The 12 apostles
and the apostle Paul have always been esteemed as righteous men of God and
rightly so. Nonetheless, there has also been a noticeable inference that they
were devoid of any inaccuracy in carrying out the position given to them by
God. While this belief may be inferred, it is not supported by Scripture. It is
a fact of Scripture that all men have the volition to choose to obey or
disregard divine directives (James 1:14-15; 1 John 1:8), otherwise there would
be no need of the commands to refrain from certain temptations and sin (James
4:11; 2 Thessalonians 3:6; Ephesians 5:3-5). Paul expressed the need for the
believer to “filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18) because he knew that
without the controlling agency of the Holy Spirit, the believer is vulnerable
to temptation and sin. The early disciples and apostles were no different than
any other believer in Jesus Christ—they too were vulnerable to succumb to
temptations.
The fact that
the apostles made mistakes only demonstrates that they were not superhuman—that
they were truly no different than any other believer. The real issue is that
they had a different spiritual gift than others. But first an examination of
some of the heroes of the faith named in Hebrews 11 will establish that those
who are used by God do not, as it were, walk on water at all times. Abraham,
Moses and David, these men were used by God in wonderful ways, and yet
Scripture records some of their errors that hindered their advancement in the
spiritual life.
Abraham, the
father of faith was told by the Lord that he would beget an heir and his seed
would be as innumerable as the stars in the heavens. The Scriptures state that
“Then he believed in the Lord, and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.”
After this declaration, Abraham became impatient waiting for Sarah to conceive.
So at an advanced age, he decided to take command of the situation and have a
child with Sarah’s maid, Hagar (Genesis 16). Regardless of his lack of faith in
the Lord to fulfill His promise, Abraham was still used by God—he and Sarah had
a son (Isaac, Genesis 21:2) and from him the nation of Israel would come forth.
Moses, who led
the children of Israel out of Egypt, disobeyed God by striking the rock to
obtain water instead of speaking to it as he was instructed (Numbers 20). His
penalty was that he would not step into the Promised Land given to Israel
(Deuteronomy 1:37) and yet God still utilized him to bring Israel to their
Promised Land.
David, the
greatest king of Israel, who God said was “a man after my own heart” (1 Samuel
13:14), committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her husband, Uriah, killed in
battle with the hopes to cover up his sin (2 Samuel 11). David was divinely
disciplined with the hostilities set against him from within his own household
which was generated by the rebellion and death of his son Absalom (2 Samuel
14-18).
There is a
difference in how God communicated with those who ministered to His people.
During the lives of Abraham and Moses, each had direct communication with the
Lord, while during David’s life, he had prophets (Samuel, Nathan) providing him
with Divine communication. On the contrary, during the onset of the Church Age,
He spoke directly to some (Paul in Acts 9); in dreams (Peter in Acts 10); in
visions (John in Revelation 1). After Acts 9, there is no recorded instance of
direct communication to any of the apostles. Any communication came by way of
inspired writings (2 Timothy 3:16). And also to be noted, the apostles did not
have a prophet as David and the other Kings of Israel, who had prophets that
communicated the Lord’s warnings or instructions of how they were to rule His
people and to correct them when they erred.
Therefore, it
is essential to objectively consider how the apostles in the book of Acts
carried out their responsibilities. It should be noted that in Luke’s writing
of the book of Acts, he does not identify any of the apostles’ activities as
error or miscalculations. This is because he did not have the office of prophet
that would necessitate him to inform them of wrongdoing or error; he merely
recounted the events pertaining to the early Church. Luke records them without
declaring their error because it simply was not his appointed function. And as
shall be seen, Paul records one example of an apostles’ error.
To begin with,
Jesus instructed them in the Great Commission to “make disciples of all the
nations” (Matthew 28:19). The apostles failure to understand the extent
intended is evidenced by the fact that they remained in Jerusalem a year after
the giving of the Great Commission, and then only after the martyrdom of
Stephen which led to the great persecution against the church in Jerusalem that
scattered them “throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria.”
