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by Charlie Wolcott

Jesus had a single mission: to save mankind from sin. But with that mission, there was a need to get the message of salvation out to the world. He could have easily done it in the flesh, but God had a plan that was much bigger than one human body. He wanted a Church, a body of people who worked together for a single goal: to love God, to worship God, and to make disciples of the nations. As has been God’s plan all along, He chose to work through people, even those who have been cursed by sin. For establishing His church, Jesus picked twelve men to follow Him.

Worldview Warriors blogger Katie Erickson did a series on the Apostles and who they were, and I am not going to get into detail about them. We have Peter, James, John, and Andrew who were fishermen; Matthew, a tax collector; Phillip, a disciple of John the Baptist; Nathaniel, an honest man on the brink of despair; Simon, a member of a Jewish violent cult, the Zealots; and Thomas, Bartholomew, James the Less, and Judas. We know the most of Peter, John, Matthew, and Judas because they get more screen time, however, these were the last people you’d ever want to choose for starting a religion.

These twelve men were a total rag-tag group who constantly bickered with each other, often sought who was the favorite and the best, wanted positions of power, and were so clueless about anything Jesus actually taught. And this was done intentionally. Just pay attention to this detail. Jesus predicted that He would be resurrected three days after He would be crucified. The Apostles never got the memo. They kept hearing it, but it never clicked until after it all happened. Yet there was a group who did catch on: the Pharisees. That is why they insisted on having Jesus’ tomb guarded. It was so the disciples could not steal the body and proclaim the resurrection – something they did not understand themselves.

So why did Jesus choose these men? Why didn’t He choose men who were more academically inclined? Why didn’t He choose men who would have money, wealth, and resources to help Him? He actually chose two such men: Matthew and later Paul. Matthew was very wealthy, and Paul was one of the most educated and intelligent men of his time. But Jesus called for them to do something that most won’t do today: to leave it all behind. Matthew left his tax office immediately, leaving behind a life of wealth and luxury. Paul left his career on track to be the leader of the Pharisees and considered all he had learned prior and all his efforts to be godly on his own to be worthless dung. Jesus picked men who were worth nothing in society and men who had positions and who gave them up. And even among them, Jesus chose one man whom He knew would betray Him and called him a devil in front of the others: Judas. Yet none of them ever suspected Judas would ever actually do that.

Jesus picked men whom the world despised to show that the Gospel was not merely for the academic and religious elite but was primarily for the poor and the lowly. He picked men like Matthew and Simon the Zealot, those who had chosen lifestyles of luxury and violence, to show that the Gospel can pull in sinners and change them. He chose men like Paul, who were academically elite, to show the Gospel could read the elite. He even chose a man like Judas as a warning that not all who follow Jesus are of Him. Judas was picked not merely to fulfill prophecy but also as a warning that following Jesus alone does not make one saved.

Jesus picked men who would stumble and bumble all over the place, looking like anything except noble servants of a great king. Peter stuck his foot in his mouth countless times. Thomas needed physical evidence to believe Jesus rose. James and John wanted to call fire from heaven to burn up scoffers, then wanted to be given the top positions of Christ’s kingdom. And those are just the highlights. If Jesus picked these men, that gives us all hope for picking us because He clearly included our stupidity, our stubbornness, and our foolishness into the equation. But He also included the work of the Holy Spirit into the equation as well.

These twelve men, from Pentecost on, became men who would turn the world upside down. When the Gospel began to spread, the Roman Empire didn’t know what to do. All they could do was to try to squash it, and all that did was make it stronger. This rag-tag group of clowns would each suffer very violent deaths and unspeakable tortures and rejections for around 40 years, and not one of them caved on the story. The very men who fled in terror upon Jesus’ arrest were proclaiming Him before thousands just 53 days later, and they willingly endured arrest and beatings to proclaim the name of Christ. What happened? The resurrection of Jesus happened, and they now had the same Holy Spirit that had armed and equipped Jesus.

Jesus picked twelve men to be His disciples and transformed them into pillars of such strength that the world and its finest could never compare. If Jesus can do that with the Apostles, He can do that with us. He can take the sinful, rebellious, stubborn, foolish people we are and make us something that the world is not worthy of. The born-again believer should live a life that makes the temporal world here so superfluous and worthless. Not with snobbery or looking down on them, but with a separation in which we are of this world and not of it and also with a longing to pull as many out of this lowly pit of worldly living as we can. CT Studd said many wanted to live by church steeples and bells, but he wanted to run a rescue shop within a yard of Hell. Studd gave up his prestigious academic and athletic career (he was the best of the best at cricket) for the sake of the Gospel and became one of the more fiery evangelists who never relented.

All Jesus asks of us is a willing and obedient heart. He’ll equip us for our tasks, but if Jesus said to us, “Drop what you are doing and follow me,” would we?

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