“He called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness. These are the names of the twelve apostles…”
The Scripture tells us that the impartation of authority Jesus gave the disciples in Matthew 10:1 had an immediate effect – even before the disciples begin to use that authority. In the very next verse, these same disciples are suddenly referred to as apostles. The difference in the two terms is significant.
A disciple is a student, an apprentice, pupil, or perhaps an adherent. A disciple is a committed follower. A follower who is following out of their own interest – disciples are driven forward entirely out of internal personal motivation. That is a tremendous thing, and a good deal more useful to the Lord’s work than simply another one of the admiring crowd who do little but look on and ‘like’ what Jesus does. A disciple does much more than a mere admirer does. A disciple is one who is actively seeking – by observation, listening and learning – to be like their teacher. We who study the Bible know that this is the goal of life – to be Christ-like. In fact, the very reason we read the Scripture and related material (like devotionals) is because we want to be more like the Jesus we are following! Being and becoming a faithful disciple is a high and noble calling.
Not only that, it is a calling that Jesus values. So much so that He will later mandate that His followers go and make disciples! It is something we value too, because disciples ‘belong’ to their master. Simply put, disciples of Christ are God’s redeemed and restored people. As Jesus later confessed of those God gave Him, “I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.” This is a tremendous truth – a surety of our salvation. Yet though offered to ‘whosoever will’, it is not accepted by many – a disciple is one of the few!
An apostle differs from a disciple in only three ways. Firstly, an apostle is a disciple who has been given authority to speak on behalf of THE authority. Not just to speak (virtually all disciples can communicate in some way, and all are called to speak truthfully), but to speak on behalf of the sender. And that is the second way they differ from a disciple. The word translated for us as “apostle” means a delegate or envoy or messenger. Matthew is telling us that from this point on the disciples have a whole new calling. They are no longer fishermen and tax collectors and the like who are following Jesus out of a deep sense of commitment. From here on, they are sent by Him to do His work. They are commissioned by Him, and that’s the third difference between disciples and apostles. Disciples are there by calling. Apostles are commissioned to be co-workers. Co-workers with Christ in His Kingdom. They have moved from being observers and learners to being fellow workers on behalf of Christ to the glory of the Father.
That has huge spiritual implications, because to be sent with His authority is an awesome gift. It is a calling by the divine to do the work of the divine with the power of the divine on account of the authority of the divine. What Christ did for the twelve (and what the Spirit does for all disciples from the day of Pentacost to our day following the Great Commission) grants us the ability to speak into the spiritual realm – even to command the spiritual realm from the realm of the physical!
But that doesn’t mean they (or we) stop being disciples. An apostle is always a disciple first. An apostle may have authority and power and commissioning, but they are first and foremost His disciples, sent to do His will, speak His truth and cooperate with His Spirit. Apostles have an authority and power and commissioning, but they have no autonomy. And that is a powerful truth that every apostle (and every disciple) must remember.
The power which Christ has vested in His Church is one that does not imply the exercise of force, but is concerned only with the understandings and convictions of men. To the Church Christ has given the power of the Spirit, the force of truth, the might of saving grace, the influence of spiritual authority; and in the administration of that power, through means of the ministry of the Word and the dispensation of ordinances, the Christian society claims no right over the persons and properties, but only appeals to the hearts and consciences of men.
James Bannerman
APPLICATION: Worship
Our authority and our power and our calling and commissioning and all that we ever truly did have, have now or will have, all come from Christ. Worship Him!