Apostles vs Disciples: What Is the Difference?

A disciple is anyone who follows Jesus and learns from him. An apostle is a disciple whom Jesus sent out to preach in his name and with his authority. Every one of his apostles was a disciple, but most disciples were never apostles: from a large company of followers Jesus chose twelve, “whom also he named apostles” (Luke 6:13).

Both words lead back to Jesus himself. He called people to walk behind him and learn, and he was the one sent before anyone else was: Hebrews calls him “the Apostle and High Priest of our profession” (Hebrews 3:1). After the resurrection he handed that sending on to his disciples: “as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you” (John 20:21). We learn from him as disciples, and whatever we are sent to do, we carry what he carried first.

	Disciple	Apostle
Greek word	Mathētēs, a learner	Apostolos, one sent
Who	Anyone who followed Jesus to learn from him	The Twelve, chosen from the disciples, and a few others such as Paul
How many	No total given: the Twelve, the seventy, thousands after Pentecost	Twelve at first, with Matthias in Judas’s place
In Acts	Every believer (Acts 6:1; 11:26)	The Twelve, then also Paul and Barnabas (Acts 14:14)
Times the word appears	More than 260, only in the Gospels and Acts	About 80, mostly in Luke, Acts and Paul’s letters

The Greek word mathētēs comes from the verb manthanō, to learn. It means a pupil, someone attached to a teacher, and it was in use before Jesus called anyone. The Gospels mention “the disciples of John and of the Pharisees” (Mark 2:18), and when the Pharisees questioned a man Jesus had healed of blindness from birth, they told him, “we are Moses’ disciples” (John 9:28).

Jesus set the terms for his own disciples. To those who believed him he said, “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed” (John 8:31), and to the crowds, “whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:27). A disciple stayed with the teaching and walked behind the teacher.

In the Gospels the word covers circles of different sizes. Often it means the Twelve: Matthew speaks of “his twelve disciples” (Matthew 10:1). Sometimes it means a much larger group. After one hard saying, “many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him,” and Jesus turned to the inner circle: “Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away?” (John 6:66–67). In Acts the word stretches to every believer: “the number of the disciples was multiplied” (Acts 6:1), and “the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch” (Acts 11:26).

Mathētēs appears more than 260 times in the New Testament, every time in the four Gospels or Acts. The letters and Revelation never use it.

Apostolos comes from the verb apostellō, to send. Thayer’s Greek lexicon defines it as “a delegate, messenger, one sent forth with orders.” The New Testament sometimes uses it in that plain sense. Jesus said, “The servant is not greater than his lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him” (John 13:16), and “he that is sent” translates apostolos. Paul uses the same word for “the messengers of the churches” (2 Corinthians 8:23). Hebrews even gives the title to Jesus, sent by the Father: “consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus” (Hebrews 3:1).

The word appears about 80 times in the New Testament, most of them in Luke’s Gospel, Acts and Paul’s letters. John’s Gospel uses it once, in the plain sense of John 13:16, and never as a title for the Twelve.

So the two words answer different questions. Disciple says whom a person learns from. Apostle says who sent him, and whose message he carries.

The Twelve were disciples first and were named apostles on one particular day. Luke tells it: Jesus “went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God. And when it was day, he called unto him his disciples: and of them he chose twelve, whom also he named apostles” (Luke 6:12–13). Mark gives the purpose of the choice in two parts: “he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach” (Mark 3:14). They were to stay with him, as disciples do, and to go where he sent them, as apostles do.

The sending followed. Jesus “called unto him the twelve, and began to send them forth by two and two” (Mark 6:7), and when they came back Mark calls them by the new name: “the apostles gathered themselves together unto Jesus, and told him all things” (Mark 6:30).

The Gospels go on using both names for the same men. Matthew introduces them as “his twelve disciples” in one verse and “the twelve apostles” in the next (Matthew 10:1–2), and after Judas’s death he speaks of “the eleven disciples” (Matthew 28:16). After the resurrection Jesus renewed their commission: “as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you” (John 20:21). The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls Jesus “the Father’s Emissary” and the apostles his emissaries, apostoloi in Greek (858).

