The Source of Their Greatness

When we think of the apostles, we tend to put them on pedestals. They seemed like superhuman individuals, but they were actually ordinary people like you and me. They made mistakes, and the Bible is honest about the mistakes they made. But in spite of their mistakes, they became saints.

I heard about a Sunday school teacher who asked her class, “Can any of you tell me what a saint is?” One of the girls in the class thought about how she had seen stained glass windows depicting the apostles and remembered how beautiful the light that came through the windows was. So she raised her hand and said, “Saints are people the light shines through.”

What the girl said was true. If you’re a Christian, then you’re a saint, not because you performed a miracle or have been canonized. A saint is simply a follower of Jesus Christ.

Here’s what we need to understand. The apostles weren’t perfect people. They made mistakes. They had disagreements, problems, and challenges. Despite that, they made an impact on the world.

The apostles were ordinary people, but God did extraordinary things through them. Their greatness was not because of who they were but because God had His hand on them.

Paul wrote, “God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful” (1 Corinthians 1:27 NLT).

The Message puts it this way: “Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these ‘nobodies’ to expose the hollow pretensions of the ‘somebodies.’”

How true. God seems to go out of His way to choose unexpected people to go to unexpected places to do unexpected things.