The designation “apostle” is found 77 times in the New Testament (NASV). The cognate verb “to send” is found 135 times in the NT and all but 12 times in the Gospel accounts and the book of Acts. There are “false apostles” who are identified as messengers of Satan (2 Corinthians 11:13). Apostle is actually a transliteration of the Greek word apostolos with the cognate verb being apostello.
“Apostles” were messengers but they were more than that. Rengstorf has an extensive discussion (50 pages!) of both the cognate verb and the noun for apostle in The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. The verb means “to send” and the noun means “one sent.” In secular usage, the “sending implies a commission bound up with the person of the one sent” (398). It is important to keep the idea of “commission” in mind. Also among secular usage, when one was sent by the king, there is a “further thought of the associated authorisation [sic] of the one sent. The men thus described are representatives of their monarch and his authority” (399). Here, keep in mind the idea of “authority.”
The Greek word was used in Jewish writings as well as translating a particular Hebrew verb (shelah) and came to be “a technical term for the sending of a messenger with a special task” (400). Rengstorf says the idea is best seen in the call of Isaiah in 6:8. In that passage, Isaiah is given the call to represent God to His people “as His plenipotentiary.” A plenipotentiary is “a person, especially a diplomat, invested with the full power of independent action on behalf of their government.” The word comes from the Latin that means “full power.” Except Isaiah did not have “full power” to act “independently.” He did, however, have full power to speak on God’s behalf as He was guided by the Holy Spirit of God (1:20; 7:10; 21:10; 40:5; 48:16; 51:16).
Discussing the use of the verb to send in the Gospel of John, Rengstorf suggests Jesus uses the verb “to denote His full authority both to the Jews and the disciples …since He thereby shows that behind His words and person there stands God and not merely His own pretension” (404). To sum up the use of the verb in the NT, Rengstorf gives this meaning: “to send forth to service in the kingdom of God with full authority (grounded in God)” (406).
Rabbinic Judaism had a proverb: “the one sent by a man is as the man himself.” That statement is certainly true of the apostles. Commenting on the use of apostolos in the NT, Rengstorf writes: “It always denotes a man who is sent, and sent with full authority” (421).
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When Jesus sent out the twelve apostles, He told them: “He who receives you receives Me, and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me” (Matthew 10:40). Later, He will tell them: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven” (Matt. 16:19).
It is clear that the apostles were sent plenipotentiary – with full power to speak and act on Christ’s behalf. Of course, they are the authority only because the Holy Spirit, as in the case of Isaiah, guided their preaching and writing (Matt. 10:20; 1 Cor. 2:13).
So melded were the thoughts of Christ and the words of His apostles that it is often impossible to distinguish between them. For example, in John 3, where do Christ’s words end and the words of the writer begin? It is hard to know and unnecessary to determine.
Thus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are no more important nor authoritative than what the rest of the NT teaches and binds on Christians. Let us respect the apostles. They are sent out by Christ.