Matthew gives the list this way:

Now the names of the twelve apostles are these; The first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; Philip, and Bartholomew; Thomas, and Matthew the publican; James the son of Alphaeus, and Lebbaeus, whose surname was Thaddaeus; Simon the Canaanite, and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him.

Matthew 10:2–4

Mark (3:16–19) and Luke (6:14–16) name the same men in a slightly different order, Acts (1:13) lists the eleven left after Judas, and two names differ. Where Matthew and Mark have Thaddaeus, Luke and Acts have “Judas the brother of James” in the King James Version, which most modern translations render “Judas the son of James.” Tradition takes them as one man, Jude Thaddaeus; as Pope Benedict XVI put it in 2006, “this is what tradition has called him, combining two different names.” Simon the Canaanite in Matthew and Mark is “Simon called Zelotes” in Luke, and Benedict explained that the two descriptions “are equivalent because they mean the same thing”; he traced both to a Hebrew verb meaning to be jealous or ardent. The story of each man, as far as Scripture and early tradition record it, is told in who the twelve apostles were.

Jesus himself tied the number to the twelve tribes of Israel. He told his disciples, “ye which have followed me … ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matthew 19:28). Revelation keeps the number in its vision of the holy city, whose wall “had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb” (Revelation 21:14).

When Judas Iscariot fell away, the eleven filled his place, and the way they did it shows where the line ran between an apostle and the wider company of disciples. Peter set the condition. The new apostle had to be one “of these men which have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, Beginning from the baptism of John, unto that same day that he was taken up from us,” so that he could be “a witness with us of his resurrection” (Acts 1:21–22). Two men were put forward, Joseph called Barsabas and Matthias. Both had followed Jesus from the beginning without being among the Twelve. “The lot fell upon Matthias; and he was numbered with the eleven apostles” (Acts 1:26).

Power to heal was not the difference. When Jesus sent the Twelve he “gave them power and authority over all devils, and to cure diseases. And he sent them to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick” (Luke 9:1–2). Yet the seventy he sent later came back saying, “Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name” (Luke 10:17).

The difference lay in witness and in foundation. Jesus “shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs” to “the apostles whom he had chosen” (Acts 1:2–3), and they were sent to testify to what they had seen. The first church was built on their teaching: the believers “continued stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers” (Acts 2:42). When believers disputed whether Gentile converts must keep the law of Moses, “the apostles and elders came together for to consider of this matter” (Acts 15:6). Paul describes the church as “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone” (Ephesians 2:20).

The Bible gives no total. It describes circles that grew:

Group	Number	Passage
The Twelve	12	Luke 6:13
The second group Jesus sent out	70, or 72 in some manuscripts	Luke 10:1
Believers gathered after the ascension	About 120	Acts 1:15
Those who saw the risen Jesus at one time	More than 500	1 Corinthians 15:6
Baptized at Pentecost	About 3,000	Acts 2:41
Men who believed soon after	About 5,000	Acts 4:4

Luke tells of the second sending: “the Lord appointed other seventy also, and sent them two and two before his face into every city and place, whither he himself would come” (Luke 10:1). Ancient manuscripts differ on the number, and some Bibles, such as the New American Bible, print seventy-two. Luke does not name them. The Catholic Encyclopedia (1909) notes that the church historian Eusebius “positively asserts that no such roll existed in his time,” and could name only a few, among them Barnabas and Matthias. Luke calls them the seventy and never calls them apostles.

After the resurrection the numbers rise quickly. Paul writes that the risen Christ “was seen of above five hundred brethren at once” (1 Corinthians 15:6), and at Pentecost “there were added unto them about three thousand souls” (Acts 2:41).

Paul is the best-known apostle outside the Twelve, and his case shows that the title did not depend on having followed Jesus before the crucifixion. He opens his letter to the Romans, “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God” (Romans 1:1), and tells the Galatians he was made an apostle “not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead” (Galatians 1:1).

Paul had been a persecutor, “breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord” (Acts 9:1). After his conversion, when he tried to join the believers in Jerusalem, “they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple” (Acts 9:26). His claim to be an apostle rested on meeting the risen Lord: “Am I not an apostle? am I not free? have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord?” (1 Corinthians 9:1). Listing the witnesses of the resurrection, he puts himself last (“last of all he was seen of me also”) and calls himself “the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God” (1 Corinthians 15:8–9).

