Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Acts 1:26

"And they gave lots for them; and the lot fell upon Matthias; and he was numbered with the eleven apostles." — Acts 1:26 (ASV)

After determining qualifications and praying, they “cast lots, and the lot fell to Matthias.” Determining God’s will in this manner (likely by casting down marked objects) was common within Israel and the ancient world (cf. Proverbs 16:33). So by the appointment of Christ himself, the full complement of apostles was restored and the church was ready for the coming of the Holy Spirit and the beginning of its mission.

This pericope on the selection of Matthias has a number of significant implications. In the first place, it shows the necessity of a hermeneutical methodology that is able to distinguish between normative principles and culturally restricted practices in the progressive revelation of the Bible. We are exhorted as Christians to “search the Scriptures” and to “know what is the will of the Lord”—exhortations that are normative. But the early church’s method for interpreting the OT (e.g., Psalms 69) and the practice of casting lots in order to determine God’s will need not bind believers today. Second, the pericope suggests that a Christian decision regarding vocation entails (1) evaluating personal qualifications, (2) earnest prayer, and (3) appointment by Christ himself —an appointment that may come in some culturally related fashion, but in a way clear to those who seek guidance.

In addition, it should be noted that it was Judas’s defection and not simply the fact of his death that required his replacement. While the NT lays great stress on the apostolic message and faith and while Luke stresses the importance of the apostles themselves, this pericope gives no justification for the theological necessity of an apostolic succession of office, as is sometimes claimed for it. According to vv.21–22, the task of the twelve apostles was unique: to be guarantors of the Gospel tradition because of their companionship with Jesus in his earthly ministry and to be witnesses to the reality of his resurrection because they had seen the risen Christ. Such criteria cannot be transmitted from generation to generation.

Thus when James the son of Zebedee was executed by Herod Agrippa I in A. D. 44 (cf. 12:1–2), the church took no action to replace him. Finally, and contrary to an oft-heard claim that the apostles were wrong in selecting Matthias and should have awaited God’s choice of Paul to fill the vacancy, it should be pointed out (1) that Paul had not been with Jesus during his earthly ministry—in fact, he acknowledges his dependence upon others with respect to the Gospel tradition (e.g., 1 Corinthians 15:3–5); (2) that the necessity of having exactly twelve apostles in the early church sprang largely from the need for Jewish Christians ministering within the Jewish nation to maintain this symbolic number, and, while Paul could appreciate this, he did not feel its necessity for his primarily Gentile ministry; and (3) that Paul himself recognized the special nature of his apostleship—namely, it was in line with that of the Twelve, but it also rested on a somewhat different base (cf. his reference to himself as an apostle “abnormally born” in 1 Corinthians 15:7–8). Paul’s background, ministry, and call were in many ways different from those of the Twelve. Yet he insisted on the equality of his apostleship with that of the other apostles.