“For there is one God, and one Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” — 1 Timothy 2:5 (Recovery Version)
“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people acquired for a possession.” — 1 Peter 2:9 (Recovery Version)
One. Paul is careful with the number. Not a layered system of mediators, not a chain of spiritual authority channeling God’s will downward to the ordinary believer. One mediator. Christ. The number closes the door on every system that would insert another layer between the believer and God.
The Greek “mediator” (μεσίτης, mesites), from mesos (middle), means “a go-between, an arbitrator, a mediator.” It appears six times in the New Testament — 1 Timothy 2:5 and Hebrews 8:6, 9:15, 12:24 for Christ; Galatians 3:19–20 for Moses (Blue Letter Bible: G3316). In the New Testament, only Christ fills the office of mediator between God and humanity.
This verse is the doctrinal foundation of one of the Reformation’s most liberating recoveries: the priesthood of all believers. Luther did not invent it. It was always there in the text. What Luther did was insist that the church take it seriously again.
What the Priesthood of All Believers Actually Means
In the old covenant, the priest was the necessary intermediary. You did not approach God directly — you brought your offering to the priest, who approached on your behalf. Access to God was graduated, filtered, mediated through a designated class with special standing before Him.
The new covenant changed this entirely. Peter calls his readers — ordinary Christians scattered across Asia Minor — “a royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2:9). The Greek “priesthood” (ἱεράτευμα, hierateuma) appears only twice in the New Testament, both in 1 Peter (2:5 and 2:9). It refers to the collective of priests — not an elite class within the church, but everyone. Thayer’s Lexicon defines “royal priesthood” as: “priests of royal rank — those elevated to a moral dignity and freedom that places them under the control of none but God and Christ” (Blue Letter Bible: G2406).
Revelation 1:6 says Christ “made us a kingdom, priests to His God and Father.” Revelation 5:10 says: “And have made them a kingdom and priests to our God; and they will reign on the earth.” This is not an eschatological hope — it is a present identity. Every believer already has the standing to approach God directly, to intercede, to offer the sacrifice of praise, to hear His voice through His word.
Hebrews 4:14–16 describes an access that is staggering: because we have a “great High Priest who has passed through the heavens,” we can “come forward with boldness to the throne of grace.” “Boldness” (παρρησία, parresia) — freedom of speech, unreserved confidence, fearless access (Blue Letter Bible: G3954). Hebrews 10:19–22 goes further: “Having therefore, brothers, boldness for entering the Holy of Holies… let us come forward to the Holy of Holies with a true heart in full assurance of faith.” The veil has been torn; every believer can enter.
This does not mean the church needs no leaders, nor that all voices carry equal weight in every context. It means: no one stands between you and God. Your access to the Father through the Son is not conditioned on a group’s approval, on an elder’s endorsement, on a ministry’s mediation. It is direct, permanent, and purchased by Christ alone.
Ministerial Authority vs. Ruling Authority
The Reformers drew a distinction worth recovering in practice: the difference between ministerial authority and magisterial authority.
Magisterial authority is the authority of a ruler over a subject — the kind that demands obedience regardless of reason, that can direct the details of your life, that makes compliance a condition of belonging. This kind of authority over the conscience belongs to God alone. He has not delegated it to church offices.
Ministerial authority is the authority of a servant — a guide, a teacher, an example. This is what Jesus described in Mark 10:42–44: “Whoever wants to become great among you shall be your servant.” Matthew 23:8–12 is more direct: “But you, do not be called Rabbi, for One is your Teacher, and you are all brothers… Neither be called instructors, for One is your Instructor, the Christ.”
The vocabulary the New Testament chose for church leaders speaks for itself. The Greek διάκονος (diakonos) — “one who executes the commands of another; a servant, an attendant, a minister,” originally meaning “one who runs errands” (Blue Letter Bible: G1249). The New Testament did not choose archon (ruler) or hiereus (priest) for church leaders. It chose servant. Ephesians 4:11–12 says the apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers were gifts to the church “for the perfecting of the saints unto the work of the ministry, unto the building up of the Body of Christ” — the gifted persons perfect; the saints do the work of ministry.
Calvin wrote clearly in the Institutes: “Christ called His servants to the office of teaching, not to subdue and lord over the church, but that through their faithful labor He might bind the church to Himself.” He added: “The power of the church is not unlimited, but is subject to the Word of the Lord.” Servants are guides on a road, not gatekeepers at a door (Calvin, Institutes IV.iii (CCEL)).
