LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2019, Page 237

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II. THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS­­—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS
While describing the priesthood and what it does,
Luther also distinguishes between that priesthood of
the baptized and the public office of preaching the
word. “No individual can arise by his own authority and
arrogate to himself alone what belongs to all.”134 “A priest
is not identical with a presbyter or minister for one is
born a priest, one is made a minister.”135 Luther goes on
to urge that where Christians do not have someone in
the public office, someone should be selected from the
priesthood of the baptized and should be put into the
office in the way that signifies the task assumed. So the
community lays hands upon the person to show that he
is now pastor or bishop.136 When that happens, then all
should “believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that this has
been done and accomplished by God.”137
This approach is biblical, Luther insists, and the
public office “established by holy ordination is the
highest and greatest of the functions of the church, on
which the whole power of the church depends since the
church is nothing without the word and everything that
exists by virtue of the word alone.”138 There can be other
procedures through which the ministers can be chosen.
Episcopal oversight and appointment as found in Rome’s
practice could also do, provided the point that structure
was not to preserve ecclesiastical, episcopal authority but
to find an informed and efficient way to provide pastors.
(Bishops ought not act on their own, Luther had said in
his treatise to Leisnig, but ought to ask the congregation
what kind of man they seek and should work with them
to get the right person. Bishops were to serve, not rule.)
Other circumstances prevented Luther’s suggestions
from being implemented in Bohemia, but the point remains that Luther commended a view of the church that
would include the priesthood of the baptized being active in countless ways in the ministry of the Word, while
not undermining the public preaching office. As a royal
priesthood they would ask one (or more) from among
them to occupy the public preaching office for the good
of the baptized priesthood as a whole.
As the decade of the 1520s wore on and as other
developments arose in the church, Luther’s emphasis
shifted somewhat. After about 1527 Luther tended to
distinguish more between the priesthood and the public
134

AE 40:34; WA 12:189.

135

AE 40:18; WA 12:178.

136

AE 40:40; WA 12:193–94.

137

AE 40:37; WA 12:191.

138

AE 40:11; WA 12:173.

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IV. LUTHER’S REFORMATION

Despite growing tensions within the Empire and
frustrations felt by those with vested interests in the
church in a visible sense, Luther continued to hold to a
simple understanding of Church and the priesthood —
the believers — that made up the Church. He seemed to
echo the simplicity yet depth of the Augsburg Confession’s satis est (Article VII: “It is enough for the unity of
the church ...). In the Smalcald Articles (1536), Luther
offered another elegant view of Church plainly evident
to anyone in the baptized priesthood: “A seven-year-old
child knows what the church is: holy believers and sheep
who hear the voice of the shepherd.”140 No institutionally defined positions, no tonsures, gowns or posturing.
Children need only hear Christ’s voice, His message —
the love and the forgiving grace — and they know: there
is Church, and we who follow that voice are Church. The
Word and the Spirit in the Word create and sustain that.
Clerics serve when they repeat the voice, and the baptized priests serve when they use the Word in witness.
That simple, pure understanding carried the baptized
priesthood through despite furious arguments over
Church that continued to the end of Luther’s life. It is no
different for the priesthood of believers still these days.
When Luther died in Eisleben in 1546, a scrap of paper was found in the bed covers. After thousands of pages and well over a hundred volumes, these were the last
lines he wrote. They are colored by Renaissance liberal
arts learning, with references to classical antiquity Luther
enlisted — “baptized” so to speak — as he commented
on the life of the believer.
No one who has not been a shepherd or a peasant
for five years can understand Virgil in his Bucolics
and Georgics. I hold that no one can understand
Cicero in his letters unless he has been involved
in efforts to govern the state for twenty years. And
let no one who has not guided congregations with
the prophets for a hundred years believe he has
tasted Holy Scripture thoroughly. Because of this
the miracle is tremendous in John the Baptist, in
Christ, and in the apostles. Lay not your hand on
this divine Aeneid, but bow before it and adore its
every trace. We are beggars. This is true.141

