{"id":2046,"date":"2005-03-07T13:25:01","date_gmt":"2005-03-07T18:25:01","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=2046"},"modified":"2005-03-07T13:32:27","modified_gmt":"2005-03-07T18:32:27","slug":"christ-as-an-apostle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2005\/03\/christ-as-an-apostle\/","title":{"rendered":"Christ as an Apostle"},"content":{"rendered":"

We often hear that the apostle’s calling is to be a special witness of Jesus Christ<\/a>. A few interesting questions about apostles came up in Priesthood this Sunday. One of them was how we are to reconcile the calling of an apostle, as a special witness of Christ, with the statement in Hebrews 3:1 that Christ himself is an Apostle<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It seems that there are a few different possibilities:<\/p>\n

1. Christ, as an Apostle, acts as a witness of his own divinity. This makes some sense. After all, who is in a better position to testify of Christ’s divinity than the Lord himself? <\/p>\n

However, this possibility seems a little intuitively strange. Is there an implication that an apostle is someone who testifies of another, not himself? I’m not sure. It seems possible to believe that the witnesses of an event should be persons other than the interested parties. And there is an element of this idea in the gospel; we see (for example) that Joseph Smith was not himself one of the formal Three Witnesses to the Book of Mormon. Similarly, it seems possible that Christ, as an Apostle, does not have the same calling as a special witness of Himself. <\/p>\n

What, then, might his role be?<\/p>\n

2. Perhaps Christ, as an Apostle, bears witness of his Father. This is an interesting possibility. Perhaps an apostle is not necessarily one who bears witness of Christ, but rather who bears witness of one greater than he. If this is the case, then perhaps Jesus, in his calling as Apostle, bears witness of his Father. <\/p>\n

3. Or perhaps apostles are not intrinsically linked to bearing witness. They simply do as they are directed. Modern apostles such as Gordon B. Hinckley bear witness of Christ, not because that’s what apostles _do_ in some general sense, but because that’s what _they_ have been asked to do, individually. If they were directed to do something else, their role would change. And maybe Jesus, in his role as Apostle, simply did as _He_ was directed, as well, which was a different set of responsibilities than modern apostles are given.<\/p>\n

Are there other possibilities that I’m missing? The verse in Hebrews is a fascinating one, and I’m still not completely sure how to read it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We often hear that the apostle’s calling is to be a special witness of Jesus Christ. A few interesting questions about apostles came up in Priesthood this Sunday. One of them was how we are to reconcile the calling of an apostle, as a special witness of Christ, with the statement in Hebrews 3:1 that Christ himself is an Apostle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2046\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}