Y Safle

A while ago I wrote a set of notes on various offices within the church, including the office of apostle, and I offer this article as an attempt to present my view of this special calling.

It is my contention that it is errant to believe that the role of apostle was ever supposed to persist beyond the first century.

Consider Paul’s own words on this subject in Romans 1:1 where he says:

“Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God.”

Paul is telling us here that he is a servant of Christ, just as we all are who bear his name, but he wants to tell us more then that. Here he is, writing to a group of Christians he never met and yet he wants them to know that he is not only a servant of Christ, but one who is called to be an apostle.

Now we find that some people were not very ready to accept that Paul was an apostle, and he had to therefore defend his apostolic authority within his writings, and especially within his letters to the Corinthians. There were people who did not like his teachings and claimed he had come in at a later date, that he had never accompanied the Lord Jesus in the days of His flesh, and he had never heard his teaching, and so on.

So it is necessary to understand what is meant by the term “apostle”. In Matthew 10:1,2 we read:

“And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples he gave them power against unclean spirits to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease. Now the names of the twelve apostles are these …”

In the first place Matthew calls them disciples, but following their commission they are called apostles. The two terms are not synonymous as it was possible to be a disciple without being an apostle. The term apostle designates a special and peculiar ministry.

Look at Luke 6:13:

“And when it was day he called unto him his disciples: and of them he chose twelve, whom he also named apostles”.

Now this verse is vital because it shows once and for all the vital distinction between apostles and disciples, and it is a distinction that Paul often alludes to. The point is that it was Christ who deliberately chose and named the twelve apostles.

The term “apostle” literally means a “sent one”, and this is quite true, but this term apostle has become much richer then that. When Christ named the twelve apostles he had in mind this idea of a specific ministry, a calling to a position within the embryonic church. What is this special ministry? Well it is possible to send someone on a mission and the term might seem to apply to this calling, but we also know that it is possible to send someone as our representative, and that was what our Lord meant to do when he raised up these apostles. These men represented Christ, and this term “apostle” includes this idea of a delegate.

Now we see in the New Testament that the person who is sent is sent with an authority from the one whom he represents. An apostle has the authority to represent Christ. One writer describes an apostle thus:

“an apostle is one chosen and sent with a special mission, as the fully authorized representative of the sender.”

What then are the qualifications of an apostle? This is an important point because if we mistakenly call men apostle who are not apostles then we are in danger of entering the error of the Church in Corinth which will surely lead us astray.

The most important qualification is that no man can be an apostle unless he has seen the risen Lord and was a witness to his resurrection. In Acts 1:21,22 we read:

“Wherefore of these men which have accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning with the baptism of John, unto that same day that he was taken up from us, must one be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection”.

This, remember, was the choosing of an apostle to replace Judas Iscariot among the twelve, and is one of the clearest statements we have that one could not be an apostle without having seen and witnessed the risen Christ.

Paul himself writes in 1 Corinthians 9:1:

“Am I not an apostle? Am I not free? Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord?”

Paul needed to defend his authority in a special way because he was as one “untimely born”. He was also a witness to the risen Lord, but he witnessed our Lord on the Damascus road. He was chosen by God there and then, and he saw the risen Lord at that time, much later then the twelve apostles, but still he was a witness.

The second qualification then is that an apostle must have this special calling. We have seen in scripture how the twelve were called, and Paul himself had this special call from the Lord himself on the Damascus road. He was also taught by the Lord himself when he went alone into the Arabian desert. This was his time of teaching, teaching from the Lord himself and not from any other man.

Paul did not pass on what he was taught by the other apostles, but he received direct revelation from the Lord himself, so that he could say in 1 Corinthians 11:

“For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you …”

You see Paul never built on anyone elses foundation, but built only on the foundation of Christ. This is another qualification of a true apostle, he is one who builds on no man’s foundation. He himself lays the foundation, and here is the reason that no man today can be an apostle - because the foundation is already laid.

The twelve laid the foundation among the Jews and Paul laid the foundation among the gentiles. The foundation is there and we can only ever build on that foundation. This is why an essential criterion for the selection of books for the New Testament canon of scripture was apostolic authorship or recommendation by an Apostle - because only the apostles had authority to speak for Christ, to lay down doctrine and to set out true teaching, because only they laid the foundation of the church.

Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 2:13:

“… when you received the word of God which you heard of us, you received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God …”

Remember that Peter spoke of Paul’s writing as scripture in 2 Peter 3:15,16. Peter knew that Paul had this apostolic authority to speak to the gentiles, and that this apostleship gave him the authority to lay down doctrine. The Lord himself gave Paul this authority, and only the Lord may call an apostle to that position.

Remember in Galations Paul opens with these words:

“Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead)”.

There Paul has asserted what it means to be called - raised up by God the Father and Christ himself, through the appearance to him on the Damascus road, the appearance of the risen Christ, and the teaching by God through his Spirit to this man in Arabia.

Paul makes this plain so often, that God chose him just as he chose the other apostles (see 1 Corinthians 15:8 which finishes off: “last of all he was seen by me also, as of one born out of due time.”

Paul’s experience on the Damascus road was no simple conversion experience, it was a meeting between this man and the risen Lord, long after the forty days, long after Pentecost, and long after his appearance to specially chosen witnesses. Acts 26 contains yet more details of Paul’s special commision, if more details are yet needed.

So now we see that by this definition of a true apostle that clearly there can be no apostles today. An apostle is called only by Christ so apostolic authority cannot be passed from generation to generation as some claim.

It is the view of some, for instance of the Catholic churches, that apostolic authority is passed by unbroken line from the first apostles to present day apostles. It seems difficult to me to support this view from scripture, for only God can call an apostle, only Christ can raise up an apostle and only a witness of his resurrection can be an apostle. Furthermore, only one who received his teaching from Christ can be an apostle for all others are building upon the foundations of others.

In the Catholic Church’s favour, however, is the recognition by most of a difference between being an apostle and being in the Apostolic succession. When Apostolic succession is defined thus: “Apostolic succession is the line of bishops stretching back to the apostles”, then it is clear that a difference is being drawn between the Apostles and those that followed in the succession.

But many protestant groups also claim to have apostles. Some protestants consider themselves a direct descendant from the Catholic church, where there is a tradition of apostolic succession - and inasmuch as any such group claims apostles through this succession, they would be errant (but few actually do). Other protestant groups claim that a man who builds a new church is the apostle of that church, but they too misunderstand the very nature of the ministry of the apostle. A man who builds a new church still builds on the foundations that were laid by those first apostles because he has learned all he learned from other Christians.

A man who builds a new church has no right to lay down doctrine, nor will he ever claim to have seen the risen Christ - even though he may have witnessed our Lord in some other manner. He may be a godly man, full of the Spirit and love for his Lord, but he is misguided if he thinks that he is an apostle.

Surely no church which claims to have modern day apostles can truly be based upon the biblical church structure, for they have misunderstood the nature of this ministry, and they are thus in error.

But finally - let us remember not to remove the speck from our brother’s eye whilst there is a log in our own. No church structures are perfect, no Christian theology is entirely correct. We can recognise that there are no apostles today, but let us not denigrate the ministries of sincere Christians simply because they have misapproriated this label. Whatever we call such ministries, they are still of value to God when they glorify his name.