“What makes a Baptist Church…Baptist?” These beliefs have historically identified baptists and distinguished them from other denominations:
- Bible as the only rule for faith and practice
- Regenerate and immersed church membership
- Autonomy of the local church
- Priesthood of the believer
- Soul liberty
- Immersion and the Lord’s supper are the only two ordinances
- Separation, both ecclesiastical and ethical
In this post, we’ll examine the 4th statement which concerns the believer’s access to God.
In an 1890 article entitled “The Difference Between a Baptist Church and All Other Churches,” T. H. Pritchard, then the President of Wake Forest College, wrote:
In the performance of a religious duty there can be no sponsor or proxy. No one, however close his relationship, can answer for another. Each human soul is responsible to God for the discharge of its own duty. Every one must repent for himself, believe for himself, and obey for himself. The faith and obedience of my parents or friends will not avail for me, and ‘compulsory or involuntary baptism is no more allowable than compulsory taking of the Lord’s Supper.’
This is a good summation of the view we are calling the priesthood of the believer, that every individual must perform his own religious duties before God and some day stand in judgment and give account for himself. As a result of this principle, Baptist churches reject the intrusion of anything into the personal relationship of the individual soul and our heavenly Father. Here is how Frederick L. Anderson put it in an address in 1920: “There is a secret place of the Most High where the Father speaks to His child and the child speaks to his Father, and this is the very seat and center of religion. Nothing extraneous can intrude here.”
The principle of individual priesthood, or what Anderson called “The Immediacy of the Communion of the Soul with God,” can be seen throughout the Bible. It is evident from the very beginning when man rebelled against God’s righteous rule in the Garden of Eden. The Lord spoke to each one in turn, both the man and the woman, and each was made to answer for his sins and bear his unique judgment. This was true for Cain and Abel and their respective offerings, and again for Cain after he murdered his brother in a jealous rage. It was true of Noah and his sons, who were faced with the choice to believe God’s word and obey, thus saving themselves and all life inside the ark from the flood.
Even in the Mosaic era, where Israel was served by an order of priests from the tribe of Levi, this principle stood. In Ezekiel 18 the prophet went to great lengths to illustrate and explain that every individual was accountable for his own relationship to God. Verse 20 declares, “The soul who sins shall die.” A father was not to be judged for the sins of his son, nor a son for those of his father. And in v.20-21 he says that the wicked man who repents will be forgiven, and his sins will not be held against him in such a case. The point is simply that each person was responsible before God for their own spiritual state.
In the NT we find this principle stated quite plainly. For example, in Romans 14:10 Paul asks, “But why do you judge your brother? Or why do you show contempt for your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.” It is not our responsibility to pass judgment on one another when it comes to what the apostle calls “doubtful things” (v.1). And he is quite blunt in v.12 as to the reason why: “So then each of us shall give account of himself to God.”
Peter speaks directly of the priesthood of all Christians when he writes, “Coming to him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 2:4-5). Again in v.9 he says, “But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” We have been commissioned by God to serve as his priests directly and to offer up acceptable sacrifices, which are the praises of the One who has called us to life through the gospel.
When Baptists talk about the priesthood of the believer, we mean that each of us is responsible directly to God and has the right and capacity as a believer to have fellowship with him. We have no need of a human mediator, because our one Mediator is the God-man, Jesus Christ. No one can absolve your sins except God himself, neither can anyone perform an act of spiritual worship on your behalf. Even in a corporate worship setting, you must engage in worship along with others; no one can do it for you.
Perhaps the Roman Catholic Church provides the most obvious contrast here with its order of priests and bishops who serve as human mediators of the grace of God. Apart from an ordained priest the sacraments cannot be performed (I prefer to call them ordinances, and we will discuss them in a later post). But, as we can see from the Pritchard quote earlier, any church which practices infant baptism violates this principle of the believer’s priesthood, since the baptism is compulsory and involuntary. Not only this, but infant baptism steals the opportunity for the individual to obey God by baptism when he exercises personal faith in Christ.
This principle touches also on the autonomy of the local church. Any form of church government which involves a hierarchy outside of the local congregation, or that establishes a line of separation between the clergy and the laity, encroaches on the equal access men have to God, and therefore violates this principle. This does not mean that every man is a law unto himself, but we recognize that even our obedience and submission to “those who rule over [us],” which Hebrews 13:17 commands, is not enforced through earthly powers. As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 11:3, “the head of every man is Christ,” and it is to him that we must give account on the day of judgment.