Walk into most Protestant churches and something is missing. There is a pulpit, rows of chairs, and a man at the front who preaches. There is no confessional box at the back, and nobody in the building has the authority to absolve anyone of anything. If you were raised Catholic, that absence is the first thing you notice. Where is your priest, and what do you do without one?

In Israel a priest was born, not appointed. You had to be a descendant of Aaron; no amount of devotion qualified anybody else. Ordinary Israelites brought their offerings as far as the courtyard and stopped. Beyond it stood a tent, and inside the tent a curtain, and behind the curtain a room nobody entered — except one man, once a year, on one appointed day, carrying a sacrifice (Hebrews 9:7). A priest was a man permitted to go where you could not, on your behalf.

And every one of them died. That is why Israel needed a long line of them: each generation buried the man who had gone in for them and trained his replacement.

Hebrews 7:23–25 (NKJV)

Also there were many priests, because they were prevented by death from continuing. But He, because He continues forever, has an unchangeable priesthood. Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.

Christ ended the line. He died once, rose, went into the presence of God, and has not come out. The last clause is in the present tense — He always lives to make intercession. This is not something He did and finished. It is what He is doing now, while you read this.

1 Timothy 2:5 (NKJV)

For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus,

One. Not one at the top with lesser mediators ranked beneath Him. Paul writes this in a letter about how churches are to be ordered, in the middle of a paragraph on prayer — the place to set out a chain of intermediaries if there were one to set out. What he sets out is a single Man.

So why does a Protestant church have no priest? Because the post is filled.

The New Testament has a word for a sacrificing priest and uses it without hesitation — of Israel's priests, of pagan priests, of Jesus Himself, and of all believers together. It never once uses it of a Christian minister. Not in Acts, not in the letters, not in the lists of qualifications for church office. What the apostles appointed were elders, overseers, deacons, pastors and teachers, and the work they handed them was preaching, leading, guarding doctrine and caring for people. Not one of them was told to offer anything.

The two offices are easy to confuse, because in common speech “priest” has come to mean whoever leads the service. But a pastor is a shepherd who walks with the sheep. A priest is a man who goes in without them. Christ does the second; your minister does the first. Luther's quarrel with Rome came down to that — a man had been put where Christ already stood.

If there is no priest, then, who hears your confession?

God hears it, and He forgives it Himself: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). John attaches no conditions about who else must be in the room. James does tell Christians to confess their trespasses to one another and pray for one another (James 5:16), and there is real good in it — sin spoken aloud to a trusted brother loses much of its grip. But it runs both ways, between believers who then pray for each other, and nobody in that exchange is granting pardon. Forgiveness is God's, and He has never handed it to anyone.

The New Testament goes further than saying you do not need a priest. It calls you one.

1 Peter 2:5 (NKJV)

you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Peter is writing to ordinary believers scattered across Asia Minor, most of whom had never seen the temple, and he gives them the word that belonged to that closed room. Four verses later he calls them a royal priesthood. A priest is defined by what he offers, so what a Christian brings is thanks and good done for people who cannot repay him — sacrifices God says He is pleased with (Hebrews 13:15–16). Paul names the largest one: present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God (Romans 12:1). Not an hour on a Sunday. The whole life.

None of this makes you a way to God for anybody else. The word Paul uses for what Christians are sent out to do is ambassador — a man who carries his king's message into a country not his own, speaks in the king's name, and has no authority of his own to give away. The message is not come to me. It is be reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:20).

Your priest is not behind a screen in a building down the road. He went into the presence of God on your behalf, He has not come out, and He is praying for you now.