The relations of Jesus with His twelve chosen disciples during His ministry make a most fruitful subject for study. In many ways the disciples must have been a sore trial to the patience of Jesus. Time after time their crude human judgments and aspirations were the exact opposite of what He sought to nurture and encourage in them. When He forewarned them of His impending suffering and death at Jerusalem, Peter, with doubtless the best intentions in the world, sought to dissuade Him. “Be it far from Thee, Lord. This shall in no wise be unto Thee.” And Jesus had to rebuke Peter for siding with the powers of evil.
The next time when Jesus spoke of His coming passion, there was no sympathetic understanding or support from the twelve, but only an unseemly, rancorous quarreling among them as to which of them would be reckoned to be the greatest. Again, on a later occasion, the Master renewed His attempt to prepare their minds for the bitter experiences which lay ahead, only to be immediately discouraged by the request preferred by James and John that to them should be promised then and there the chief places in His kingdom.
How Jesus must have groaned inwardly at the spiritual blindness of these, His chosen! Had their association with Him day after day for three and one-half years lifted their souls to no higher plane than that of their self-interest ? What could He hope to achieve with others if these men so highly privileged exhibited such lack of response? The climax to all this came at the Last Supper, when, sorrowful and depressed, He found Himself called upon to settle a quarrel among them as to who should have the chief seats. And this He did by washing the feet of all of them: He, their Lord and Master, did this!
This is one side of the picture, but, happily, there is another side. There were instances such as Peter’s flash of insight when he declared his faith in his Lord: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” He said this at a time when many were turning away and walking no more with Jesus of Nazareth. There was that brave gesture of blind loyalty made by Thomas when Jesus turned back to Judea that He might raise His friend Lazarus from the dead: “Let us go also that we may die with him.” There was Philip, bringing believing Gentiles to his Lord, not realizing how His Master’s flagging spirits were raised by such acts.
It must have been little incidents such as these which prompted Jesus to say when His hour was come: “Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations.” The words are a moving acknowledgment of the strength and solace which Jesus had derived from their loyalty and fellowship. It was the Lord’s “thank you” for all that they had done for Him without their ever realizing that they had done anything at all.
The last and sweetest touch was in that upper room when He had washed their feet. “Now are ye clean”, He said, “but not all.” For He knew who would betray Him. Readers of these words tend to focus their attention on Judas, the traitor, and thus they can easily overlook the power of the first phrase, “ye are clean.” Imagine it! These men who had bickered and squabbled about unimportant temporalities, who had proved themselves incapable of appreciation of the peerless teaching of their Leader, and who by and by (as He already knew so well) were to turn and flee when danger threatened—these men He accepted and pronounced them clean in His sight! All their crudities and small-mindedness He overlooked and forgave because of their faith in Him: dim, feeble and half-realized though it was.
These things should be of great comfort to the Christians of today. If the Lord was so tolerant of the bad in His disciples, and so thankful for the little good He found in them, is it likely that His expectations are any higher today, or His mercy less freely given?
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One