Priesthood of all Believers

Priesthood of All Believers

Institution vs. Organism

Abraham Kuyper’s distinction between the church as institution and the church as organism.

Church as Institution — Official structures of the Church, with its offices of Pastors, Elders, and Deacons assigned the role of maintaining the marks of the Church, that is, the Preaching of the Word, Dispensing of the Sacraments, Discipling and caring for the membership as well as the other responsibilities that attach themselves to the formal existence of the Church. In many respects (though not all) it is the work of the Church gathered. The Institution of the Church is tasked with core doctrinal, formal worship, and office-bearing responsibilities that inform and shape the life of the body. The Church as Institution bears the more Hierarchical impulse.

Church as organism — The web of relationships among the Church members that exist outside the Church both with one another and with those to whom they minister Christ. The Church as organism includes also the working out of the undoubted catholic Christian faith, that is taught in the Church as Institution, into every vocation and calling of the membership. In many respects (though not all) it is the work of the Church scattered. The Church as Organism may be said to be more directly missional but it is more directly missional as a consequence of being part of the Church as Institution. The Church as Organism bears the more Democratic impulse.

When Peter writes in I Peter 2 which aspect of the Church is he speaking of?

I think clearly he is speaking more to the Church as Organism here though we must keep in mind that we can never completely sunder the two. Peter will go on later to speak to issues surrounding the Church as Institution a few chapters later (5).

We might say it is one of the geniuses of the Reformed faith that embraces this distinction (Church as Institution vs. Church as Organism) and yet keeps these two aspects together. In some Christian Denominations the emphasis is on the top down hierarchical Structure of the Church. In other Christian Denominations the emphasis is on the Democratic impulse so that everyone is Indian so that all are, at the same time, both chiefs and Indians. In the Reformed Faith you have proper hierarchy but you also have the proper priesthood of all Believers.

This genius was one of the major consequences of the Reformation. We know well of the emphasis of on Sola Scriptura as the formal cause of the Reformation and sola fide as the material cause of the Reformation but we often overlook that the Priesthood of all believers was another extraordinary consequence of the Reformation.

Prior to the Reformation the Priesthood was relegated to the Professionals. Everyone else in the Church sat in the back of the bus so to speak. Being a Priest was a Holy Calling but all other vocations seemed to exist so that those in them could support the Holy Callings. There was a chasm between the Hierarchy and laity. During what is called the Radical Reformation there was the desire to eliminate all distinctions in the Church.

The Priests represented the people before God. They were the mediators between God and man. Their work, as Priests, alone was Holy work. The Reformation overwhelmed that position and insisted that all God’s people were Priests in the sense that all that they did before God was accepted by God as Holy.

When Luther referred to the priesthood of all believers, he was maintaining that the plowboy and the milkmaid could do priestly work. In fact, their plowing and milking was priestly work. So there was no absolute hierarchy in terms of vocation where the priesthood was a “calling” and milking the cow was not. Both were tasks that God called his followers to do, each according to their gifts.

We see Peter getting at this when he says to all the believers that they constitute together “a Holy Priesthood,” and later in vs. 9 “a Royal Priesthood.” Every person in union with Christ is a priest in the sense that they themselves have access to the Father and the privilege of serving Him personally in all He does. The official Priesthood was extinguished in Christ, our great High Priest, but as belonging to Christ we are all Prophets, Priests, and Kings under sovereign God.

The fact that the Priesthood of all believers is contingent on belonging to Christ is hinted at in the language of Peter.

First he refers to Christ as the “living Stone” (vs. 4) and then in vs. 5 he refers to the Christians themselves also as “Living stones.” This language of “living Stone,” and “Living Stones” strongly points to our union with Christ.

Second, Peter notes that all our work is acceptable to the Father only through Jesus Christ, once again emphasizing that our role’s as Priests is dependent upon our great High Priest.

