You may be wondering about the title of this article. After all, were there not just twelve apostles? That is what children learn in Bible class. That is the number that immediately comes to mind for most Bible students of any age. If you count the men that Jesus chose during His time on the earth, there were just twelve apostles. But if you count every person mentioned in the Bible as being an apostle, you find not twelve, but sixteen.

Before noticing who these sixteen are, let us remember what the word apostle means. It is from the Greek word apostolos, which means one who is sent. In the context of Scripture, an apostle was one who was sent out on a divinely ordained mission with a message that came from above. His duty was to proclaim the good news of salvation.

So who were the sixteen apostles? We typically think of the twelve that were chosen by Jesus: Peter, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Simon, and Judas (Matthew 10:2-4). Besides these, we read of Matthias (Acts 1:26), Paul (Romans 1:1), Barnabas (Acts 14:14), and even Jesus Himself (Hebrews 3:1) being called apostles.

Not every one of the sixteen was the same type of apostle – Barnabas and Jesus particularly were distinct in different ways, as we will notice. But what they all have in common is that their apostleships help explain how God has chosen to reveal His word and how He desires that it be spread. So with this in mind, let us consider the sixteen apostles.
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