office. He did not depart from the idea that all priests
possess all the same rights and responsibilities, but he
also noted that not every individual baptized Christian is
prepared to fulfill every task, with some better suited for
some things than others. That is no denial of the priest
being in full possession of all that God gives, but rather
it is recognition that God also gives talents and abilities
differently to various people. In addition, problems arose
with the Radical Reformation’s Anabaptists and Spiritualists, who claimed revelation apart from and beyond
the biblical word, not only challenging the Word but also
claiming a special position or authority. In reply, Luther
maintained that no one has either the right to lay hold of
what is common to all or the right to fill the preaching
office without the consent of those who would be served.
It is the community of priests — the congregation in
most cases — that calls someone to the public office and
bestows on that person the right to use the gifts that
belong to all.
That such problems sprang from the tumult involved with the Reformation does not discredit Luther’s
positions on the universal priesthood or its relationship
to the office occupied by one of the baptized priests. It
simply made it harder to steer the course while avoiding
an increasing number of competing positions, ideas that
Luther saw as Satan’s way of attacking that which Christ
had established and which His Word sought to preserve
and expand. Luther had hoped that all the preaching
and writing and teaching of the Gospel that had gone
on in the decade since the Ninety-Five Theses would
have helped the baptized understand their identity, grow
in their faith and take up the right use of the Word in
their homes within their families and beyond in witness
to others. As the Gospel became clear in those early
years, Luther confidently expected the Gospel would
work, change hearts and minds and so reform the
institutional church.
In fact, the parish visitations done a decade later in
Saxony in 1528 found that often little progress had been
made. Some might see this as proof that the Reformation
was a failure, with a message that carried no weight and
made little difference. Actually not all was abysmal, and
there were positive examples to be found. But on balance
there was reason to be disappointed. Luther understood,
of course, that this was not a matter simply of following
a formula. There were complicating factors: the devil, the
world and the sinful flesh still plagued those reborn at
the font. It was up to the priesthood to keep trying, and
up to God to grant success when and where He want-

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by Christ and others is indeed miraculous. But while
experience helps in understanding texts, in fact the texts,
particularly the texts that deliver the Word, also work
from their end. They address the believer and carry the
believer through when falling back on one’s own history
will never be enough. The Word makes the believer,
makes priests from the font forward. The Word makes
the Church. And the Church constantly uses the Word,
because the learning and the growth about the one thing
needful never end.
And the response of the priesthood? There is a saying
attributed to Luther: Wenn zur Theologie kommt, eine gewiße Bescheidenheit gehört dazu. “When it comes to theology, a certain modesty is called for.” Modesty. Do not
presume to say you thoroughly know you have exhausted
the Word until you have been at this a hundred years (at
least!). Modesty. Put another way: awe, admiration and
praise. The Aeneid is Virgil’s story of Aeneas having to
leave his old, fallen city of Troy laid waste in the war and
find his way eventually to a new city, a new place: Rome.
It is a story of a journey, an odyssey through life. The
“divine Aeneid” is the Bible, a story of another pilgrimage
from Eden to and through the cross and the empty tomb,
and on to a new place, to a new heaven and earth even
now on the way, the culmination of a new life by grace
and promise.
The story is not yet done. People continue to travel.
And as they do, that Word makes them priests to serve
along the way, giving thanks for who they are, raising
doxology for how they came to be priests and for all the
Word does, and proclaiming the message of that Divine
Aeneid, the saving Word that makes more and more
priests, that makes Christ’s Church. A hundred years
experience to have things thoroughly in hand? Not by a
long shot. But we in the priesthood of believers hear and
know the voice of the Shepherd and know this is the way
to go.

ed. Doing what he could, Luther sought to build up the
priesthood by reminding them that they, still plagued
by sin, were daily dying and rising again to new life in
Christ. The lessons are to be found in the catechisms
he wrote in the wake of the visitations to help both the
priesthood and those in the public office better teach the
faith. Continued problems and challenges were evidence
that sin is still loose and needs to be confronted and the
sinner still needs to be crushed and then raised up with
Christ’s gracious Gospel. Yet despite problems, the continued presence of the baptized priesthood showed that
the Gospel did its work, even in the most challenging
circumstances.

Rome was unhappy both with the Lutherans’ view
toward “church” (meaning the ecclesiastical institutions)
and with their theology that embraced and held high an
understanding of the “Church” as all believers and a royal priesthood. The priesthood of believers resting on the
Word was one of the prime offending doctrines, if for no
other reason than that it challenged the ecclesiastical hierarchy and shifted the focal point of authority. So Rome
rejected Luther’s idea that there was only one priesthood
with no second, special and higher priesthood peopled
by clerics under their structure and authority. For Luther
“priest” was first and foremost the baptized believer, not
the minister called to fill the public preaching office.

As the Reformation moved into the 1530s, Luther’s
attention shifted again. The evangelical movement had
grown in the tumultuous 1520s. What might be next? In
hindsight we know how the story would go, but at the
time, who knew what would come if and when Emperor
Charles, who had gone off to war after Worms, would
return and focus on his Empire? After nearly a decade
away, Charles returned in 1530 to preside over the gathering in Augsburg (Diet of Augsburg) of the representatives drawn from throughout the various lands. He
wanted the Reformation problem ended to make for a
stronger Empire. At Augsburg the Lutherans were called
to account, pressed to demonstrate that they really were
within the realm of “church.” If not, then they legally had
no place in the Empire.

The Diet of Augsburg did not settle things. Lutherans
were threatened: Give up your positions and return to
the fold, or else. The “or else” ultimately could mean war.
While such threats occupied princely rulers, Luther had
other things to think about. Called to govern in a different way, the Reformation had brought much change.
Yet much of the old, particularly in terms not only of
structure but also message, remained the same. Luther
had hoped that the Gospel when unleashed would sweep
everything clean, but that had not happened. What was
left in terms of the institutional church in Rome (and
there was much) was opposed to the Lutherans.

