Built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.
Ephesians 2:20
When Christians speak about the centrality of Scripture in the life of the church, a thoughtful question often arises:
If the earliest believers did not yet possess the New Testament as we do today, what were they devoted to? And what does that mean for Word–centered ministry today?
This question matters because it touches on the issue of authority: How Christ rules His church, and how we know His voice today. If the first generation of Christians lived and grew before the New Testament was complete, does that suggest that Scripture is secondary rather than central? Is Word–centered ministry something that developed later, or was it present from the beginning?
By Word–centered ministry, I mean the church’s intentional commitment to gather around, submit to, and be shaped by God’s revealed Word—trusting it as the sufficient and final authority through which Christ builds and governs His people.
To answer the question, we must consider what the early church had.
They Had the Old Testament
The early church did not begin without Scripture. They possessed the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings — the very Scriptures Jesus affirmed and fulfilled.
After His resurrection, Jesus explained to His disciples that Moses and the Prophets were ultimately speaking about Him (Luke 24:27). The Old Testament was not a closed story waiting to be replaced; it was a promise awaiting fulfillment.
This is exactly how the apostles preached. At Pentecost, Peter proclaimed the risen Christ from Joel and the Psalms (Acts 2:14–36). Throughout the book of Acts, the apostles reasoned from the Scriptures, demonstrating that Jesus is the promised Messiah (Acts 17:2–3). They did not set aside Israel’s Scriptures—they opened them and showed how they pointed to Christ.
The earliest believers therefore gathered as a Scripture-shaped community. They listened to the Old Testament read, explained, and applied in light of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. The church was born not in the absence of Scripture, but in its fulfillment.
But they had more than the Old Testament.
They Had Living Apostolic Revelation
From the very beginning, believers devoted themselves to “the apostles’ teaching” (Acts 2:42). At that moment there was no completed New Testament. Yet the church was not without God’s Word.
Christ—the final and fullest revelation of God—had come (Hebrews 1:1–2). And the men He appointed now bore witness to Him with divine authority.
The gospel was first declared by the Lord Himself and then confirmed by those who heard Him, with God bearing witness through signs and wonders (Hebrews 2:3–4). The apostles were not religious innovators. They were eyewitnesses of the risen Christ, personally commissioned by Him, and empowered by the Holy Spirit to remember, proclaim, and explain what He had done (Acts 1:21–22).
On the night before His crucifixion, Jesus prepared His disciples for this very role. He promised that the Holy Spirit would teach them all things and bring to their remembrance all that He had said to them (John 14:26). He told them that the Spirit of truth would bear witness about Him, and that they also would bear witness because they had been with Him from the beginning (John 15:26–27). He further declared that there were still many things they could not yet bear, but that when the Spirit came, He would guide them into all the truth and declare to them what belonged to Christ (John 16:12–15).
These promises explain why the apostles’ teaching carried divine authority. Their witness was not the result of human reflection alone, but the fulfillment of Christ’s own promise that His words would be preserved, clarified, and proclaimed through those He had chosen.
When they preached, they did not offer speculation. They delivered what they had received. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, he handed on what was “of first importance”—the death and resurrection of Christ according to the Scriptures.
This apostolic ministry was foundational and unrepeatable. Through these men, Christ Himself spoke to His church. The foundation of the church was being laid in history—once for all.
The apostles did not create a new message; they bore faithful witness to the One who had come. And as Peter later explains, their message was not produced by human will but carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:20–21).
Apostolic Proclamation and Apostolic Scripture: Distinct but Foundational
Jesus Himself set the course of apostolic witness when He told His disciples they would receive power and be His witnesses to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).
In the book of Acts, we see that witness unfold. Churches are planted, elders appointed, doctrine illuminated, and believers strengthened through living apostolic preaching (Acts 13–15; 17; 19). Through these men, Christ was speaking in history.
Scripture describes this period by saying that the church was “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone” (Ephesians 2:20). These prophets are best understood not as the Old Testament prophets, but as New Testament prophets who, together with the apostles, received divine revelation during the foundational period of the church. They worked alongside the apostles and assisted in the establishment of the church through Spirit-given revelation (Ephesians 3:5). Like the apostles, their role belonged to the founding stage of the New Covenant church, when God was giving authoritative revelation that would not need to be repeated.
Yet apostolic proclamation and apostolic writing were not identical in form or function.
The apostles preached far more than was ever written down. They addressed specific situations, answered questions, and instructed congregations in ways that were never recorded. Not every sermon was preserved. The church today is not governed by everything the apostles once said, but only by what the Holy Spirit saw fit to preserve in Scripture.
This, too, was anticipated by Christ. He told the apostles that the Spirit would guide them into all the truth and declare to them what was to come (John 16:13). Their teaching would not remain a temporary oral tradition, but would be the Spirit-guided transmission of Christ’s own words to His church.
The apostles wrote with the authority of Christ behind them. Their words did not become Scripture over time; they were Scripture by divine inspiration from the moment they were written, before the ink was dry. The church over time acknowledged and received what God had already spoken. Under the Spirit’s inspiration, the apostles committed authoritative revelation to writing for the permanent foundation of Christ’s church (2 Peter 3:15–16; 1 Timothy 5:18).
The distinction is simple but crucial: apostolic preaching was historically foundational; apostolic Scripture is permanentlyfoundational.
The church no longer gathers around living apostles, for that office has ceased. The church now gathers around the Word they wrote—the Scriptures. And that written Word now stands as the binding and sufficient authority through which Christ continues to rule His people.
This is exactly what Jesus anticipated when He prayed not only for the apostles themselves, but also for those who would believe in Him through their word (John 17:20). Future generations would know Christ through the apostolic testimony, not through new revelation, but through the faithful preservation of the witness once given.
Therefore Word-Centered Ministry Is Continuity, Not Innovation
Word–centered ministry today is not a departure from the earliest church, but its direct continuation.
As Paul exhorted the Ephesian elders:
“And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.”
Acts 20:32
Notice what Paul entrusts the church to—not new apostles, not evolving revelation, not institutional authority—but “the word of his grace.” Even before the New Testament was complete, the church’s future was tied to God’s revealed Word.
When the church devotes itself to Scripture—to its public reading, prayers, faithful teaching, and careful expository preaching—it is not innovating. The church is being faithful to her Lord.
Word–centered ministry is not innovation but covenant continuity. The same God who spoke through the prophets spoke through His Son and His commissioned witnesses. The same Holy Spirit who empowered the apostles to preach also guided them in writing Scripture, and that same Spirit and Word continue to build and preserve the church today.
To be a Word–centered church today is not to move beyond the early church—it is to remain within the apostolic doctrine once for all delivered to the saints.
