The Message And Lifestyle Of The Apostles

These different types of apostles had different roles, but what they had in common was either their encounter with Jesus in his earthly ministry or in his risen and ascended ministry, or else their being directly commissioned by one who had met these qualifications. And their transformation in understanding Jesus’s identity as God incarnate, offering salvation to the world, became the foundation of their message. The Twelve and Paul are dramatic examples.

The Twelve displayed a remarkable personal diversity. For example, Peter, Andrew, James, and John were partners in a successful fishing business on the Sea of Galilee (Mk 1:16-20; Lk 5:9-11). Matthew was a hated tax collector (Mt 9:9-13), seen as a traitor because he worked for the Roman occupying government extracting as much tax as he could from his own people. Simon the Zealot was a revolutionary who was willing to die for the cause of liberating Israel from Rome. In normal circumstances these men might be ready to stick a knife in each other, but their individual encounters with Jesus transformed them into a cohesive unit dedicated to declaring Jesus to be the only way to eternal life (cp. Jn 6:67-69).

Peter’s preaching at Pentecost is an example of his dramatic transformation from one who denied Jesus to one who fearlessly preached to the multitudes in Jerusalem. His message was clear: “Repent . . . and be baptized, each of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. . . . Be saved from this corrupt generation!” (Ac 2:38,40). For more than thirty years Peter traversed the ancient world proclaiming the same message, until finally the Roman government executed him. But Rome couldn’t silence the message, for the church continued to proclaim the gospel fearlessly in the face of persecution.

The apostle Paul was a former Pharisee (Php 3:4-6). The Pharisees were well-known critics of Jesus (Mt 12:14), and Paul himself actively persecuted the church as a Pharisee (Ac 22:3-4). But after his encounter with the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus, Paul was radically transformed from an enemy to one who gave the rest of his life as a servant of Jesus. Paul’s own testimony of what produced the transformation is found in his letter to Titus. He speaks of his former life of foolishness, malice, envy, and hatred (Ti 3:3), but then says:

“But when the kindness of God our Savior and his love for mankind appeared, he saved us—not by works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit. He poured out his Spirit on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we may become heirs with the hope of eternal life” (Ti 3:4-7).

The apostles seem an unlikely group to be used by Jesus to establish the church and proclaim his message of salvation and transformation. But what empowered them was not their own charisma or powerful preaching, nor an ambition to create a movement. Rather, it was the operation of the Spirit that caused their transformation into the image of Jesus, which then impelled them to proclaim Jesus’s glorious message of salvation and hope of change to the entire world.