A priest is someone who is set apart in order to spiritually serve a group of people.  “Spiritually” does not mean only our spiritual part, but everything that helps foster a spiritual life including the emotional, mental, and physical needs of that group of people.  This is because all four aspects ultimately affect our spiritual lives.

Painting by John Bridges, Christ Healing the Mother of Simon Peter’s Wife, 1839

We know priests as the people who officiate at a church service, who guide us in our spiritual lives, who take our confessions, and who are there in the best and worst of times.  However, that is one type of priesthood.  That is a pastoral and sacramental priesthood.

There is another priesthood which includes all believers: male and female, old and young, wise and simple, rich and poor.  This is the general priesthood.  This priesthood is ours since we have chosen to follow God and become members of the Body of Christ.

The Bible speaks about this general priesthood in the Book of Revelation three times.  The first time, it says our Lord Jesus Christ “has made us kings and priests to His God and Father” (Revelation 1:6 NKJV).  In some versions of the Scriptures it reads, “He has made us a kingdom, priests to His God and Father” (Revelation 1:6 RSV).  This repeats in Revelation 5:10, but that verse adds, “We shall reign on the earth.”  This general priesthood is mentioned a third time in Revelation 20:6.

Since all Christians are entrusted with such a priesthood, how then should this priesthood work?

1. Bringing Christ to the World

We should bring the beauty, goodness, and truth of God into the world.  First we must let these take root in us and grow in us by a life of faith, prayer, and following our Lord Jesus Christ.  This will cause us to be set apart (sanctified) from the non-believers on the earth, and then we will radiate the beauty, goodness, and truth of God to the world.  We cannot radiate what we do not have.  If we are to bring the beauty, goodness, and truth of God into the world, then we must become full of these in ourselves and then they will naturally radiate and bring Christ’s transforming power into the world.

How we speak

This radiation should reflect in the way we speak to people.  We should speak words of encouragement.  We should speak what people need to hear and not simply what they want to hear.  This way we will truly love them.  Paul the Apostle says,

“Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear” (Ephesians 4:29).

Giving grace is exactly the radiation we should bring to the world since we are priests to God.

How we treat others

The people of the world experience too much bitterness, anger, and hatred.  The last thing we as priests to God should do is cause further bitterness, anger, and hatred.  We must stand apart from the non-believers since we are the representatives of God’s Kingdom.  Standing apart to God and being clearly distinct from the world is one definition of holiness.  We should bring joy, peace, and love into the world.

If we are priests to God, then we should imitate God’s actions on earth to give people a glimpse into what life with God will be like.  God explains what He has done for His people saying,

“They did not know that I healed them.

I drew them with gentle cords,

with bands of love,

and I was to them as those who take the yoke from their neck.

I stooped and fed them” (Hosea 11:4).

That is how we should live.  Christ lived in the same way, and this then is how we should live.

2. Bringing Healing to the World

The world has too many problems, so we should bring healing to these problems, and we have that ability since we are priests to God.  It has happened before in history, and it will continue to happen if we live lives of faith, prayer, and the following of our Lord Jesus Christ.  We should not try to fix the problems in the world by organizing violent protests and campaigns.  Sometimes these work, but these are changes from the outside; they often don’t change hearts.

We should change hearts and not only the outside.  Healing the world should happen organically and from within first, and then spread by means of internal change in all of us and through the conversions of others to the way of life in Christ.  By going about it this way, we will restore the world to God’s original vision.   There are several examples from Christian history.  For example, before Christianity, women were treated horribly in the ancient world.  They had to sit and watch as their husbands took multiple wives or had concubines, or slept with temple prostitutes in the name of pagan religion.  Men could also divorce their wives for many (often trivial) reasons.  Christianity, on the other hand, brought with its way of life the rule of life of one man being married to only one woman and vice versa.  In addition, divorce was only permissible for adultery.  By the Christians simple way of life in which they radiated the beauty, goodness, and truth of this rule of life in Christ, there was a transformation in the world.  The transformation that Christianity brought with it was so powerful that most westerners do not even seriously imagine marrying multiple people simultaneously or having concubines or sleeping with another person beside a spouse.  They feel on the inside that it is wrong.  There was an internal change.  Christianity healed the world.

Next, slavery was rampant in the past.  In the Roman Empire, 10%-20% of the population was enslaved going up as high as 40% in Italy alone.  Slavery was a saddening reality all across the Roman Empire.  Most slaves had no rights, and were considered to be a social class of their own, the lowest of all.  Yet, the New Testament has verses like, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).  That changed people’s way of thinking.

Also, “Whatever good anyone does, he will receive the same from the Lord, whether he is a slave or free” (Ephesians 6:8).  That changed people’s way of thinking.

The most dramatic example is in Paul’s Letter to Philemon, a slaveowner, whose slave escaped and went to Paul in Rome.  Paul sent him back to Philemon and wrote, “For perhaps he departed for a while for this purpose, that you might receive him forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave—a beloved brother, especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord” (Philemon 15-16).  That changed Philemon’s way of thinking.

This type of thinking that Christianity brought with it slowly grew all over the empire and Europe until slavery was forgotten; it was only an object of history until it was learned anew in the early 1500s when Europeans were taught the practice by the Congolese.  Even after slavery returned in the form we are most familiar with, Christians had a large role in the freeing of slaves and ending of slavery.  Again, Christianity, and those truly following it, healed the world from slavery.

3. Bringing Renewal to the World

After we radiate the beauty, goodness, and truth of God and bring healing to the world.  Now the world has the opportunity to be renewed.  The word renewal means “to begin or take up again.”  What then are we beginning or taking up again?  It is the original intention of God for humanity; it is the way God meant for us to see the world.  This happens when our mindset as Christians causes us to view the world in a different way, in the way God meant for us to see it, a world full of meaning and depth.  Paul the Apostle speaks about this saying, “[You] have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him” (Colossians 3:9-10).  This knowledge is the mindset we had when God created us in the beginning of the world.  When this mindset spreads, it causes the world to change and improve because it is a return to the way which God originally had planned for us.

We will change the world.

The only way we can fulfill our duty as priests to God as the Book of Revelation calls us is to live a life of faith that leads to righteousness, prayer that leads to holiness, and following our Lord Jesus Christ which leads us to God.  Only then can we bring a lasting change into the world.  All other ways to try to heal and renew the world will necessarily fail in the end because they are detached from God.

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