318. In the spiritual meaning, "stealing" refers to using false and heretical ideas to deprive others of the truths of their faith. Priests are spiritual thieves if they minister only for financial benefit or status and they teach things that on the basis of the Word they see, or at least could see, are not true. They rob people of the means of salvation, which are the truths related to faith.

Priests like this are called thieves in the following passages in the Word:

Those who do not enter through the door to the sheepfold but climb up some other way are thieves and robbers. Thieves do not come in except to steal, slaughter, and destroy. (John 10:1, 10)

Store up treasures, not on earth but in heaven, where thieves do not come in and steal. (Matthew 6:19-20)

If thieves, if people who knock things over in the night, come to you, how might you be cut off? Are they not going to steal whatever satisfies them? (Obadiah, verse 5)

They run here and there in the city, they run on the wall, they climb into houses, they come in through windows like a thief. (Joel 2:9)

They made a lie; the thief comes in, and the crowd scatters outside. (Hosea 7:1)