You are a Priest -- No Need to Run to One!

When I was attending a local church, an institution which followed a more traditional liturgy and adhered to a set of views which many may consider out of date today, one of the older gentlemen who attended the same mass as I would come up to me every week, asking:

"So when are you going to join the seminary?"

He felt obliged, or obligated, to proffer to me the opportunity to become a priest, a minister in the church. I was in no way interested in that service, for at the time I was just content to get in, get some new insight, and then get out.

Every Sunday, though, this man would come up to me during the mass, asking the same questions: "When are you going to become a priest?"

Then I read in the Bible:

"But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light:" (1 Peter 2: 9)

In Christ, every believer is both a king and a priest! We do not need to run to a priest in order to access God:

"Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews 4: 16)

The notion that certain people have more access to God than others is sheer folly, and unscriptural without hesitation:

"For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." (2 Corinthians 5: 21)

God the Father looks at every believer in the Body of Christ, and He sees each of us just like His Son:

"Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world." (1 John 4: 17).

The next time that the older gentleman approached me in church, he asked me the same question, and this time I answered:

"Haven't you heard?" Surprised, he then asked me, "What's happening?"

Then I shared with him the same truth which is available to all who believe:

"We are all members of a royal priesthood!"

Don't let anyone tell you that you must do or say or think a certain way in order to be a priest for God. In Christ, we have all received the ministry of priesthood in the same order as our High Priest, Jesus Christ!