So, we are Priests under sovereign God. Consequently, all of our work is Holy work. It is not that the Pastor or the Elders are the ones who uniquely do “Holy Work.” No, the doctrine of the Priesthood of all believers taught that all work as done unto God was Holy Work. The Pastor does His Holy Work in its proper place and it is the work of the cultus and is monumentally important but all believers also do Holy Work in its proper place. The Housewife in her nurturing of the children and the tending of home is Holy Work — Peter’s “Spiritual Sacrifices.” The Butcher, the Baker, and the Lawn and Grounds Caretaker are offering up Spiritual Sacrifices.

Bunny trail,

When Peter says our sacrifice is spiritual he is NOT saying that our sacrifices are non-Corporeal. Our sacrifices are called spiritual here because he is contrasting them with the sacrifices in the OT of bulls and goats which have been eclipsed since the Lord Christ has fulfilled all that type of sacrifice with His wrath turning death. Our sacrifices are not material in that way. Our sacrifices are spiritual in the sense of a grateful response of a redeemed people as that grateful response is incarnated corporeally in our living. (Rom. 12:1, Phil. 4:18, Heb. 13:5, Rev. 8:3-4).

But I have all, and abound; I am full, having received from Epaphroditus the things which were sent from you, a sweet fragrance, a sacrifice acceptable, well-pleasing to God. (Phil 4:18)

Our work though is only acceptable because we belong to the Lord Christ. We belong to Christ because of His death for His people and our work is accepted for the same reason our persons are and that is because our work is imputed with the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

Implications of the Priesthood of all Believers

1.) The Church as Institution is no longer considered the center Institution

One of the Changes of the Reformation was to reduce the time laity spent in the Church building. In the Medieval age the Church was open for Matins, Vespers, Masses, canonical hours, confessional, etc. It was thought that the more time one spent in the Church the better Christian one was. The Reformation changed all that with the understanding that all of life could be lived unto the glory of God. The Reformation actually reduced the time one spent in Church.

Certainly Worship should be attended but the idea that members have to be present for every single function of a Church which has functions every night suggests that the Church may be seeking to replace the role of the Family. The idea of the Church as the institution uniquely and alone responsible for the rearing and raising of children in their undoubted catholic Christian faith is forgetful of the doctrine of the Priesthood of all believers.

2.) There is a bond between the believers (5)

The idea of the Priesthood of all Believers is a corporate and covenantal idea. Here in I Peter it is not the priesthood of each single believer, though there is truth in that, but it is the Priesthood of all believers. Together we constitute the “Spiritual House” and the “Holy Priesthood.” Together we are the “Chosen generation.” All this bespeaks the covenantal aspect of the Church as organism. Together we constitute these realities. In both the OT (Exodus 19:5-6) and NT texts it is the community that has a priestly function. The church together is a royal priesthood.

Practically this means that when we come together for worship we are together offering up “spiritual sacrifices.” Practically this means that our pattern of living, when taken together, is part of this body’s “spiritual sacrifices.”

3.) Agents of Reconciliation

The role of the Priest in the OT was to represent the people before God. As Priests under sovereign God we should be those who are praying for people. 1 Timothy 2:1 says that believers should offer prayers, supplications, and intercessions for all men, particularly for rulers.

We should be praying for one another, but we should also be praying for those in our orbit who understand Christ in a strange way and even those who mock and scorn the Christ of the Scripture. As a Holy Priesthood our long public Prayers when gathered here or when spoken at home should have a Priestly missional quality to them as we pray for the West, and as we pray for the World and as we pray for people name by name.

4.) The Leverage of the Church’s influence multiplies (vs. 9)

When each believer remembers their role as part of the Priesthood of all believers then all believers takes up their charge to do all that they do as before the face of God. This has the potential of setting loose a tidal wave of Christians as salt and a blitzkrieg of Christians as light. As believers take seriously their place as Priests under sovereign God then their understandings of their callings … their living our of their vocations becomes so distinct from those not in the Faith that Biblical Christianity is lived out in all the nooks, crannies, and crevices of life.

