One of the fundamental ideas for the work that we do, making disciples and planting churches and teaching others to do the same, is that God has made each of us to be his priests, collectively a “priesthood”. This is the belief that, if we are followers of Christ, if we are the people of God, we were all made to be his priests.

We believe, of course, that there are authority structures within the church. We believe that the church should be led by elders and that there are those referred to as deacons who are appointed to carry out special service-based tasks within the context of the church, but none of those responsibilities or roles would, in any way, negate someone’s identity or responsibility as a disciple of Christ. If we follow Christ, we are called to do everything that Jesus commanded, we are to teach others to do everything that Jesus commanded, and we are to teach others to teach others to do everything that Jesus commanded. To be priests means that we are to serve our God, carrying out all that God has told us to do in an act of love in response to the incredible love, grace, and mercy that he has shown for us.

From where in the Bible can we take the idea that we are all priests, collectively a priesthood? It is found, in fact, throughout the Bible, throughout the Word of God, so in this article, I want to highlight a few of the scriptures so as to help us see what God has said about us as priests as we serve him while also looking at the implications of this idea.

From the beginning until now

God made each of us in his image and called us to be fruitful, to multiply and fill the earth. This was the beginning and God’s plan, that we would be fruitful and multiply, filling the earth with God’s image. Every one of us were made in God’s image and so each of us are therefore a part of God’s plan, each of us carrying his image, each of us becoming a part of multiplying it across the earth for his glory.

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground. ”

Genesis 1:26-28

We believe that God’s plan has not changed. Despite the fall of man and woman into sin and despite man’s rebellion against God all throughout history, God continues to call each of us, even today, to multiply the true image of God, Jesus Christ himself, across the whole earth, amongst all nations.

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Matthew 28:18-20

God’s plan has remained the same. Just as it was from the beginning, as we can read it even now in Genesis 1, we see the same plan announced by Jesus in the “Great Commission”, recorded here in Matthew 28. We all, each and every one of us, have been commissioned, have been called to be part of his plan. We have all been called to serve God, to be his priests, to carry out his mission, to join God in begin part of his mission being completed here on the earth

The people of Israel

As part of this original and overarching plan, God’s original chosen people were the Israelites. God made a covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob, that if they would obey his commands, he would be their God and they would be his people. As God brought the Israelites out of their slavery in Egypt, he called Moses up onto the top of Mount Sinai where he gave Moses the law, starting with what we know today as the Ten Commandments.

Before announcing and writing out these laws, though, God told Moses the purpose of the people of Israel. He was clear in who he intended his people to be:

Then Moses went up to God, and the LORD called to him from the mountain and said, “This is what you are to say to the descendants of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel: ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites.”

Exodus 19:3-6

God brought the people out of Egypt with his power and might, delivering them from the mighty military power of the Egyptians that had kept them in chains. They had originally been welcomed into the nation of Egypt because of the family connection through Joseph, but as the pharaohs changed, the new pharaoh forgot about the commitment that the previous pharaoh had made to the Israelite people and instead enslaved them in order to do the physical work of building the nation of Egypt.

Now, to the Israelites, their time in Egypt was in their past because God had rescued his people.

Now, from one extended family, the Israelites had become one large nation, having multiplied from hundreds of people to hundreds of thousands, likely even more than one million people, and God had brought them out from Egypt into the wildnerness, taking them to the land that God had promised Abraham that his people would inherit.

Now, God is about to give his people his laws, but before he does, he tells Moses who he intends his people to be. They are to be a holy nation. In fact, they are to be a kingdom of priests.

God had made a covenant with the Israelites and they were to serve God within his kingdom. They were each meant to be priests. Yes, the Levites specifically served God in the tabernacle, and eventually in the temple that Solomon would build. That was the job of the Levites, but the identity of all of the Israelite people would be that they would all be his priests. They would all serve him. They would all represent God as individuals and as a nation before the rest of the nations. That was their identity and their identity gave them a purpose.

We can see, therefore, that this isn’t a new idea. This isn’t an idea that was invented by Martin Luther during the protestant reformation, nor even in the New Testament. It is repeated again and again throughout the Bible, but the idea that God made his people, all of his people, to be his priests is a very old idea. From the birth of the nation of Israel, God intended that all of his people would be his priests and they would all serve him.

Priests in the kingdom of God

Jesus came to earth as a descendent in the royal line of David, but he also came as a descendent as the one true son of God. He was God who was made and appeared in the flesh and he came as the Messiah who would lead his people once again out of slavery, although this time, instead of leading them out of slavery to Egypt or another world power, he led them out of slavery to Satan, the king in the kingdom of darkness. As a result of their sin, all of the people throughout the world, whether the people of Israel or any other people from any other part of the world, every person was captured into the kingdom of darkness as a result of their sin.

