As the Incarnate Word, Jesus declared the mind of God to His hearers. However, He did not declare the totality of God’s word to those who heard Him. The evening before His crucifixion Jesus informed the disciples of this fact saying, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now” (John 16:12). The issue was not with Jesus but with the ability of the disciples to receive all that God wanted to reveal. Only with added experience and continued listening would they get the rest of the story. In the face of this limitation Jesus added this explanation, “When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13).
After the promised Holy Spirit came upon the apostles and others at Pentecost the apostles began preaching the gospel. In fact persecution became the impetus that thrust them out in every broadening proclamation. Those who had been with Jesus and heard His words took His good news everywhere they scattered. God’s continuing revelation through the Spirit began to fill out what still lacked in His revealed truth. Apostolic preaching became the channel for the spoken word of God for several decades before that Word took written form.
Apostles’ writing, preaching
God’s Word was heard not only in apostolic preaching but also in the writings of the apostles. From almost the beginning of the written epistles there was recognition that those writings carried revelatory authority. For example Peter referred to letters written by Paul as having the same status as other Scriptures, declaring in 2 Peter 3:15–16 that “our beloved brother Paul” wrote letters “according to the wisdom given him as he does in all his letters” before continuing with the frank acknowledgment that “there are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other Scriptures.” The reference to “the other Scriptures” attests that some of Paul’s letters were received on a par with other Bible books.
The apostolic preaching and writing were not considered a revelatory word from God simply because they were the activities of apostles. The Spirit of truth inspiring what they apostles proclaimed and wrote caused their words to be the very Word of God. Apparently some of the apostles wrote some letters that were not of this character. They were only ordinary correspondence.
Of particular note would be the correspondence the apostle Paul had with the Corinthian church. Within the two Corinthian letters that are part of the Bible are references to other letters that Paul wrote to the Corinthians. For example in 1 Corinthians 5:9, Paul referred to a prior letter he had written where he urged them to refrain from sexual immorality.
In Paul’s case he was told at his conversion that God picked him as a chosen instrument to carry God’s message to Gentiles and the children of Israel (Acts 9:15). Years later when writing to the Colossians, Paul mentioned that God had given him the responsibility “to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed” (Col. 1:25–26).
In short God used selected apostles and their close associates to fully reveal His Word through their preaching and writing. We can think of their message as the apostolic Word.
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