It is a good and basic question: Were they really
church? In one way the evangelicals had no quarrel living
with the ecclesiastical structures. In some of his treatises
Luther tried to sort through problems in that area and
hoped for better to come from those filling various roles.
Too often, however, the Roman structures and leadership failed to provide the kind of theology the Lutherans
thought should be there. That theology, especially the
doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone,
which was at the core of their Augsburg Confession,
was also important for the “church question,” for it was
the Gospel that made priests. As the Spirit worked, the
Gospel created the Church. The gathering of believers
certainly did not need structures when Church was understood only as a spiritual assembly. But as people living
in the created order, they reasonably would expect to
have structures. There they could live with any number
of options so long as the Gospel predominates to define
identity and empower service.

SA III 12:2, KW, 324. See also FC SD X 19, KW, 639.

141

AE 54:476; WA-Tr 5:5677.

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IV. LUTHER’S REFORMATION

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IV. LUTHER’S REFORMATION

V. CONCLUSION

T

his study is necessarily
limited in several ways. It does not, for
example, explore the doctrine of the royal
priesthood in the time since the Reformation
and therefore does not trace its recent history in the
LCMS. Nor does it provide suggested in-depth, extensive applications for the royal priesthood in the church
today. The 2007 LCMS convention directed the CTCR
“to prepare a comprehensive study document which
clearly presents the biblical teaching of the royal priesthood and Luther’s teaching on vocation.” The resolution
then added that it was to carry out this study “in the light
of the mission challenges of today.”142 In the foregoing
sections, that is what the Commission has sought to do
by indicating in each place not only biblical teaching, but
also how that teaching assumes and directs a significant
role for the laity, the whole of the royal priesthood, in the
church’s missionary outreach, making God’s mighty acts
known to all people.
The following conclusions flow from the foregoing
pages. They summarize biblical teaching on the royal
priesthood, as well as Luther’s, and enable us to see the
crucial and necessary connections of the royal priesthood to “the mission challenges of today” and, for that
matter, every day.
1. The Royal Priesthood is a biblical way to identify,
teach and confess the “one, holy, catholic (Christian), and apostolic Church.” That is to say, the
royal priesthood is all believers, “from every tribe

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“To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God
and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.” Revelation 1:5–6

142

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As time wore on, Luther found himself essentially with a new and parallel church looking to him for
organization and ecclesiastical leadership. With all else
Luther had thought through, he had never made plans
for revamping the institution. He had hoped what was in
place would change and thus serve well, but not so. As
the 1530s dawned, Luther was forced to deal with any
number of requests that would otherwise have gone to a
bishop, and Luther became, somewhat to his dismay, a
church bureaucrat.139 He certainly had not lost sight of
the priesthood of believers. That was church. But as de
facto leader of the reform, he had to advise on practice
and handle issues of casuistry. He would rather have
spent the time preaching the Gospel and would have
been happy with an evangelically oriented episcopacy
for the other work. Luther tended to live with what was
there so long as it did not impede the Gospel. But by now
it was clear that that was not going to work. So he turned
to princes to act as emergency bishops and supported
superintendents set up as a substitute for the old-style
bishops who were bypassed and benevolently grandfathered until attrition took its course.
139
James Kittelson, “Luther the Church Bureaucrat,” Concordia Journal
13 (October 1987): 294–306.

Life experience helps in understanding the texts of
Virgil on agricultural life, of Cicero on politics and statecraft, and of the Scriptures. But notice: a hundred years
first?! Impossible? Yes, and so what was accomplished
140

237

“2007 Resolution 1–03,” first resolve.

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V. CONCLUSION

and language and people and nation” whom God
has made a kingdom and priests (Rev. 5:9–10) by
working in them faith in Christ by the power of the
Holy Spirit.
2. Individuals become priests of the royal priesthood,
the Church, by the saving promises of Baptism
into Christ, where we receive the washing of
rebirth, the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the
Holy Spirit (John 3:5; Acts 2:38–39; Titus 3:5).
3. The royal priesthood finds its identity only in
Christ, the Great High Priest and only mediator between God and man. Royal priests are in
turn called to lives of priestly mediation between
God and the world. They offer living sacrifices of
thanksgiving — not sacrifices of merit or atonement. In prayer they intercede on behalf of all
people. They make known the excellencies of God
in Christ — sharing His Word, gifts and blessings
with all nations. (See 1 Tim. 2:5; Rom. 12:1; Phil. 4:6;
1 Peter 2:9.)
4. As the people of God, both corporately and individually, we mediate God’s truth of salvation and
life to the world around us. Every individual believer is called to confess the faith to others since
the mission of the whole church, that is, the entire
royal priesthood, is to make disciples of all nations
(Matt. 28:19–20). Members of the royal priesthood
share in that calling as they give a defense for
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2019 Convention Workbook