Apostle and other Meanings

It is sometimes said by those who recognize that there were other apostles besides the Twelve and Paul that the latter (to whom some, on the ground of 1Co 15:7; Gal 1:19, would add James the Lord's brother) were the apostles par excellence, while the other apostles mentioned in the New Testament were apostles in some inferior sense. It is hardly possible, however, to make out such a distinction on the ground of New Testament usage. There were great differences, no doubt, among the apostles of the primitive church, as there were among the Twelve themselves - differences due to natural talents, to personal acquirements and experience, to spiritual gifts. Paul was greater than Barnabas or Silvanus, just as Peter and John were greater than Thaddaeus or Simon the Cananean. But Thaddaeus and Simon were disciples of Jesus in the very same sense as Peter and John; and the Twelve and Paul were not more truly apostles than others who are mentioned in the New Testament. If apostleship denotes missionary service, and if its reality, as Paul suggests, is to be measured by its seals, it would be difficult to maintain that Matthias was an apostle par excellence, while Barnabas was not. Paul sets Barnabas as an apostle side by side with himself (1Co 9:5 f; Gal 2:9; compare Act 13:2 f; Act 14:4, Act 14:14); he speaks of Andronicus and Junias as “of note among the apostles” (Rom 16:7); he appears to include Apollos along with himself among the apostles who are made a spectacle unto the world and to angels and to men (1Co 4:6, 1Co 4:9); the natural inference from a comparison of 1Th 1:1 with 1Th 2:6 is that he describes Silvanus and Timothy as “apostles of Christ”; to the Philippians he mentions Epaphroditus as “your apostle” (Phi 2:25 the Revised Version, margin), and to the Corinthians commends certain unknown brethren as “the apostles of the churches” and “the glory of Christ” (2Co 8:23 the Revised Version, margin). And the very fact that he found it necessary to denounce certain persons as “false apostles, deceitful workers, fashioning themselves into apostles of Christ” (2Co 11:13) shows that there was no thought in the primitive church of restricting the apostleship to a body of 12 or 13 men. “Had the number been definitely restricted, the claims of these interlopers would have been self-condemned” (Lightfoot, Galatians, 97).

This biblical study was taken from the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia Edited by James Orr, published in 1939 by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co