1:21,22
Peter sets out the grounds for choosing the replacement apostle. It had to be a man who had been with them the whole time since Jesus had been among them, ie for the whole time of Jesus’ earthly ministry. This stresses the importance of all of Jesus’ ministry. While the cross and resurrection is clearly the climax and the focal point of everything, the whole of His ministry matters. They were also to be a witness of the resurrection, ie they had to have met the risen Christ. So the apostle had to be a direct witness of all that Jesus had said and done.
1:23
Two men were nominated who fulfilled the criteria, and whom presumably the other apostles thought to be of good character. The two were Joseph and Matthias. The fact that Joseph had at least three names is worth noting. Joseph was a very common name. Barsabbas means “son of the sabbath”. He was also known as Justus. It was not unusual for someone to have a Jewish name and a Latin name. Often in Scripture we find a person or a place known by two or more different names. We may think this unusual, or think that it is evidence of some discrepancy in the text. It isn’t, it was perfectly normal in those days.
1:24-26
This section offends us to some degree, largely because of the casting of lots. There are a couple of points to note. First, casting lots was a normal practice in the Old Testament, and was seen as giving the decision to the Lord (eg Prov 16:33). So if we look at the words in v24 we see that the disciples were admitting the limits of their wisdom. They had acted as far as they could using human wisdom, and rightly so. However, even if they had chosen themselves which of the two to appoint it really would not have been any better than casting lots. They were openly admitting that they had gone as far as they could. They then gave the decision to the Lord.
It has been noted that Matthias, the one chosen, is never mentioned again, and some draw the conclusion that this was all a big mistake, or at best a waste of time. However, Peter, James and John are about the only apostles of the original twelve who are mentioned in Acts, so the non-mention of Matthias really doesn’t mean a lot. It has also been noted that after Pentecost there is no further mention of casting lots. This point has some more validity, but we could be reading more into that than is merited.
There is a theory that the books we call "Acts" and "Luke" are Paul's legal submission for his trial in the court of the emperor. Acts ends abruptly with Paul living in a rented house. If he was preparing his legal case, it is not surprising that many people drop out of the picture. His case would be that what we call Christianity and they called the Way was true Judaism.
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