Paul describes his calling and assignment as “Apostle Paul” as a grace flow.
This led some to assume that “apostle” is a charismatic gift. Not so. Paul is not describing “apostle” as one of the gift capacities, although all apostles have a specific gift mix or function of the gifts that respond to their role in leadership and the ministry of Jesus.
Every kingdom leader has a grace flow that answers to the role of leadership each of the kingdom leadership dynamics fulfills. Added together, you get the leadership of Jesus represented. You don’t get Jesus. You get His representation in all its leadership roles, capacities, and serving the King modes.
Leaders serve as Jesus serves. Serving people does nothing to diminish the leadership of Jesus. Washing feet does not mean leadership doesn’t give directives and enforce the King’s decision in kingdom culture. Leadership is serving, and serving as an apostle means serving the King who sends you as if He is the One doing the feet washing. Serving does not negate commanding.
Representing the King
The issue of grace flow for all kingdom leaders is representation.
Grace transforms the apostle. The apostle expressly, but not exclusively, represents Jesus, so his identity from Christ dominates his identification with and in Christ.
Paul says, “I am what I am by God’s grace.” Identity from Christ in the apostle’s representation of Christ is an apostolic grace flow. No one but apostles receives an apostolic grace flow so that no one can fake apostleship by mimicry.
If we have an outbreak of frauds and wanna-be’s, the absence of apostolic grace flow should occur. Apostolic grace flow will confront misrepresentations of Christ.
For example, Ephesus confronted “apostles who say they are but are not,” commended by Jesus for doing so because some of the elders of Ephesus were apostles. Paul produced, prepared, and positioned apostles as well as the other four kingdom leadership dynamics.
Some of the leaders Paul identified, because Holy Spirit marked them as elders, would be wolves themselves, using their grace flow to wolf some of the people they were to keep in kingdom culture. Immediately Paul was seen as “never returning”–he was going to die, or he would have returned–some leaders starting salivating and howling to have a wolf den of their own. This wolf behavior is a leadership perversion of grace flow with positional leadership, a mixture that becomes increasingly richer in the flesh as it matures.
Some of our current champions of church-growthism are celebrated for wolf behavior because we now see wolves as the greatest leaders of believer accumulations. They still get some people born anew, but the actual “growth” is sheep lured from one assignment to their wolf dens.
Healthy kingdom culture is only possible when the grace flow of apostles is present, active, honored, and integrated. They serve a role of in kingdom revelation we could characterize as “blueprint leadership.”They serve a role of in kingdom revelation we could characterize as “blueprint leadership.”
Individual and Metron-Specific Blueprinting
Apostolic grace is fathering grace in a specific way because everything the King is and does has to do with His international inheritance. Inheritance is the stuff of kingdom purpose.
Nations have an inheritance, so apostles participate in grace flows that produce national purpose at the regional and territorial levels of metron.
Individuals have an inheritance, so apostles discern and discover personal purpose as blueprinting for fathering the destinies of kingdom citizens.
The Inheritor of the Inheritance uses government to be a terror to them that do evil, providing a social construct that overcomes lawlessness and piracy so the kingdom of God can influence individuals and nations toward their purposes in peace.
A government cannot produce purpose, but a government can protect purpose. When a society lacks the government to preserve purpose, like Sodom, it is replaced or destroyed–new people with redemptive purpose arrived as a sent remnant to restore the purpose of the place.
The apostolic sense of any Remnant is that apostles with blueprints, establishing kingdom and its culture, provide the Didache of kingdom lifestyle for individual citizens and the regional, territorial, and national ekklesia. An apostle can look at your belly–so to speak–and see your destiny; an apostle can stand on the land and discern and discover the purpose of the place. An apostle carries a blueprint that overlaps or overlays into the metron of a regional, territorial, and national apostolic blueprint.
This snapshot of apostolic grace flow gives us the meaning of “apostolic order”–the grace flow provided apostles represents to all kingdom citizens and all places on Earth what the King wants for the restoration of His inheritance.
