What inspired the Apostles?

Why did Jesus inspire so many people to forget about their personal ambitions and invest their lives to teach the masses about the Gospel? Let us start by examining two apostles, one was a disciple who denied knowing Christ while under threat of arrest, and the other was a powerful Pharisee who persecuted Christ’s followers. I am obviously referring to the apostles Peter and Paul respectively.

It is human nature to feel a certain amount of guilt when we let a friend down or cause harm to another person. Yet, God does not create or relish in our guilt, as we create our own guilt since we are made in God's spiritual image and sin separates us from God.

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"But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God,

and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear."

- Isaiah 59:2 (ESV)

So imagine the overwhelming guilt Peter must have felt after he denied knowing Jesus on three separate occasions, just after Christ was arrested and then Crucified. And imagine Paul’s deep-felt guilt after his conversion, when previously, with his authority had been condemning Christians to death. I don’t think anyone can realistically imagine how these two felt in retrospection. It must have been so profound that it changed their purpose.

​We all feel guilt for various reasons throughout our lives. And, it can be easy to let guilt negatively affect our lives and hold us back. As Christians we must learn from our past mistakes and move on. Just like feeling physical pain, guilt can be a blessing if it inspires us to fix our problems and into action to make a change for the better. Peter and Paul are two primary examples of Christians who were inspired by their own bad decisions to take prior wrongs and make them right. Their sincere faith and love for Christ provided the life changing motivation to counter their mistakes with lifelong commitments to spread Christ's message of love and salvation for all of humanity.

In the book of Mark (ch.10) we learn that both James and John asked to have royal status in heaven. They even had their mother, Matthew (ch.20), present this same request too. 

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To a certain point, all of the disciples let Christ down on various occasions. At times, the disciples had difficulty understanding Christ’s reasoning and ministry. After almost three years of learning from their Master and just before His crucifixion, they even failed to stay awake to warn Jesus when the guards came to arrest him in the Garden of Gethsemane. 

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Yet after Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, a newfound theme was recorded about all of the disciples. They matured to set their own egos aside. Their various self-centered faults were now transformed by their faith into boundless courage and unrelenting commitments to share their own messages about eternal salvation through Christ. All of their individual ministries now spoke to those who would listen and this would usually include the sick, the poor and those without prejudice that had an open heart.
 

These amazing journeys of service to God, though often painful and in many ways deadly, would serve as an example for all Christians to not give up and to keep the faith in times of doubt and hardship. 

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Examples

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James, Son of Zebedee (brother of John), was one of the original four disciples of Christ. He ministered the Gospel in Judea and supposedly Spain. He was eventually (Acts12:1-2) beheaded by King Herod in 44AD after returning to Jerusalem. He was a man of courage and forgiveness, a man without jealousy, living in the shadow of his brother John, a man of extraordinary faith. He was also the first of the twelve to become a martyr.

Before his beheading, tradition has claimed that James returned back to Jerusalem after assuming his ministry journeys had failed. Yet in reality, long after his ministry in Spain, James has inspired the Camino de Santiago that continues to this day. Known in English as “The Way of Saint James”, it is a pilgrimage where millions of inspired individuals take six weeks out of their lives to symbolically walk a 500 mile path that follows where James is said to have traveled. This pilgrimage leads to the famous cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwestern Spain where tradition has it that the remains of the Saint are now buried. Here is an inspiring video of one man's journey across the Camino.

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Andrew the Apostle (brother of Peter & follower of John the Baptist) was the first disciple of Christ. Andrew eventually spent many years ministering to people about Jesus in Asia Minor and the Black Sea region until his martyrdom around 60AD. His fatal mistake was healing and converting the wife of the Roman Governor Aepeas in Patra, Achaea (present day Greece).

This conversion enraged the pagan governor, who ordered the arrest of Andrew and condemned him to die on a cross. Andrew, feeling unworthy to be crucified in the same manner as his Master, begged that his be different. So, he was crucified on an X-shaped cross. Today, this X-shaped symbol of a cross is revered and called Saint Andrew's cross. This symbol is currently honored on the flag of Scotland.

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Thomas Didymus was a disciple that hailed from Galilee. When hearing that Jesus had risen after His crucifixion, in John Ch.20 Thomas said:

“unless I see the nail prints in Jesus' hand and the gash of the spear in His side,

I will not believe”.

This is where the term 'Doubting Thomas' comes from. And when Jesus later appeared to the disciples, He invited Thomas to put his finger in the nail prints in his hands and in his side. Like so many other disciples, his shame for doubting the Lord causes him to have a profound change of heart and confession of faith when he says: "My Lord and my God".

Thomas' doubts were transformed into undeniable belief and faith. Tradition says he went on to minister in Parthia, Persia, and India and eventually suffering martyrdom near Madras, at present day Mt. St.Thomas, India.

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These three condensed examples are just a small sampling of the incredible tales of first century Christian faith and sacrifice. If one were to research the ministries of the disciples and apostles in detail, they would find inspiring stories of faith and sacrifice.

To this day, there are countless legends, shrines and cathedrals spread out across the many nations where they traveled, ministered and died.

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A disciple is a student, one who learns from a teacher... An apostle is one who delivers those teachings to others. The apostles of Christ were on a mission to teach the Gospel with compassion and brotherly love, so that we may also acknowledge the glory of God. We do not earn our eternal salvation through deeds, as it was Christ who has already paid for our sins at the cross of Calvary. As Christians, it is Christ's eternal grace that allows us the opportunity to now learn as disciples and bear fruit as apostles.