Jesus gave himself as a ransom to pay for every person who places their faith in him to be bought out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God. Jesus came and gave his blood, his entire life so that we could each be purchased away from the kingdom of God. This is what we learn from the end of the story in the book of Revelation as the Lamb of God is revealed as the one who is worthy to open the seals of the scroll that will pour out God’s wrath, the justice of God, across the entire earth at the end of time:

And they sang a new song, saying:

“You are worthy to take the scroll
and to open its seals,
because you were slain,
and with your blood you purchased for God
persons from every tribe and language and people and nation.
You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God,
and they will reign on the earth.”

Revelation 5:9-10

We can see here that Jesus made his people, those that he bought and purchased with his blood, to be a kingdom. He purchased them from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God. Yet within that kingdom, Jesus made them to be priests who would serve our God.

Our role is to be the priests within the kingdom. He made us to serve him. He made us all to do the work of God. No one excluded. Everyone who has been purchased has also been made to be a priest.

A spiritual house to be a holy priesthood

Peter explains it further by saying that he have, together, been made into a priesthood. We are not just individual priests, but together we have been made into a priesthood, a people who are individually priests but together have been made into a group of people who collectively serve God:

As you come to him, the living Stone —rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him— you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For in Scripture it says:

“See, I lay a stone in Zion,
a chosen and precious cornerstone,
and the one who trusts in him
will never be put to shame.”

Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe,

“The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone,”

and,

“A stone that causes people to stumble
and a rock that makes them fall.”

They stumble because they disobey the message—which is also what they were destined for.

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

1 Peter 2:4-10

In Christ, Peter says, we have been made into a spiritual house. We have been built together as one, and we are made to be as one so that we can be a royal priesthood. We are “royal” in the sense that we are part of the kingdom of God. Jesus is the king and we are his people. We are royalty because we belong to the king.

But we are not just royalty. We are a royal priesthood. We live as the people of the king within the kingdom of God, but he made us to also do the work of the kingdom. We do not simply live as royal subjects, but we live as priests within the kingdom. We serve our king. We do his business. He called us to be part of the work of his kingdom. As he grows his kingdom, as he expands his kingdom, or even as he maintains his kingdom from within, Jesus calls each of us to be his priests, to be the workers for the work of God.

What difference does this all make?

Why does any of this make any difference? What would change if we truly understood and lived out the fact that Christ has made each of us to be his priest? There are several changes that we would make if we each lived as God’s priests, :

First of all, we would accept a new identity for ourselves and we would discover a whole new purpose for our lives. As said in the beginning of this article, God’s mission is that his image would be spread all across the face of the earth. If that is God’s mission, we can also find our mission, the purpose of our lives, within the context of that which God is doing. We no longer will need to ask God what he wants us to do. We can simply join God in what he is doing, working as priests to be part of God’s mission.

Second, there would no longer be a hierarchy, real or perceived, within our churches. We would no longer see a need to leave the “religious work” to a certain subset of people within the church. Each person would be a priest and each person would grow in God, producing the fruit of the Holy Spirit and producing fruit in making disciples of Christ, multiplying the true image of God everywhere they go. There would be no need to reserve certain activities – baptism or the Lord’s Supper, for example – for a special class of people within our churches. We would no longer simply obey some of the commands of Christ and leave the rest to certain leaders. We would become “100% disciples”, obeying all of the commands of Christ – 100% of those commands – and teaching others to do the same.

And finally, understanding that every person in the church is made to be a priest within a royal priesthood in the kingdom of God, those that are leading within our churches would labor to equip and help others grow in becoming the priests that Christ has made us to be. There would be no need for a power struggle or divisions within the church because the leaders would actively teach others to not only know good theology, but just as importantly, to practice good practice. The maturity of the people within the church would be based on the living the life of a priest within the kingdom of God. The leaders would not primarily count the number of people in the church, the size of the building in which they are contained, nor how much money was collected in the offering in that week, but instead they would primarily consider the maturity of the people, the effectiveness of the priesthood, the equipping and growth of the priests within the church. In short, each leader would primarily consider the priestly life of the people within their church, calling each person more deeply into what it means to do their part in serving our God within his mission.

In short, truly understanding and living out the priesthood of the believer changes everything, both for us individually as well as for us collectively in the Body of Christ.

Fundamental to movement

In the beginning of this article, I said that the priesthood of the believer is fundamental to the work that we do. Our desire is to make “100% disciples”. Jesus said that we are to teach them – other disciples – to obey everything that he has commanded us to do. In that same passage, Jesus commanded his disciples to do several things. He said:

• Go
• To all nations
• Make disciples
• Baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
• Teach them to obey

If I simply focus on just those three verses and my desire is to make a “100% disciple” – in other words, teach them to truly be the priest that Jesus has made us to be – then I must focus on teaching them to do each of the things that Jesus said in that passage. My job, as a disciple-maker – a priest-maker, let’s say – is to teach them to Go. Not just in a theoretical sense. No, in a real sense. In the sense of actually going. Actual movement.

And when I teach them to go, I need to teach them to go to the nations. Yes, we must go to our own people because our own people are part of all of the nations, but our heart and our desire must not only be for our own people, but for all people.

