Choosing The Ordinary for The Extraordinary

Many Bible scholars have suggested that one of the greatest miracles Jesus ever performed was His miraculous endurance of the 12 disciples He chose to personally train & make His apostles. “It took divine patience,” one writes, “for the Lord to put up with, pour His life into, & entrust His ministry with this group of unlikely men. How He must have groaned within Himself so many times as He witnessed their countless blunders all the way to the point of their desertion of Him as He went to the cross.” Never have 12 men ever been given greater privilege & responsibility than these (the Great Commission, the Gospel message, & the care of the church), & never have 12 people seemed so inadequate & unqualified for such a tremendous task. If there was anything extraordinary about these men, there is absolutely no evidence of it. If anything, the Bible highlights their many mistakes & weaknesses. The 12 apostles were uneducated & unrefined men. They were the commonest of the common. They were not the elite, aristocratic, & influential of society; instead, they were ordinary people from rural areas, some farmers & fishermen, with plenty of character flaws.