In Luke 6:12-15, the Lord chooses twelve men to be His inner circle of disciples. At first glance, these verses seem to be placed in the book randomly. In fact, they seem out of place. The Lord has been both miraculously healing people with different diseases and interacting with the religious leaders, who oppose Him (5:12–6:11). After choosing the Twelve, He will heal even more people (6:17-19). In what seems an interruption of these accounts, Luke gives us the names of the Twelve. What is the purpose?

Furthermore, why does the Lord even need to designate twelve men to be His disciples? Through His teaching and power, He showed that He was able to do what the Father had sent Him to do. He didn’t need their help. In fact, when we read the rest of the Gospel, we see that these men weren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer.

I know nothing about cars. If a friend of mine were a master mechanic and a car needed repairs, it wouldn’t make much sense for him to call me to “help” fix the car. He wouldn’t need me. That seems to be what the Lord does here.

When we look at the larger context, however, we see why the Lord calls these twelve men and why He does it at this point in His ministry. After His last interaction with the religious leaders, immediately before He chooses the Twelve, the leaders are “filled with rage” and discuss what to do with the Lord (v 11). Mark adds that they wanted to kill Him (Mark 3:6).

These leaders would lead the nation to reject and kill Christ. Of course, the Lord knew this. He knew that He would need disciples to continue His work when He was gone. Even before the Lord’s death, these men would be sent to the nation of Israel to announce that Christ had come (Luke 9:1-6).

In other words, these men would do the Lord’s work. They would be His hands, feet, and mouth. Even when He was with them, the Lord could not be in every place in the nation to offer the good news of the coming kingdom. He therefore multiplied the giving of that message by twelve. When He ascended to the Father after the Resurrection and was no longer physically on the earth, these men would take His message to the ends of the earth.

These Twelve were a unique group of people. Nobody today is part of the group they belonged to. They had a unique message and ministry to the nation of Israel. They will sit on specific thrones judging Israel in the world to come. Their work formed the foundation of the Church (Matt 19:28; Eph 2:20). There are no apostles today!

But we are like them in other ways. One of those ways is that we can be disciples of Christ. We can continue His work as we serve Him in the time and area in which we live. We have His Word, and we can proclaim it when given the opportunity. We can tell others of the offer of eternal life as a gift that can never be lost by believing in Christ alone for it. We can serve His Body with the spiritual gift He has given us as believers. When we do these things, we are His hands, feet, and voice.

The Twelve were chosen to continue the work of the Lord in a hostile world that would reject Him. As believers, that is true for us as well. They were very privileged. So are we.