The Westminster Confession (1647), Chapter 20, enshrined this principle as creed: “God alone is Lord of the conscience, and has left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in anything contrary to His Word, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship… the requiring of an implicit faith, and an absolute and blind obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience, and reason also.” (Westminster Confession, Ch. 20 (OPC))
The confusion of these two kinds of authority is one of the most common ways spiritual communities go wrong. It starts subtly — a leader whose judgment is deferred to on small matters, then larger ones, then the significant decisions of personal life. Before long, the community operates around an unspoken truth everyone knows: the leader’s authority over your life is effectively total, and to resist it is to resist God.
But 1 Timothy 2:5 will not allow this. The one mediator is Christ. The leader is a fellow servant, not a commanding officer.
The Witness of the Fathers and Reformers
This is not a sixteenth-century invention.
Tertullian (c. 155–220) was the earliest father to explicitly assert the priesthood of all believers. In On Exhortation to Chastity, Chapter 7, he wrote: “Are not even we laity priests? It is written: ‘He made us a kingdom, priests to His God and Father.’” He went on to acknowledge that the institutional distinction between clergy and laity was a human arrangement, not a divine ordinance (Tertullian, On Exhortation to Chastity (New Advent)).
Chrysostom (c. 349–407), in his twentieth homily on Romans (commenting on Romans 12:1, “present your bodies a living sacrifice”), taught: “Become a priest of your own body, a priest of the virtues of your soul.” He said that by presenting their bodies as living sacrifices, believers perform a spiritual priesthood — moral conduct and daily living replace animal sacrifices. This internalized, spiritualized priesthood was open to every Christian, not only the ordained (Chrysostom, Homily 20 on Romans (New Advent)).
Luther dismantled the medieval wall between the “spiritual estate” and the “temporal estate” in his 1520 Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation: “All Christians are truly of the ‘spiritual estate,’ and there is no difference among them except that of office.” He used a vivid example: if a group of Christians were exiled to a wilderness with no ordained pastor among them, they could choose one from their number to baptize, preach, and administer the sacrament — “such a man would be as truly a priest as if all the bishops and popes had ordained him.” (Luther, An Open Letter to the Christian Nobility (Project Wittenberg))
What Watchman Nee and Witness Lee Taught
Watchman Nee traced the priesthood of all believers back to God’s original intention in Exodus 19:6 — all Israel was called to be a kingdom of priests. The Levitical priesthood was instituted only after Israel’s failure in worshipping the golden calf. In the New Testament, God restored His original design: “In the New Testament there is no clergy-laity distinction; all are priests.” He said plainly: “We can no longer tolerate a mediating class… a group of people serving God while the rest merely sit on the pews.” The clergy-laity system “destroys the function of the members of the Body of Christ” (Watchman Nee, New Believer’s Series — The Priesthood (BibleRead Online)).
Witness Lee extended this teaching further. He taught that every believer is a New Testament gospel priest, citing Romans 15:16 — believers should seek out, contact sinners, and offer them to God as New Testament sacrifices. “It is not that only a few who are saved and have a special gift are priests, and the rest cannot be priests; this is not in accord with the Bible.” (The Universal Priesthood of the Gospel (Ministry Samples)) He also emphasized mutuality in meetings: “In the Body of Christ we are members, and in the service to God the Father we are priests; therefore, they not only must function in the meetings, they also must serve, and everyone should participate.” (Having Small Group Meetings Full of Mutuality (Ministry Samples))
Witness Lee identified the Nicolaitans of Revelation 2:6 and 15 with the clergy-laity system. “Nicolaitan” is a compound of nikao (to conquer) and laos (people) — “conquering the people.” He said: “Such a hierarchy is hated by the Lord because it destroys God’s New Testament economy concerning the church.” (The Test of the Nicolaitans (Ministry Samples))
Following Leaders Well — and Faithfully
The priesthood of all believers does not produce a church of unteachable, uncorrectable, unleadable individualists. The New Testament envisions genuine relationships of trust between believers and elders — deep enough to be honest, strong enough to allow real correction, humble enough to receive genuine counsel.
But that trust is always measured against Scripture, never a substitute for it. Hebrews 13:17 calls believers to obey their leaders and submit to them — but the leaders described are those who “watch over your souls as those who will give an account.” Their accountability is to God, not institutional loyalty. Their authority derives from their service to the Word, not their position in a hierarchy.
When a leader faithfully serves the Word, following that leader is following Christ. When a leader steps outside that service — when teaching becomes control, when counsel becomes command, when personal decisions about marriage, work, or where to live require their sanction — the priesthood of all believers gives you not only the right but the responsibility to say: that authority was never yours.
You have one Lord. You have one Mediator. Everyone else, however gifted, is a fellow servant on the same road.