The point of
contention focuses on the word ‘nations.’ By definition or usage this cannot
refer exclusively to Jewish people. The Greek word used is éthnos (ἔθνος)
and means a race, a nation; in the plural the nations; and as a distinction from Israel, Gentiles.[3]
The translators for the New American Standard Bible translated this word the
majority of the time (93 times) as ‘Gentiles’.[4]
The Greek
scholar, Spiros Zodhiates writes:
In the Jewish
sense, tá éthnē the nations, means the Gentile nations or the Gentiles in
general as spoken of all who are not Israelites and implying idolatry and
ignorance of the true God, i.e., the heathen, pagan nations…In the New
Testament, éthnos generally designates a non–Jewish nation, but it is also used
of the Jewish nation when referred to officially (Luke 7:5; 23:2; John 11:48f;
18:35).[5]
Nowhere in
Scripture is Israel referred to in the plural as the nations. So when the apostles heard this Great Commission and
the words ‘all the nations’, they had to have known its significance. There
could be no mistaking: this was not
the continuation, as some scholars believe, of the previous commission (Matthew
10:5ff) when our Lord stated “Do not go in the way of the Gentiles [ἔθνος], and do not enter any city of the Samaritans; but
rather go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” The Great Commission
countermanded those instructions set forth in Matthew 10 and was the basis of
God’s institution of the new Age of Grace.
A.T. Robertson
concurs, that they were to go “Not just the Jews scattered among the Gentiles,
but the Gentiles themselves in every land. And not by making Jews of them,
though this point is not made plain here. It will take time for the disciples
to grow into this Magna Charta of the
missionary propaganda.”[6]
Which brings us
to Acts 11 where Peter relates to “the apostles and brethren that were in
Judea” regarding his ministering to the Gentile, Cornelius in Caesarea. He
reveals how the Holy Spirit fell upon Cornelius “and all those who were
listening to the message.” He then
concludes:
“Therefore if
God gave to them the same gift as He gave to us also after believing in the
Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God’s way?” (Acts 11:17)
This statement
alone demonstrates that Peter did not understand the full implications of the
Great Commission.
Also to be
noted is the apostles’ response to Peter’s account:
When they heard
this, they quieted down and glorified God, saying, “Well then, God has granted
to the Gentiles also the repentance that leads to life.” (Acts 11:18)
The implication
seems to be that this was the first time they had heard that the Gentiles also
were offered the gift of eternal life. And yet this was not the case for the
fact is it was detailed in the Great Commission by our Lord, Himself.
Consider
another example of an error in judgement committed by the apostle Peter. It is
not found in the book of Acts, but recounted by Paul in his epistle to the
Galatians (2:11ff). Paul cites Peter’s duplicity concerning his association
with Gentiles in Antioch; that while “prior to the coming of certain men from
James” Peter had no problem eating with the Gentiles and after these ‘certain
men’ had arrived, Peter would “withdraw and hold himself aloof.” This attitude
of aloofness was directed towards those Gentiles who he had associated with
previously. The reason Peter reacted this way was because he feared the
Judaizes who still held to the legalism of Judaism regarding relations with
Gentiles. Paul further states that Peter’s hypocrisy influenced other Jews and
even Barnabas.
This is not
atypical of Peter—this character flaw is evidenced in the Gospels. J.B.
Lightfoot explains:
But in fact St.
Peter’s character, as it is drawn in the Gospels, explains every difficulty. It
is at least no surprise, that he who at one moment declared himself ready to
lay down his life[8]
for his Lord’s sake and even drew his sword[9]
in defense of his Master, and the next betrayed[10]
Him with a thrice repeated denial, should have acted in this case, as we infer
he acted from the combined accounts of St. Luke and St. Paul. There is the same
impulsive courage followed by the same shrinking timidity.[11]
Summary
The intent of
this study is not to denigrate the early apostles or to belittle their divinely
appointed office. But instead its objective is to demonstrate that they were
not superhuman, without the capacity for failure or error. Regarding this, they
were no different than any other believer: they were saved for all eternity, the
Holy Spirit indwelled within them, they each had a spiritual gift and each
possessed an old sin nature. Their spiritual gift was ‘apostle’, and this gift
entailed an authority over the early church. But it did not include
infallibility. The only time a believer can be assured that they are under the
complete control of the Holy Spirit is when they obey the command to be filled
with the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18) and stand free from unconfessed sin (1
John 1:9).
It can be
concluded from the Scripture passages cited that concerning the Great
Commission, the apostles either misunderstood the scope of the Great Commission—that
the Gospel of Salvation extended to the Gentiles as well as to the Jews—or the
fact that they were so entrenched in Jewish Pharisaical traditions that they
were hesitant to fulfill the entire objective of the directives which the Lord
imparted to them.