Obstacles to Priesthood of all Believers

1.) The Institutional Church refuses to teach this and instead offers up a consumer model

2.) The Laity fail to think God’s thought’s after Him and so absorb an alien way of thinking

In many respects your callings as laity is more difficult than mine. You have these holy vocations but you are so accelerated in your life that you are hard-pressed to have the time to examine how it is that you should handle these holy vocations as Priests unto God. Because this is so the idea of the Priesthood of believers has landed on difficult times.

Conclusion

In all of this we see that God is the master craftsman who is doing all the doing. In this we see the Reformation doctrine of Sola Dei Gloria.

In vs. 4 — Chosen by God
In vs. 5 — Being built up (Something is being done to us. We are passive. God is building up)
In vs. 10 — Now have obtained mercy

All of this language lays emphasis on the fact that God is sovereignly doing the doing. We do not make ourselves into a Holy Priesthood or a people of God. He takes upon Himself to build up His Church.

Let us pray ask God that He might continue to build up His Church and that we might continue to do the work of the Priesthood of believers as a grateful response for all that Christ has done for us by making us friends with God.

Ask the Pastor — What Should We Make of the Current Higher Education Scene?

Dear Pastor,

Can you elaborate on the concept that University academia is inherently flawed and anti-Christian? I have always noticed that the Christians I know that have been to University tend to be more political leaning in one way, more sympathetic to humanistic ideas, anti-death penalty, more sympathetic to homo ‘rights’ etc etc.

Obviously you can be a Christian and be extremely infected with worldly ideas…which Universities of course specialise in propagating. What would be the practical alternative in an ideal world?

Thanks in advance,

Felix

______________

Dear Felix,

Thank you for writing.

The modern University system is flawed and anti-Christian because, in the great percentages of cases, it is owned and operated by the Cultural Marxists. As such, when you attend a University you are paying top dollar to be propagandized into one form of Marxism or another. Christian parents who pay to send their children to University are shelling out 20K a year for the privilege of having their children indoctrinated against Christianity. Christian Universities and Colleges are usually the worst because they take the same doctrines and teachings and cover them with a thin patina coating of “Christianity,” thus convincing students that the Marxist faith is, in point of fact, the Christian faith. Because this is so, I wouldn’t send my dog to modern Christian Universities – Colleges, never mind God’s covenant seed.

Second, there is the whole student debt angle. Many students graduate University with house mortgage type debt and a lousy degree. This insures that they will remain controlled and ineffectual as they are beholden to what jobs they can find and as they will be so consumed with working to pay off their debt that they will likely not take the time to ever think for themselves. Once you’ve interacted with professional Academicians one easily begins to see why our church and culture is in the shape it is in.

However, Felix, this is not anti-intellectualism on my part. It is, rather, anti-humanist intellectualism on my part. It is simply the case that by in large Christian intellectualism is dead on the vine. Harry Blamires made this point over a generation ago in his book, “The Disappearance of the Christian Mind,”

“We are all caught up, entangled, in the lumbering day-to-day operations of a [social] machinery, working in many respects in the service of ends which we as Christians reject. This situation, the present [schizophrenic] situation of thousands of thinking Christians is the end product of a process that began the day Christians first decided to stop thinking Christianly in the interests of national harmony; the day when Christians first felt that the only way out of endless public discussion was to limit the operation of acute Christian awareness to the spheres of personal morality and spirituality.

From that point, the spheres of political, cultural, social, and commercial life became dominated by pragmatic and utilitarian thinking.”

The only way the Christian mind will be recovered is to not marinate our children’s minds in the paganism that is typical of Universities, Colleges, and Seminaries Christian or otherwise.

Third, there is the whole Frat house – whore house college experience which emphasizes College as a Summer camp – Animal house experience. Hardly healthy.

Yes, I fully realize Felix, that exceptions to all this exist but the exceptions are indeed exceptions. We are floating in a sea of Academic Humanism.

