The Royal Priesthood – A New Anthropology for the Church (Part 1)

God's Big Picture

Three now widely accepted truths about the creation stories (Gen.1-2)¹:

-they narrate the divine construction of a temple in which God will dwell on earth with his creatures,

-God intends the Holy of Holies (where God dwelt in the temple) to extend from its embryonic beginning in the mountain garden of Eden to finally cover the while earth, and

-that God intends and commissions his human creatures to be agents of this extension of his creational temple and to serve in it as “royal priests.”

This view of God's ultimate purpose in creating us and our world reorients the way we need to think about

-what God wants,

-what God has done for us, and

-who we are and what we're supposed to do here.

This “big picture” of God's purposes and intentions allows us a glimpse into God's mind before sin ever enters the picture. That doesn't happen till Gen.3. So what we see in the first two chapters is before and apart from sin. And what we see there is that God creates a world, a beautiful, verdant, abundant, flourishing habitat in which he and his human creatures will live in joyous, intimate fellowship forever.

And where else would God live but a temple? And that's what he's done for us – provide a place where this relationship can take place by constructing this world as a temple. The whole world seems constructed along the lines that Solomon's temple would be.

-The garden is the Holy of Holies. The innermost part of the temple where God lived and where only the High Priest was allowed to enter and that only once a year on the Day of Atonement. In Gen.3:8 we learn that God “walked” in the garden in the evening apparently with Adam and Eve in fellowship and harmony. The garden as the place of divine-human fellowship makes it analogous to the temple's Holy of Holies.

-Eden itself (“delight”) is akin to the Holy Place, a larger area outside the Holy of Holies which only the priests could enter.

-the larger as-yet-uninhabited area of earth is like the Outer Court of the temple. Gentiles were allowed to enter this part of the temple but could go no further on. Sacrifices, prayers, and sacrifices were offered here.

God has made our world a temple in which it prefigures all people as God's children wherever in the world they are. And that in turn prefigures Jesus Christ as God's new and final temple in which God dwells with all his children. So his coming in flesh as God incarnate among us was always a part of God's plan to be as near and dear to us as he could possibly be. And God can't get any nearer or dearer than by becoming one of us, can he?So Jesus' coming is about way more than dealing with our sin. It's about the climactic moment when God comes to be with as one of us. Jesus has to deal with out sin, of course. And he does. But that's no the reason he came as a human being. That became necessary after Gen.3 but is not in the picture in the creation stories. And that's what God has done for us.

Human beings are made, equipped, and called to be priests in this creational temple God has fashioned. And not just priests but royal priests because they are children of the Great King.

-In the first creation story (Gen.1:1-2:3) the human creatures are made in God's image, which on analogy with the use of this phrase in surrounding cultures suggests kinship between the deity and the creature. To these “kin” God grants dominion over his creation to protect and nurture it to its full flourishing. Kin of the King – royal children.

-in the second creation story (Gen.2:4-25) God places Adam in the garden (Eve will join him later as co-equal companion) with the mandate “to till it and keep it” (2:15). This pair of words when used together elsewhere refer to priestly duties. Adam and Eve's mandate, then, is priestly. Their work protecting and caring for the garden, and extending its boundaries as humanity grows and moves to other parts of the world, is their priestly labor. Earth-care is temple care.

Royal priests, then, is the identity and vocation of humanity as God's family. If we want to know whose we are, who we are, and what we are to do in this world, royal priest is the Bible's answer.

Are You a Royal Priest?

I'm betting that you don't or have never thought of yourself as a royal priest and a part of God's royal priesthood. And that's because Christianity in the West has forgotten or ignored about God's big picture purpose for us and our world. To hear most of our presentations of the gospel you'd think human beings are primarily forgiven sinners whose forgiveness gains them assurance of life with God forever after death or Christ's return in heaven. I call this “The Gen.3 to Rev.20 Gospel.”

So we wait between the time we come to Christ and death (or his return) with no clear sense on what we should do or why or how any of this “in-between” stuff matters in God's plan. One could point to the so-called “Great Commission” in Mt.28 if sharing the gospel with every person was what that passage meant (it doesn't²) and if the church showed any real zeal to do it (most don't. If the goal was to forgive our sins and assure us life forever in heaven, and Christ has accomplished that, then how does what we do from then on till the kingdom comes really matter. From the state of Christianity in the West it evidently does not matter much.

If we read the gospel from Gen.1–Rev.22, however, we don't have that problem. We do have the problem of unlearning the truncated Gen.3-Rev.20 version we been reared on. And that's no small matter as it involves a thorough rethink of what the gospel really is. But if we see ourselves not only as sinners God has reclaimed in his forgiving mercy (which we are too be sure) but above and beyond that also restored to the royal priesthood which is our identity, vocation, and destiny as human creatures of the Bible's God.

Reclaimed and restored. Not merely reclaimed – that's the Gen.3-Rev.20 gospel. But reclaimed and restored – readied to take up the role God always meant for us to play in the drama of his creational project: royal priests.

So what does it mean that in Christ we are restored to this identity? I suggest in summary the following:

-As royals we are called to:

-represent (passions)our Sovereign wherever we go,

-reflect (priorities) the will and way of our Sovereign, and
-redeem (practices) all that has gone wrong to God's creatures and creation.

As priests we are called to model and guide the people:

-in devotion (passions),

-in discernment (priorities), and

-in direction (practices).

I use a model of three “p's” - passions, priorities, and practices – to order my reflections on what it means to be human. I believe these three “p's,” bundled together as strands wrapped together to make up a cord. Inextricably bound together and reciprocally influencing each other, these three realities form the core of our humanity. And as long as they “walk arm-in-arm” with each other at the same pace and in the same direction our lives have coherence and offer a faithful witness to the Lord Jesus.

-passions are the deep-seated affections or loves that drive us to action,

-priorities are our deepest convictions about God, Christ, how the world works, and our life in it, and

-practices are the arms and legs that make visible the coherence and witness of our lives.

Aligning our passions, priorities, and practices with our call and restoration to be God's royal priests extending God's creational temple by enacting the victory of Christ in his cross and resurrection is what we traditionally call discipleship or Spirit-uality.³

As both royals and priests we are under authority and exercise authority. But we have both only under submission to the triune God. And that means we are authorized

-by the God who is love (1 John 4:16),

-to live under the sign of the cross of Jesus (1 Cor.2:2), and

-in the community of all who follow the crucified and risen Jesus (2 Cor.4:7-12).

All of this is involved in being human beings created by God.

-as God's children we are like him in that we share a love-trust relation with him (even broken, as it has been from our side, impacts who we are and how we live),

-as God's royal children we represent God's will and way in our world, shaping it in the manner and inner telos as his creation (always realizing that such “dominion” is through the power of the cross and not imperial power or coercion), and

-as his royal priests we mediate God's relation, concerns, and interests to the world and the world's relation, concerns, and interests to God. We are the articulate part of creation that raises its praise to God and its cries of distress to him when violated.

1Gregory K. Beale, “Eden, the Temple, and the Church's Mission in the New Creation,” JETS 48, 5-31.

2See Tim Gombis, “I am the Object of the Great Commission,” FB 7.19.19.

3I spell spirituality this way to highlight its origin in the Holy Spirit and not in some inner, immanent quality in us.