Cheryl

Don,

When Paul said that he is least among the apostles he did not say least among the apostles of Jesus Christ so I think it would be reasonable that he is talking about the bigger picture than the twelve. I could be wrong but the verses above this one list the foundational apostles as “the twelve” even though there were only eleven at the time. This group of apostles was the overseers appointed by Jesus as the foundational stones for the church.

You ask whether all the apostles made a blunder. How I would describe it is that they made an assumption that was faulty. I don’t have a problem with that. After all they also made an assumption that deacons should be males (Acts 6:3). This was a faulty assumption at the time, but it appears the apostles had baggage that they brought with them from their Jewish upbringing. Jesus said that he had many things to teach them but they were not able to bear them at the time. There is a time of maturity that was needed and when the apostles made mistakes (such as when Peter withdrew from eating with the Gentiles) these did not affect the text of scripture which is God-breathed. The apostles still were human.

I love these kinds of dialogs. They stretch me and make me have to think through these issues. Now I would like to stretch you. What makes you believe that Paul was not a foundational apostle – on of the twelve who are ordained by Jesus himself? What makes you think that God picked Matthias and not Paul for this place of service? Is it just because the apostles thought they were responsible and prayed about it? Or do you see Paul’s fight to be considered an apostle of Jesus Christ as something different than I do?

Guys, there are lots to think about here. The fact is that there is a boundary or fence that holds the foundational apostles to a number of twelve. How do we deal with that? How can we see things differently outside the box than how we have always seen the twelve? No matter what our answer, we have to understand there were not thirteen foundational apostles…there were twelve.