What are the alternatives …

1.) Autodidact
2.) Education by Extension (College Plus)

In college plus one can get the Bachelor’s degree without being indoctrinated.

3.) Forget formal education and become Entrepreneur.

One more point on this score that you did not ask about but I want to mention. Christians, in order to overcome this current situation, simply have to get over the whole idea of “accreditation.” Educational establishments like to tote that they are “accredited.” Christian needs to start asking, “Yes, but accredited by who?” You see, the point I’m making is to ask why Christians think it is important that their children attend schools accredited by the humanist enemy who wishes to destroy us. Consider Gordon College. Recently, the New England Association of Schools and Colleges’ Commission on Institutions of Higher Education considered whether Gordon College’s ban on “homosexual practice” runs contrary to its Commissions Standards for Accreditation.

Why would Gordon College care? If the Cultural Marxists don’t want to Accredit our schools that should be a reason for rejoicing. Christians, should they desire to return to Academic and Intellectual respectability, simply have to give up trying to curry the favor of Humanist Accreditation agencies.

Rushdoony on Salvian the Presbyter

Salvian says, “Rome is dying, but she continues to laugh.

The early church because it believed in the resurrection faced the world with confidence, it was not afraid of change and decay. Others as they saw Rome fall were filled with horror, to them there was no future, no hope. But men like Salvian the presbyter could see the fall of Rome coming and say it has to come, and let us welcome it.

One of the neglected books of the fall of Rome is Salvian, the governance of God. And what Salvion did when the first major bastion, Trier, fell to the barbarians and he lived there and he saw that very soon Rome would fall because there was no resistance, nobody was ready to fight, and he indicted first of all the Christians. He said that now you are successful and have been for a century, you have picked up all the traits of the Romans, all their moral evils and therefore you are no longer the salt that should preserve the empire but you have become a part of the problem. And this is an aspect of the fall of Rome that we don’t hear about.

Well, on a … the way people react, of course, has a great deal to do with their faith. One of the most memorable books I have ever read was the book by Salvian the Presbyter, S A L V I A N, The Governance of God. It was an account of the fall of the Roman Empire. It is not well known like Augustine’s work, but in some respects it is the greater work as far as a description of what happened is concerned, because Salvian describes the horrors that ensued, the unwillingness of people to face them, how when Trier was destroyed the people were in the coliseum for the games unwilling to defend the city and the survivors petitioned the emperor to rebuild the coliseum to improve their morale.

And Salvian’s whole point was that the horrors, grim as they were—and he was an eye witness to them—were better than the alternative. Rome had to fall, he said. And the judgment on Rome was a demonstration of the grace of God.

The presbyter Salvian wrote in the last days of Rome and before the barbarian invasions saying, “If Rome does not fall then we will know there is no God.” And we can say the same today.

Salvian gives us a grim account of the fall of Trier when he said the cries of the raped and the dying mingled with the cheers of the people who would not leave the arena. And when it was over and the city had been burned to the ground the survivors of the city council met together to petition the emperor. Rebuild the arena to improve the moral of the people. Salvian said, “Rome is dying but it continues to laugh.”

Read Salvian sometime or other, on the governance of God. Salvian welcomes the Fall of Rome. He said it was an evidence of the righteousness and holiness of God that Rome fell. He was a resident, at the time, of the barbarian invasions of Trier in what is now northern France, and he describes what happened as the barbarians took over the city. Most of the people were at the Arena watching the games. They couldn’t be bothered with defending the city, and he said the shouts of the raped and the dying mingled with those of the cheering crowds in the Arena, and after the barbarians passed through and left a burnt out city, the survivors of the city council met and petitioned the Emperor for funds to rebuild the Arena in order to improve the morale of the people, and Salvian described the insanity of man for more and more amusement and said, Rome dies but she continues to laugh as she is dying.” Salvian welcomed the fall of Rome.

