B. Jesus and the Apostles

First, Jesus promised that His words would not pass away:

“Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words shall not pass away. (Mat 24:35)

Second, so that his words would not pass away, Jesus entrusted His teaching to the Apostles and he then promised them the guiding presence of God’s Spirit in their continued preaching and teaching. But most importantly, Jesus said that the Spirit of God would also teach them and guide them into the truth. This means that the Apostles should now also be recognized as a source of divine revelation and a key element in how God has spoken to our world. Consider the following portions of Scripture which illustrate these points. In these passages Jesus is speaking to the apostles during the last supper which he shared with them before his arrest.

“These things I have spoken to you, while abiding with you. {26} “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. (John 14:25-26)

“No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. (John 15:15)

“When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, He will bear witness of Me, {27} and you will bear witness also, because you have been with Me from the beginning. (John 15:26-27)

“I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. {13} “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. {14} “He shall glorify Me; for He shall take of Mine, and shall disclose it to you. {15} “All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said, that He takes of Mine, and will disclose it to you. (John 16:12-15)

These things Jesus spoke; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify Thy Son, that the Son may glorify Thee, ……..{6} “I manifested Thy name to the men whom Thou gavest Me out of the world; Thine they were, and Thou gavest them to Me, and they have kept Thy word. {7} “Now they have come to know that everything Thou hast given Me is from Thee; {8} for the words which Thou gavest Me I have given to them; and they received them, and truly understood that I came forth from Thee, and they believed that Thou didst send Me. (John 17:1-8)

Finally, after His resurrection, Jesus commissioned His disciple to go out into the world to be His witnesses and make disciples. In the opening verses of the book of Acts, Luke the author explains what happened in the time between Jesus resurrection from the dead and His ascension into heaven, mentioning the fact that Jesus gave “orders” to the apostles when He commissioned them regarding the work of the Kingdom of God.

The first account I composed, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when He was taken up to heaven, after He had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom He had chosen. To these He also presented Himself alive after His suffering, by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of forty days and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God (Acts 1:1-3)

We learn more about theses “orders” that Jesus gave them in the next two passages, the first of which tells us that the apostles were instructed to go out and be witnesses for Jesus.

So when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, “Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority; but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.” (Acts 1:6-8)

Jesus also directed them to go out and make disciples, teaching those new disciples to observe all He had commanded.

And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Mat 28:18-20)

Based on the promises made by Jesus and the instructions He gave to the Apostles we can be very confident that what we read in the New Testament is not just the words of men but the words of God given to His Son and to the Apostles who were His chosen instruments of divine revelation. On the next page we learn how the apostles recognized that they had been chosen by God to teach and preach the word of God.