I want to talk to you about the release of the apostle. I wish I could see how many different reactions there are in people’s minds to that statement because that is a common phrase that we hear: the apostle’s release—the apostolic ministry being released.
I have come to learn that it means many different things to different people. To some it means the apostolic ministry in me is to be released so that I am no longer hindered and harassed by circumstances.
To some it means that he is to be released in his body. To those in churches outside the area I live, it means primarily one thing: that I would be freer to travel and minister to others. I believe that it takes in all of those things.
But the thing I want to do, more than focusing on just what his release as an apostle would mean, is to look to the Word and see in general what it means for an apostolic ministry in the New Testament order, to be released. In this way we will understand more fully what it means for the ministry of an apostle that God brings forth, to be released to the world and to the Body.
We need to understand that the release of an apostle means much more than just his freedom to travel around ministering to churches. It means more than the appearance of a man to the world so that the ministry is seen before the eyes of the people. Some may wonder why God has put such a rich ministry in the midst of this walk and yet left it so obscure. In the natural mind, not in spiritual thinking, but in the natural mind, one of the most plausible arguments against this walk would be, “If it’s so much of God, where are the people?” But that is not right. It is of God, but God has veiled it. God has left it obscure, God has blinded the revelation of the ministry He has restored, except for a select few that He is preparing, in order that they become something. The release of an apostle means more than his freedom to move about, it involves that apostolic ministry and its function and purpose being released within the Body of Christ. It involves the coming forth of the apostolic ministry within the people of God.
“And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to the fulness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:11–13).
The apostolic ministry is given by Christ to the Church as its channel and agency to bring it into perfection.
The apostles and prophets are the foundation of the Church. It isn’t a man that is the foundation of the church. Roman Catholic thinking interprets the Scripture that way. They say when Christ gave the promise to Peter, that upon this rock He would build His Church, that Peter becomes the issue and the Church is built upon him. I believe the Church was built upon Peter, but not in the sense that they interpret it. It was built upon the revelation that Peter had of who Christ was. It was built upon what Christ became to Peter. Peter, in being a revelation and a manifestation of what Christ was, became the release of Christ: the Church of Christ.
The apostle is given to the Body to bring forth its perfection. The apostolic ministry is given to set forth fresh revelation for each generation. The Church is raised up to walk in the plan of God, and that is why there are so many denominations. Whenever a little group of people began to see something new, they moved on with God. But then as they became dead, and others moved on, another denomination was formed. What they were all striving to do was to move in something fresh from God. God doesn’t change; the Scripture says that the Lord changes not (Malachi 3:6). But God does unfold. You can see that God is stable but as you look at the stability of God, you may not understand all that He is. He remains the same in His purposes, but to you His purposes seem to change because your perception of His purposes deepens. God moves on in each generation.
Apostles are raised up to bring an understanding of what God is doing in the present generation. Do you realize that we are probably the first generation since the early Church that has had the apostolic ministry come forth on the level that we see it? Do you realize the privilege that we have in sitting under a ministry God has raised up to bring a revelation of what He is doing in this age, in order that we can move with God? We don’t have to second-guess God. We know just what He is doing, because the revelation of His very purpose, His very intent in our lives and in our generation, and how our generation ties in with every generation past, and those ahead of us, is set before us continually by an apostolic flow of revelation.
The apostolic ministry is furthered in the earth by its release, but the release comes forth in a people. The apostolic ministry is released in a people. God’s principle of dealing in regard to His Christ, His Son, in this day is this: Christ must come forth in a many-membered body. In the thinking of the people of God, Christ can no longer be the individual man that walked the earth two thousand years ago. As far as thought is concerned, as far as all reality is in accordance with the word of God, Christ is a many-membered body. If you cannot look on Christ as an individual entity, you cannot look on an apostle as an individual entity. His anointing, his revelation, his flow of spirit is released in the people, and they become that ministry. To release the apostle is to release the apostolic anointing in the people that are raised up to be the seal of that ministry.
What is the scope of an apostolic ministry? Paul says: Let a man regard us in this manner, as servants of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God (stewards of the mysteries of God). In this case, moreover, it is required of stewards that one be found trustworthy (I Corinthians 4:1–2).
Notice this phrase—“the mysteries.” Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which has been kept secret for long ages past, but now is manifested, and by the Scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the eternal God, has been made known to all the nations, leading to obedience of faith; to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever (Romans 16:25–27).
Paul often talks about the mystery of the gospel. He was sensing that what he saw in the plan of God in his day had been a mystery, it had been hidden, and he was raised up to speak and reveal to the people what the Father was doing in that age. That is the function of an apostle. That is the scope of his ministry: to show the plan and the ways of God’s will in the earth. They become the word of God for that age. They become the message of the Lord. They become the living word that goes forth.
It is not a concept that we are following, it is not a system of teaching, it is not a doctrine. It is a living word that we become, and it unfolds in our lives. The apostolic ministry is going to move through the world, but it is not going to spread just through the printing or the video or the audio. It’s going to spread through the world because of a people that become the seal and expression of the ministry, and they go forth and spread it. If you have a piece of bread and you take a hunk of butter and you put it in the center of the bread, that’s just great for the little piece of bread under that lump of butter, but the rest of the bread doesn’t have any butter—until you spread it. When you spread it, every part of the bread has butter on it.
