Apostles

[OBW]

Originally Posted by ZNPaaneah

As for "the average Christian" I have no idea what you mean by that. I don't want to assume the worst, so I hope you can clarify that expression.

Actually, from where I sit, the worst would be a church age in which every Christian is expected to be fully grounded in the details of correct theology. Who must each take upon themselves the job of ferreting out bad teachers, apostles, etc., and must entirely self-feed. Christianity's version of the Army of One, which I will call the Church of One (C1).

In C1, there is no farm or building, but all are the workers.
In C1, Jesus did not have a few followers who were the close circle getting the detailed teachings, then more followers who traveled constantly with him and got a lot of His teachings, then the majority of his follower who stayed in their towns and followed the teachings of the one who came and performed the miracles and said how to think and live more righteously. Instead, only those who left all and followed were his followers. And only those who got to be on the inside were the followers.
In C1, there are not "big letter" apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers to perfect everyone else for their works of ministry. Instead, everyone has to become big in something.
In C1, everyone has every spiritual gift because they want it. And they need them all because they do not rely on anyone else to have that particular gift. They must have it for themselves.
In C1, Paul wrote to Timothy simply because he had to address it to someone. It was intended that everyone understand the charge to direct certain ones not to teach certain things, or to understand the qualifications for elder and deacon and become one.
In C1, there is no flock with a shepherd, just a flock of shepherds.

In C1, the most important parts of the NT are all those commentaries by Paul about specific things that went wrong in various churches. And the point is not that they have what they need to fix it, but that they should be focused on getting what they need and eventually fix it.

But in the church, the assembly of the redeemed, there are workers and there are the farm, the building. There are shepherds and there is a flock.

No. The flock is not just stupidly moving from sparse field to sparse field eating a little grass here and there as the shepherd doles it out. But they are not all rising to be fully shepherds.

The way we have been taught for many years — and not just in the LRC — is that we are all on our own. I do not think that everyone reading their own Bible is bad. It is very good. But everyone trying to glean their own interpretation of things is the early stages of C1 syndrome. We should be reading. But reading to see for ourselves what those who are our teachers have shown us or at least tried to show us. We read to focus and strengthen our "ethic" concerning what we learn "in the temple" so that as we live house-to-house, and at work, and in the marketplace, etc., we are living a life that will get inquiries.

When Peter said to always have an answer for every man, he was not talking about having a gospel message to proclaim from a street corner. He was expecting that each of those "different lives" being lived out in the places in which they were lived would be questioned by the people who noticed. Have an answer. If they are not asking, then it is probably that the life is not sufficiently different to be noticed and raise a question.

And last. All the focus on whether or not there are present apostles and how to detect the true from the false (if there are present apostles) is taking our eyes off of our real task, which is living changed lives, and putting them onto people. And at least some of the rhetoric seems to think that it is that task of every one of us — a bunch of C1s — to be up on it.

This is based on a view of the gospels and the epistles that sees the primacy of the gospel in following and obeying and not in the teaching. Some of the epistles were written expressly to the teachers. And some were written to the flock. But in the gospel, it is your life that seems to matter the most, not your theological knowledge or your ability to discern true apostles.