Ok everyone, I have been posting and unposting things on
some of my blogs lately, but I think this is a nice safe post. It is simply a thing I have been wondering as
a person who is mostly a Protestant and worries about other people's salvation
and sometimes thinks like a Catholic. It
actually has to do with the new testament section where the believers get
called "A Royal Priesthood." So here is my question: If all believers are priests, and I do think
that is the idea, then who are the parishoners?
People can say that it means we are priests for each other, but I
actually think people do not usually use the term "priest" that
loosely in the Old or the New Testament.
David was told he could not be a priest because he killed people, and the
whole book of Hebrews is about how qualified for priesthood Christ is. So I think the concept of the
"priesthood of the believer" is a big deal and a very exciting thing,
but I also am wondering if it means that there could be another exciting role
for people who haven't latched onto Christianity in the ways that make me not
worry about them. Sometimes everything hinges on the "laypeople," of
churches, and I am wondering if all the people who have signed up for church
are getting trained to administer grace in more substantial ways than we
realize for anyone in our world, including people who might be participating in
God's kingdom more than we are allowed to believe after putting so much stock
in official sinner's prayers for salvation. There seem to be a lot of verses
that have to get ignored for people's mechanical systematic theology to take
shape from a survey of the Bible, and I personally think that this Royal
Priesthood idea is one of them.