That is what God is doing with us. He is raising us up and He deals with us. Do you think He is dealing with us so we will do certain things? God’s emphasis is not upon what you are going to be doing—it is upon what you are going to be. Everything you do will come out of what you are. This is what He is trying to bring forth in our lives.
How does the revelation come? We have seen the picture before in Psalm 133. The anointing begins on the head of Aaron, the oil is poured on his head and it comes down on his beard and flows down even to the skirts of his garments, to the hem of his garments, down to his feet (Psalm 133:1–2). Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church. In Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:3). So the revelation begins in Him and flows through the apostles, it flows through the prophets and the elders and the ministries, through the husbands and the wives and the children; and all the body that is positioned in the divine order receives it. It flows through the entire body!
The apostle is not super-human. He is not a super man. He is a channel of God. He is not raised up to be extraordinary in every aspect of his life; but he is raised up to be in tune with the mind and the will of the Father. He becomes the channel of God’s word and God’s truth to the Body of Christ. We make a mistake if we put upon an apostle a certain image of what we think he is to be. How should we look upon him? How should we look upon a man called as an apostle? Should we look upon him after the flesh? Should we glorify him? God forbid. How should we respect him? See him as a channel that God has raised up! Expect nothing more of him than that he be a perfect channel of God, and that he be liberated for God to flow through him. Then God can be created in the same level in our lives and God can flow in the earth through the Body that He is raising up.
An apostolic ministry has been called the father ministry of the Church because it is a creative anointing upon an apostle of God that gives birth in the spirit to many children. Remember how Paul wrote to the Galatians, “My little children of whom I am again in travail until Christ be fully formed within you.” Galatians 4:19. Maturity in the people of God comes through the travail that God puts upon men of God, and they travail for His people. The New Testament is filled with prayers that Paul made: prayers for his church, prayers for the people that God had put under his hand. Night and day, without ceasing, he travailed that they would be presented perfect before the Lord.
That is part of the function of the apostle. But one of the great functions of an apostle is to have a people under him become the proof of his ministry. Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some, letters of commendation to you or from you? You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men; being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts. And such confidence we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. II Corinthians 3:1–6.
Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? And in the same sentence, Are not you my work in the Lord? If to others I am not an apostle, at least I am to you; for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord. I Corinthians 9:1–2. The freedom of an apostle comes because his deposit of God is expressed through people that are his seal. And they are the fruit of his ministry. Paul called the Thessalonian church his crown of exaltation in the presence of the Lord (I Thessalonians 2:19). What is the reward of an apostle of God? His reward is a people who are his crown. Does he get some special crown because he cared for the people? No, but those people in their spirit, their love and faith, and intercession and dedication, become the crown of exaltation in the presence of the Lord—the proof of a ministry that God has wrought in the earth.
False apostles are going to come by the hundreds, but I believe that you cannot have an apostle unless you have a people under him who are his seal and through whom his ministry is released into the Body of Christ in a greater measure.
God is working on a corporate principle, He is not working on an individual principle. I wonder if we are not making a mistake to limit the release of an apostle to the Body just to the release of that man to travel to the churches to minister. There were times in the early Church when Paul couldn’t go to a church. It took weeks, sometimes months, to get to another church. What would he do? He would send Timothy. He would send Titus. He would send Epaphroditus. He would send any one of the other brothers. Could he trust them?
For if you were to have countless tutors in Christ, yet you would not have many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. I exhort you therefore, be imitators of me. For this reason (the reason of imitation) I have sent to you Timothy, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, and he will remind you of my ways which are in Christ, just as I teach everywhere in every church. I Corinthians 4:15–17. Timothy was a child of the apostolic ministry. He was the offspring of it. He was a true image of that ministry.
As a child begins to grow up, someone will say, “He’s the spitting image of his dad!” And that is what we are to be: the spitting image of an apostolic ministry. The spitting image of it—the same anointing, the same depth, the same loyalty, and the same violence coming forth. This is to be worked in us, so that whether he is in our presence or away from us, we are that ministry. It is not a thing separate from us that he has to try to bring us into, but we explode with it whether we are by ourselves, or when we are together as a body and he is not in our midst. We are the apostolic release. There may be just a few that are named by Christ, “This man is an apostle.” Nevertheless, that deposit, that revelation word, and that anointing of God is working in the lives of the people.
This walk has to be a living thing. The seal of it is coming forth again and again, reproduced in the spirit, not in the soulish realm of copying or human imitation.
We are going to be a mighty Timothy company. There is a spiritual anointing that rests upon an individual to be a Timothy. Any individual who is moving in the revelation of the apostle and is moving in the same spirit is a Timothy. We become the imperial spread of the Kingdom, of a Kingdom apostleship that God has brought forth in a new day. You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, these entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also. II Timothy 2:1–2.
There is one thing that is being built in our generation: God’s Kingdom! If you want to be an expression of God in the earth, how do you do it? Just keep sitting under the word that is coming forth. Have an open spirit that hungers and prays, “Lord, reveal it; Lord, stamp it in my spirit. Let it be a reality there.” Then this word will become more than a letter that kills, or a principle—it will become a living truth in your heart.