The Priesthood of Believers

Here's a link to a paper I recently finished on the priesthood of believers. Here's the upshot:

It seems that when the Bible speaks of the priesthood of believers it most often associates it with the believers’ responsibility to love and serve one another and their neighbors. This means that, far from being an individualistic doctrine, the priesthood of believers means that “God has so tempered the body that we are all priests to each other.” Instead of a solitary priest representing the people before God, or the believer acting as his or her own priest, all believers may represent one another before God. The priesthood of all believers is more a commission to undertake than a prerogative to claim. Thus the definition proposed above seems correct: the priesthood of believers is the right of all Christians to relate freely and directly to God and to offer spiritual sacrifices to him through Jesus Christ for the good of one another.