Quotations concerning the Priesthood of the Baptized

From the Scriptures

Although the whole earth is mine,you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.  Exodus 19:6a

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of  darkness into his wonderful light.  Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.  I Peter 2:9-10

The Church is defined by suffering

Seventh, the holy Christian people are externally recognized by the holy possession of the sacred cross.  They must endure every misfortune and persecution, all kinds of trials and evil from the devil, the world, and the flesh (as the Lord's Prayer indicates) by inward sadness, timidity, fear, outward poverty, contempt, illness, and weakness, in order to become like their head, Christ.... They must be pious, quiet, obedient, and prepared to serve the government and everybody with life and goods, doing no one any harm.

Martin Luther, "On the Councils and the Church," in Luther's Works, vol. 41, ed. Helmut Lehmann (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 164-165.

A priest, particularly in the New Testament, must be born, not made.  He is not ordained; he is created.  However, he is not born of the flesh but of the Spirit, that is, ofthe water and the Spirit in the washing of regernation.  Therefore all Christians are priests, and all priests are Christians... (What Luther Says, p. 1139)

We conclude, therefore, that a Christian lives not in himself, but in Christ and in his neighbor.  Otherwise he is not a Christian.  He lives in Christ through faith, in his neighbor through love.  By faith he is caught up beyond himself into God.  By love he descends beneath himself into his neighbor.

          --The Freedom of a Christian, Martin Luther (Martin Luther's Basic Theological Writings, ed. Timothy Lull, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989, p. 623)