A few others carry the title. Luke writes of “the apostles, Barnabas and Paul” (Acts 14:14), and Paul writes, “other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord’s brother” (Galatians 1:19). Thayer’s lexicon describes this wider use as the name “transferred to other eminent Christian teachers.” The title mattered enough to be claimed falsely: Paul warns of “false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:13).

Women were disciples. Whether the New Testament ever calls a woman an apostle depends on how one verse is read.

Women traveled with Jesus too. Luke records that “the twelve were with him” along with certain women: Mary Magdalene, “Joanna the wife of Chuza Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others, which ministered unto him of their substance” (Luke 8:1–3). Acts uses the word itself of a woman: “Now there was at Joppa a certain disciple named Tabitha, which by interpretation is called Dorcas: this woman was full of good works and almsdeeds which she did” (Acts 9:36). The Greek there is mathētria, the feminine form of mathētēs, and this verse is its only appearance in the New Testament.

After the resurrection Jesus sent Mary Magdalene with a message: “go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.” She “came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that he had spoken these things unto her” (John 20:17–18). The Catholic Church’s 2016 decree raising her day, 22 July, to the rank of a feast recalls that Thomas Aquinas called her an “apostle of the apostles.” The Orthodox Church honors her as “Equal of the Apostles.”

The verse in question is Romans 16:7: “Salute Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen, and my fellow-prisoners, who are of note among the apostles, who also were in Christ before me.” Translations divide on two points. The first is the phrase: the New International Version has “outstanding among the apostles,” which counts the pair among them, though its footnote gives “are esteemed by” as another reading; the English Standard Version has “well known to the apostles,” with “messengers” in its margin as another rendering of apostles. The second is the name. The New American Bible’s note says, “The name Junia is a woman’s name,” and adds that “most editors have interpreted it as a man’s name, Junias.” The ESV gives Junias in its margin.

Churches answer this differently, and the question is an old one. A letter the church in Rome sent to the church in Corinth in the first century, traditionally credited to Clement of Rome, describes a chain of sending: “Christ therefore was sent forth by God, and the apostles by Christ.” It goes on to say that the apostles, preaching through countries and cities, “appointed the first fruits [of their labours] … to be bishops and deacons of those who should afterwards believe.”

The Catholic Church teaches that one part of the apostles’ office could not be passed on: “to be the chosen witnesses of the Lord’s Resurrection and so the foundation stones of the Church.” Another part continues in the bishops, who “have by divine institution taken the place of the apostles as pastors of the Church” (Catechism 860, 862).

The Orthodox Church holds that its bishops, priests and deacons “guarantee the continuity and unity of the Church from age to age and from place to place from the time of Christ and the apostles,” in the words of The Orthodox Faith, published by the Orthodox Church in America.

In the Reformed tradition, the Westminster Assembly’s Form of Presbyterial Church Government, approved by the Church of Scotland in 1645, holds that the office has ended. It divides church officers into “some extraordinary, as apostles, evangelists, and prophets, which are ceased,” and others “ordinary and perpetual, as pastors, teachers, and other church-governors, and deacons.”

Some Pentecostal churches say yes. The Apostolic Church, which calls itself “a Trinitarian, Pentecostal movement” formed out of the Welsh revival of 1904, lists among its tenets “Church government by apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, elders and deacons.”

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also names living apostles. It is led by a First Presidency and a Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, whom it describes as “special witnesses of Jesus Christ,” and it teaches that “Jesus Christ calls Apostles to represent Him in our day just as He did in the Bible.”

In the sense Acts uses the word, yes. The risen Jesus told the eleven, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 28:19). Where the King James Version says teach, the Greek verb is mathēteuō, to make disciples, from the same root as mathētēs. Everyone baptized under the Great Commission was to become what the eleven already were, a learner who follows Jesus.

Catholic and Orthodox teaching also speak of the whole Church as sent, in a wider sense than the Twelve were. The Catechism says the Church is apostolic because she is “sent out” into the whole world, and that “All members of the Church share in this mission, though in various ways” (863). The Orthodox Church in America’s The Orthodox Faith says the Church “in its earthly members is itself sent by God to bear witness to His Kingdom.”

The Twelve he sent and every learner who has followed him since are known by the same mark. Jesus gave it to them himself: “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another” (John 13:35).

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