When Jesus endowed his followers with the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, he constituted them as temples and conferred upon them the identity, office, and authority of priesthood. Because the Spirit of God indwells and regenerates
42every new covenant member without exception (Jer 31:31-34; Ezek 36:25-27; Joel 2:28; John 20:22;
Act 2), the identity, office, and authority of priesthood is granted to every member of the new covenant. All people become new covenant members and priests when they are born
42 New covenant Christians are without exception indwelt and regenerated by the Holy Spirit.
Indwelling should not be confused with regeneration, and yet “after the glorification of Jesus, regeneration and indwelling can be seen as concurrent, though they remain distinct ministries of the Holy Spirit.”
Hamilton, God’s Indwelling Presence, 143. All of those who comprise the new covenant people of God are regenerate Christians. This reality was not true of those in the old covenant,for Paul wrote of the old covenant Israelites: “Not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring” (Rom 9:6-7). Paul was communicating that “it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring” (Rom 9:8).
That is, though every Israelite received covenant membership via his or her natural birth into the nation of Israel, not every covenant member was truly part of the remnant of believing Israelites.
The Mosaic covenant did not produce a faithful covenant people, so God’s redemptive plans anticipated a time when it would become obsolete and replaced with a new covenant. As noted above, the old covenant community was a mixed community of believing and non-believing Israelites. However, in the new covenant, every covenant member would be indwelt and regenerated by the Holy Spirit. This was the expectation of the old covenant prophets; Ezekiel, for example, spoke of a time in the future when God would cleanse all of his covenant people from their unrighteousness (cf. John 3:5), give them a new heart, put a new spirit in them, and cause them to walk in and obey his statutes (Ezek 36:25-27). The prophet Jeremiah also spoke of a future time when God would establish a new covenant with his people; he anticipated that when this would come to pass, the people would be changed at the level of their hearts, when God would write his law on the hearts of his covenant people, a reality that was apparently not yet true for those in the old covenant (Jer 31:31-34). Joel also spoke of this future time when God would pour out his Spirit on his sons and daughters, resulting in powerful manifestations of the Spirit in his people (Joel 2:28-29). Jesus further anticipated a new work of the Spirit that would come following his
glorification (John 7:37-39; cf. Acts 1:4-5). All of these prophetic texts point forward to the institution of the new covenant and the inception of the church when God poured out his Spirit on all those who believed at Pentecost (John 20:22; Acts 2). Indeed, on that day, those who believed in Jesus “were all filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:4). This event established the superiority of the new covenant, a covenant where all of its members possessed the indwelling Holy Spirit and were regenerated followers of Jesus Christ.
Pentecost, furthermore, stands as the point in history when the new covenant establishment of the church took place. Allison, Sojourners and Strangers, 70-82.
again, receive the new covenant sign of believer’s baptism,
43and then join and covenant with a local church congregation.
44From this basis, a locally organized and covenanted group of priests collectively commit to maintaining regenerate church membership.
45That is, they commit to maintaining church discipline.
Scripture provides further evidence that the new covenant people of God are all considered priests. John presents Jesus as making all of his new covenant people
43 While the seed of Abraham received the covenant sign of circumcision (Lev 12:3) and were thus members of the old covenant, they were not all truly the people of God; they were the natural seed of Abraham, but not every Israelite was a spiritual seed. Members of the new covenant now relate to its covenant head, Christ, as his spiritual seed, not as his physical seed. The covenant sign of baptism is intended to be delivered only to those who are regenerated believers in Christ (Matt 28:19-20), a pattern that is evidenced in Scripture (Acts 8:5-6, 12, 26-40; 9:18; 16:33; 18:8; 22:16). See Stephen J. Wellum,
“Baptism and the Relationship between the Covenants,” in Believer’s Baptism: Sign of the New Covenant in Christ, ed. Thomas R. Schreiner and Shawn D. Wright (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2006), 136-37;
Allison, Sojourners and Strangers, 339-40. Whereas old covenant membership was the right of Israelites by birth and was not dependent on regenerating faith, new covenant membership and its covenant sign of baptism are reserved for those who have been regenerated through saving faith in Christ. Indeed, as articulated above, every member of the new covenant is a regenerated believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.
44 Rooted in their covenant relationship with God, new covenant Christians are expected to willfully enter into covenant relationship with the local church. Allison, Sojourners and Strangers, 128.
