherish, nourish, and enable the priesthood of the whole body (“Lay Presidency at the Eucharist,” Theology 99 (Sept/Oct 1996): 366-370 [emphasis mine]).