I have prompted by a friend, Dr. James Goodloe, in an article to think about the Priesthood of the believer. This is a grand truth rediscovered by Luther in the time of the Reformation. However, it has come to mean many different things to many different people and has come to mean much of nothing.

This is one of the phrases our PC USA church likes to use quite often. But, what does it mean?

Every Christian is a cleric, Luther proclaimed in one of his earliest treatises, The Freedom of a Christian , and those who “are now boastfully called popes, bishops, and lords” are in reality “ministers, servants, and stewards, who are to serve the rest in the ministry of the word””servants of the servants of God.

So, does this quote from Luther mean there is no legitimate calling to ministry – no gifting for the office of Minister of Word and Sacrament? Such is not the case!

Peter Leithart writes – “Unfortunately, the priesthood of the faithful in both its Protestant and Catholic forms has been corroded by fusion with modern individualism. While no denomination sanctions this fusion, strains in popular Protestantism, especially American Protestantism, have taken “priesthood of believers” to mean that every believer has an absolute right of private judgment about morals and doctrine, the liberty to interpret the Bible with complete autonomy.

“Priesthood of believers” means that believers can do very well without attachment to any church, thank you very much. Each believer is a church unto himself. Renouncing Rome’s one Pope, Protestantism has created thousands.

This was not Luther’s view.”

Instead, to be a priest is to be a priest for someone. We are all priests to and for someone else – caring for them, praying for them, bearing them up before God. This is an important and weighty responsibility. Are we faithful servants and priests of our Lord?

:Leithart writes again – “In the old order, priestly service was housekeeping. In the new order, all are priests, called to the ministry of bodybuilding.

In the hands of some Protestants, “priesthood of believers” became an anti-ecclesial slogan, a “get out of church free” card. Understood in its original biblical and Reformation sense, the priesthood of believers is quite the opposite. It is not a solvent of ecclesial Christianity but an affirmation of churchly piety and the foundation of a thoroughly catholic church practice. Five hundred years after the event, this Reformation slogan may be even more relevant than it was when Luther first shouted it out from Wittenberg.”

While recognizing our mutual priesthood and its responsibilities, we must also recognize the gifts that God has given to his church and our responsibility to function in the use of our gifts for the glory of God and the welfare of His church.