The reality of local church membership is evidenced at several points in the New Testament. The earliest example of the early church shows Christians gathering together—rather than remaining abstracted from fellowship with the other Christians—regularly for worship, fellowship, prayer, ministry, the breaking of bread, hearing the apostles’ teaching, giving and sharing finances, belongings, and resources, and
evangelism (Acts 2:42-47). Many epistles are written, not to the church at large, but rather to local churches that gathered in specific geographical regions (Rom 1:7; 1 Cor 1:2; 2 Cor 1:1; Eph 1:1; Phil 1:1; Col 1:2; 1 Thess 1:1; 2 Thess 1:1).
Additionally, the New Testament pattern shows that Christian leaders or pastors were made responsible for specific sheep; Peter wrote to the elders: “Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care” (1 Pet 5:2). Paul reiterated the same message to the elders at Ephesus: “Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers” (Acts 20:28). The point is that pastors were given the burden of caring for specific Christians; the pastors Peter addressed were responsible for shepherding different Christians than the pastors Paul addressed in Ephesus.
The other side of this point is that early Christians knew the specific leaders to whom they were to be submissive (Heb 3:17) and to whom they were to show honor (1 Tim 5:17). Furthermore, apostates in the early church abandoned specific fellowships (1 John 2:19), and unrepentant church members were removed from specific congregations (1 Cor 5:13). All of this evidence serves to uphold the biblical notion of church membership.
Though non-believers may associate with local churches and attend their worship gatherings, though wolves may masquerade in sheep’s clothing, though tares may exist among the wheat, the overall local church gathering of new covenant priests are to do their due diligence to distinguish between those who are truly Christians and those who are not. Jonathan Leeman, The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love: Reintroducing the Doctrines of Church Membership and Church Discipline (Wheaton, IL:
Crossway, 2010), 29-30.
45 The purpose of this dissertation is not to make an argument for church membership. Yet, discipline requires attention to regenerate church membership. For an introduction to the doctrine, see John S. Hammett and Benjamin L. Merkle, eds., Those Who Must Give an Account: A Study of Church
membership and Church Discipline (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Academic, 2012); Jonathan Leeman, The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love; Jeremy M. Kimble, 40 Questions About Church Membership & Church Discipline (Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2017).
“priests to his God and Father” (Rev 1:6), “a kingdom and priests to our God” (Rev 5:10;
cf. Rev 20:6). Drawing connections to Exodus 19:5-6, John maintains that the new covenant priesthood is both kingly and priestly and “like the OT priests, now the entire people of God have free, unmediated access to God’s presence because Christ has removed the obstacle of sin by his substitutionary blood.”
46Peter also speaks of the whole body of Christ as a “holy priesthood” (1 Pet 2:4- 5), indeed a “royal priesthood” (1 Pet 2:9), who together perform the ministry of the priesthood. For those new covenant members who believe in Christ, the corporate royal priestly primogeniture, which was promised to Israel (Exod 19:5-6) and forfeited by Israel following its idolatrous covenant breach at the Golden Calf episode (Exod 32), is finally reestablished with the whole new covenant community of believers. Everyone who is “born again” (1 Pet 1:3) is included in this new covenant priesthood (1 Pet 2:4- 9).
47As Hahn notes, “with the inauguration of the new covenant in Christ, all who enter the new covenant . . . are restored to the original royal priestly primogeniture promised to Israel at Sinai (Exod 19:5-6; 1 Pet 2:5, 9).”
48Commenting on this Petrine text, Schreiner underscores the priestly status of the individual Christian while also highlighting Peter’s emphasis on the corporate nature of the priesthood:
Peter was not thinking mainly of each individual functioning as a priest before God.
The focus here is on the church corporately as God’s set-apart priesthood in which the emphasis is likely on believers functioning as priests. Western believers tend to individualize the notion of priesthood rather than seeing the community emphasis.
In the Old Testament the priestly caste was limited to the tribe of Levi, and in that sense only a portion of Israel could carry out the priestly function. . . . All of God’s people are now his priests. Despite the emphasis on the corporate priesthood, what Peter said applies by implication to individuals as well. That is, all believers have direct access to God by virtue of the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We must
46 Beale, The Book of Revelation, 193.
47 Scott W. Hahn, Kinship by Covenant: A Canonical Approach to the Fulfillment of God’s Saving Promises (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 171.
48 Hahn, Kinship by Covenant, 175.