When Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church in 1517, it proved to be the symbolic blow that launched the Protestant Reformation. But Luther himself saw the act as something far more important than simply a revolt against ecclesiastical abuses. He believed that he was fighting for the gospel itself. And at the heart of the gospel, in Luther’s estimation, were the twin doctrines of “justification by faith” and the “priesthood of all believers.”

In other words, the righteousness achieved through Christ’s sacrificial death and resurrection is imputed to all those who believe, and on that ground alone, they are already fully accepted by God. Thus, there is no need for a special, upper class of Christians—such as priests—to mediate our relationship with the Almighty. “Each and all of us are priests,” wrote Luther, “because we have the one faith, the one gospel, and one and the same sacrament. Why, then, should we not be entitled to taste or test, and to judge what is right or wrong in the faith?”

You would be hard pressed today to find a Protestant who would argue with that statement. It is now widely accepted that we don’t need the Pope to tell us what to believe … or the General Assembly … or even our beloved pastor. Our beliefs are just that—our beliefs! Each of us may believe differently, of course … but then again, that is our God-given right. No one can coerce the shape or content of our faith, for “God alone is Lord of the conscience.” That is what is meant by the doctrine of the “priesthood of all believers.”

Or is it? Is the radical individualism that we witness today truly what the Reformers had in mind? Is belief really only a matter of personal preference? If we don’t happen to agree with a particular doctrine of the church, are we free just to ignore it and follow the pathways of our own conscience?

I’m guessing that many of the Reformers would be absolutely horrified by the current state of the church. True, the Protestant tradition freed us from the compulsion of ecclesiastical authorities. But what Luther, Calvin, and the others would quickly point out is that the individual license to believe anything you wish is not freedom at all. Rather, it is a sentence of solitary confinement to your own isolated world of values. The gospel has never been a philosophy of our own devising, or worse still, an ethic that we can fashion to suit our individual ambitions and desires.
Just because God alone is Lord of the conscience doesn’t mean that we can work and live independently of the standards of the larger community. The reason that Christians insist on coming together to worship and study is because we recognize that the grand vision of the gospel is simply too broad for any one of us to grasp all by ourselves. It is only by acting as priests to one another that we are able to obtain the freedom of faith that God intends for all believers.