commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles” (2 Pet. 3:2). Paul and the other apostles wrote just as they preached: conscious of Jesus’s mandate. From the beginning, the full authority of the apostles (and prophets) to deliver God’s word was recognized, at least by many (Acts 10:22; Eph. 2:20; 1 Thess. 2:13; Jude 17–18). This recognition is accordingly reflected in the earliest nonapostolic writers. For example, Clement of Rome attested that “the apostles received the gospel for us from