Priesthood of All by WH Fremantle

I have a couple of thoughts on the doctrine of the Priesthood of All Believers...

First, a few years ago when I was still a member of an OPC church, there were some struggles around social issues that came up in the church. The elders made a controversial and unnecessary ruling on how members should handle the matter, and some of the members visibly rebelled. At one point the leadership called a Town Hall meeting, in which the members were told that because they made a commitment to follow the church leadership without question then they were expected to comply, I then began to ask a lot of hard questions in the following weeks. The responses that I received from leadership ranged from "if you do what we tell you then you're covered with God" to "who do you think you are telling the elders what you think the Scriptures mean". I felt as though I had joined the Catholic Church, not one that has deep ties to the Reformation. It was then that I resigned my church membership and eventually left the church after I was told that Communion was not for people like me (not a member of an "approved" church). The sad part in the whole affair is that despite what was taught in the church, it was clear that the teaching of the Priesthood of All Believers was ignored. As was Sola Scriptura since responses to my questions were answered from the Westminster Confession and Church Order. Everything that I had ever learned in the nearly 60 years prior to that time was rendered inoperative by this church. But in retrospect, it is this way throughout the institutional church system. The vast majority have rules around Communion or church membership that require some kind of adherence to the man-made rules of that church. To know if someone is a Christian, we only need to look to 1 John 4 which tells us that anyone who professes that Jesus is God Incarnate, come in the flesh to save us from our sins, is a Christian (especially verses 2 & 14-15)

Second, because so many people fail to fully understand that they have direct access to God, the clergy uses this to their advantage. I can't list the number of times that I've been told that denominations are good because they keep people from believing just about anything. Not only is this not true, but over these last few years I have benefitted greatly from different perspectives from within the Body of Christ. I find that people outside of the church system are much more concerned with the unity of the ekklesia. Additionally, I have this site to thank for meaningful discussions on the kingdom reign of God. Further, I have a YouTube channel that I follow that is particularly focused on our sin and God's righteousness (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJk02o8Gbi-kNn7lSvcABaA for anyone interested). There are an amazing number of Christians out there who confess that Jesus is "the Messiah, the Son of the Living God" (Matt 16:16). It's just that they express their faith in ways that fall far outside of the institutional church system. While I find that I sometimes miss the comfort that a structured system gave me, I don't miss the shackles that came with it