In this respect he (Augustine) was a world apart from Salvian the Presbyter. Salvian wrote that, “Because God is, therefore Rome must fall,” and he looked to Rome as a vindication of God and the vindication of the Christian. He knew the habits it would create. He saw it before Augustine ever did, because he was in Treves, right on the border of Germany. When the Barbarians came, Treves was one of the first cities to be burned to the ground, and Salvian saw all the horrors that went with it, but Salvian said, emphatically as he wrote, “After Treves had burned, it is the governance of God, that this was the righteous judgment of God, and had to be welcomed by the believers, and it had to be seen as something that was necessary,”

Salvian gives us a vivid picture of the new morality of his day of the impurities of the theatre and of the circus. William Carol Bark, a Stanford historian, calls attention to Salvian’s observations and he comments: “Few observers of this period of history can have failed to ponder the fact that millions of Romans were vanquished by scores of thousands of Germans. According to Salvian it was not by the natural strength of their bodies that the barbarians conquered nor by the weakness of their nature that the Romans were defeated. It was the Romans’ moral vices that alone that overcame them. Narrow as it is, this judgment by one very close to the events remains respectable. As for the men of more exalted positions, the well educated noble men who fled to the barbarians in order to escape the persecution and injustice that prevailed among the Romans, it is clear that they like their poor compatriots had given up hope of obtaining justice and protection from the Roman state and its law. Their flight confirms the fact that in large areas of the western empire, public spirit and public justice had disappeared and that men were obliged to act privately and locally in matters that had formerly been regulated by central governmental authority.”

Rome died. Why? Rome had become humanistic to the core. This is implicit in a philosophy of Rome from the very beginning. The one basic law in Rome which progressively took action was this: the health or the welfare of the people is the highest law. Now over the centuries this law was implied, was applied more and more systematically. So that the republic gave way to the empire and the empire progressively did that which the republic had not done: catered to the mob. A welfare mob was created. Release was not enough. It had to be bred and serviced. So they were given free housing. Apartment houses were built for them; they were given food and they were given free tickets to the circus so they could go to the arena and see the Christians thrown to the lions. They were given free wine. But of course they always wanted more and Aurelius in 274 AD it gave way to another demand. The mob was becoming concerned it was traumatic for their young people when they became old enough to marry to have to go down on and apply for relief, it really hurt their feelings. And so what was the demand of the mob? They had cradle to grave security, they wanted welfare for their children without application and so Aurelian and the government said that every child born to every welfare family will have welfare as his birthright. He won’t have to apply and answer a lot of nosy questions from our officials. And his children and his children’s children will all have welfare as a birthright. Of course the mob was happy and the coins of that year 274 AD celebrated Aurelian as “our savior and our god.” But the poor man had nothing to deliver the next year so they killed him. All this sounds familiar does it not?

Neo-Orthodox Scholar Affirms that the Scripture’s Authors were Creationists

James Barr, a neo-orthodox scholar who did not necessarily accept what the Scriptures taught, wrote to David C.C. Watson in 1984,

‘… probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1–11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that:

a. creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience

b. the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story

c. Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark.’

Barr seemed certain that what the Scriptures taught, taking them upon their own testimony, was a literal 6-day creation.

James Barr, Oriel Professor of the interpretation of the Holy Scripture, Oxford University, England, in a letter to David C.C. Watson, 23 April 1984. Barr, consistent with his neo-orthodox views, does not believe Genesis, but he understood what the Hebrew so clearly taught. It was only the perceived need to harmonise with the alleged age of the earth which led people to think anything different—it was nothing to do with the text itself.

Presuppositionalism and the Trivium

“The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.”

Two children learn the trivium. One is a covenant child who presupposes God in all his thinking. The other is a pagan child who presupposes man in all his thinking. The result are two trivium educated people who couldn’t be anymore different in terms of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. So much so that the second child, though trivium educated, is a fool.

The Trivium by itself is not the means by which wisdom is attained.