I must teach them to make disciples of all of these people. We must learn to make disciples as we go to the nations.

I must teach them to baptize. Jesus told his disciples to teach the disciples that we make to obey everything that he commanded us to do, and one of the things he just commanded us to do is to baptize other people. It is important to understand that he didn’t say that we must be baptized – which we must, of course – but he instead he said to baptize. To be a priest, to be a “100% disciple” means that we are willing, able, and practicing baptism amongst the disciples that we are making.

And finally, if I am teaching them to obey, I must also teach these priests to teach other people as well. If we understand Jesus to say that we are to teach the disciples, and we are teaching them to be disciples, then the implication is that we not only teach them to do what Jesus said, but we also teach them to teach others.

Our desire is, and must continue to be, that each person is a priest in the kingdom of God. Each person must learn to be a disciple of Christ and teach others to be a disciple of Christ. This is the only way in which we can see a movement of people who will come to God, spreading out into each people on the earth, leading one generation of disciple-makers to become the next generation of disciple-makers. One generation of royal priests that will become the next generation of royal priests. This multiplication of priests, of those who will make disciples of Jesus, will allow the kingdom of God to continue to grow and expand both much further and much faster than our old paradigm of only a select few performing the religious activities on behalf of the rest of the community.

A vision that fits Jesus’s description of the kingdom of God

I have heard several people say that they have sometimes wondered why there is such a difference between what they read in the Bible and what they have experienced in their churches. More than one person has held out each of their two hands to me saying that, on the one hand, they feel that they read the Bible and have one sense of what the life of a Christian looks like, but then show me the other hand and say that their experience in the Body of Christ seems to be so different.

“Why do I sense such a significant difference?”, they ask. “Why do I sense such a difference between what I read in the Word of God and what I experience in the Body of Christ?”

I believe the answer to these questions are related to the fact that we have often not been taught to be the royal priests that God has made us to be. We have been taught, possibly intentionally, but I sooner suspect inadvertently, to be spectators, to be consumers in the Body of Christ instead of being priests in the kingdom of God.

We were never meant to be spectators. We were never intended to be consumers. We were meant to priests. Christ made us to glorify him, to live the full and abundant life of a priest in his kingdom. We were made with a purpose, but if we are not living the life that he intended for us to live, we can expect to sense the difference that so many have felt.

Jesus described the way that the kingdom of God should work within the parables that he told to the people as he walked the earth teaching them to follow him. Here are a few of those parables:

The parable of the yeast

The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.

Matthew 13:33

Jesus says that the kingdom – his kingdom, where he is the king – is like yeast that worked its way all of the way through the dough. How is it possible that the yeast worked its way through the dough? Each yeast cell did its work. Every part, every cell, multiplied itself to fill the entirety of the dough just as every person within the kingdom is meant to be a priest and do the work that God has intended for them to do.

The parable of the sower

Listen then to what the parable of the sower means: When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. This is the seed sown along the path. The seed falling on rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful. But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.

Matthew 13:18-23

In this parable, we see that there are three separate soils – the rocky soil, the thorny soil, and the good soil – actually all produce believers. Even the rocky soil and thorny soil produce a plant, but only the good soil produces a crop. In other words, by being the priests that Jesus has made us to be, we produce fruit. Some may produce more fruit than others, but that is not the point. The difference is that the good soil produces fruit. It produces what it was intended to produce. The plant does what it was made to do. In the same way, the priests in the kingdom of God produce the fruit that they were intended to produce.

Parable of the bags of gold (the talents)

“Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them. To one he gave five bags of gold, to another two bags, and to another one bag, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. The man who had received five bags of gold went at once and put his money to work and gained five bags more. So also, the one with two bags of gold gained two more. But the man who had received one bag went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.

“After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. The man who had received five bags of gold brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five bags of gold. See, I have gained five more.’

“His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’

“The man with two bags of gold also came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with two bags of gold; see, I have gained two more.’

“His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’

“Then the man who had received one bag of gold came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’

“His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.

“‘So take the bag of gold from him and give it to the one who has ten bags. For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

Matthew 25:14-30

Jesus told a longer parable showing us that while he, the master in the parable, is away, we are to be like the servants. He has left us in charge of a few things, but his expectation is that we will be at work. All of us, not just a few of us, investing and using what he has given to each of us so that he will receive a return on his investment when he returns from being away. Jesus describes each of us in a new way as his priests. He describes us as those who are continuing to do the work while he is away. Jesus is describing each of us as his priests, doing the work of the kingdom of God.

Living as a priest

God’s intent is that we would be priests, royal priests, within the kingdom of God. He never intended that we would be a spectator or a consumer, but instead that we would be the people of God who would do all that he has commanded us to do. This is the people that we both wish to be and the vision that we are calling everyone, everywhere to live out, taking on the identity that God has already given to us and living out the reality of the priesthood in our daily lives, serving God for his kingdom and his glory.