I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who asked me if I was trying to be clergy... Having not grown up catholic, I didn't really know what to do with the word "clergy" but I figured it was something like pastor, so I said yes. But what does that really mean?
1 Peter 2:9
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you our of darkness into his marvelous light.
Don't get messed up in false offense with the whole "chosen race" thing here. It is simply referring to those that God has called (anyone who believes) as a separate people group, all sharing the same beliefs.
According to Peter, all believers are a "Royal Priesthood". So I guess by default, if I have said to Jesus, "My life is no longer mine, but yours because of your work for my sake on the cross..." then I have become a "Royal Priest". That feels weird. So what does this rhetoric really mean?
If Christ is the king, and I am now considered one of his children, then there's the royalty part, but what about the priest part? I don't wear robes and sing melancholy gregorian chant in a building surrounded by varnished wood and stained glass. I don't use words like "Bless you my child..." or "In his great manifold wisdom we honor thee and cherish this holy Septuagint..." In fact, I'm not eve sure what a Septuagint is.
I think the "Royal Priesthood" is simply a statement of who we are. We are royalty. We are in awe of the fact that God (the King) loved us enough to send his Son so that we could personally get to know the KING on an intimate level - - that is huge!! This should incite us to be not only grateful, but telling everyone about it and living in such a way that would honor the King - - there is our Priesthood. A priest simply tells others about Christ - and in the same way, our actions and words will be doing the same if we are living up to who we truly are. We are Royalty. We are priests.
This week - ask yourself if you are living as Royalty - as a child of the King? The priesthood part can only come if you have truly internalized how much you are loved by your God and your king. This is a big deal. If you find yourself worried about what others think of you, and often being swayed because of the things around you, then are you really convinced that you are royalty?
Jon,
ReplyDeleteThe Septuagint is the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into the Greek language. It was supposedly commissioned by Alexander the Great and was translated by seventy scholars. It also known as the LXX because of the afore-mentioned seventy scholars it took to translate it.
-Scholar,Sparrow,Actor.