The disciples followed Jesus for three years and still got almost everything wrong — so why do we act like they had it figured out from the start?

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  Theo K.1mo ago

  I keep coming back to the Emmaus road. Two disciples walking away — defeated — and Jesus walks with them for MILES while they explain their devastated hopes, not even recognizing Him. And Jesus doesn't grab them by the collar and say 'it's me!' He WALKS WITH THEM in their confusion and explains Scripture slowly. That image is everything to me. He doesn't demand clarity before He shows up. He shows up in the middle of the confusion.

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  Drew1mo ago

  I want to share something personal. I had a crisis of faith a few years ago, and one of the things that actually helped me hold on was reading about how confused and scared the disciples were. It made faith feel possible for me again. Like if Peter could deny Jesus three times and still become Peter — the Rock — then maybe there was hope for someone like me who has doubted and stumbled way more times than I want to admit. The disciples' mess saved my faith. That's not me undermining Scripture. That's Scripture doing exactly what it's supposed to do.

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  Nina T.1mo ago

  What gets me is that Jesus KNEW they didn't understand and kept going anyway. He doesn't fire them. He doesn't start over with smarter followers. He asks Peter 'do you love me?' after the denial. Not 'do you have correct theology.' Not 'have you properly articulated the atonement.' Just: do you love me. That's the invitation and I think a lot of churches have lost that completely.

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  Theo1mo ago

  The real question isn't why they were confused — it's why WE think 2,000 years of distance and zero direct access gives us better clarity than the people who ate breakfast with the man. The arrogance of that assumption is breathtaking when you actually sit with it.

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  Theo1mo ago

  We act like the disciples eventually 'got it all figured out' but Paul's letters show churches that were chaotic, divided, immoral, and confused decades after Pentecost. Corinth was a disaster. Galatia was reverting to works. Colossae may have been flirting with proto-Gnosticism. The idea of some pristine early church that 'had it right' is a myth we invented to make ourselves feel worse about the mess we're in now. The church has always been a mess. God has always worked anyway.

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  Taylor1mo ago

  My dad is a pastor. I asked him once why Peter got it so wrong so often and my dad said 'because God uses broken people and Peter was just honest enough to let his brokenness show.' I was maybe 12 when he said that and I never forgot it. Doesn't shake my faith. It actually grounds it.

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  Drew 211mo ago

  This is the most honest question I've seen on this forum in months. Mark literally has a theme scholars call 'the messianic secret' — Jesus keeps telling people to stay quiet, the disciples keep misunderstanding, and Mark seems almost embarrassed by how bad they were at being disciples. That's not a flaw in the story. That's the story being REAL. Real people are confused. Real faith is messy. The fact that the text doesn't sanitize them is actually evidence of its authenticity.

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  Taylor K.1mo ago

  Three years. Three years with the Son of God in the flesh and they still had to be told 43 times not to worry. Do you know how many times I've been told the same thing in church and still panic at every hard thing? Maybe I'm not so different from them. Maybe that's the point.

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  Priya1mo ago

  I'm a seminary professor (yes we're on this forum too) and I want to push back gently on the way this question is framed. The disciples' misunderstanding in the Gospels is not random chaos — it's theologically structured. Mark especially deploys it as a literary device to put the READER in the position of having to understand what the characters don't. It's called 'irony of position.' The reader is supposed to understand the cross better than Peter does. That's Mark's whole homiletical method. So the confusion is actually doing theological work in the text.

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  Zara1mo ago

  I think the thing that actually challenges me is Judas. He wasn't confused — he was disillusioned. He expected something Jesus wasn't going to be. And he made a choice. And that's scarier to me than confusion. Confusion you can work through. Deciding Jesus isn't what you thought He'd be, and walking away — that's a different crisis entirely. And the text doesn't flinch from it.

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  Omar T.1mo ago

  I grew up in a church where pastors presented the disciples like these towering heroes of faith. Then I actually read the Gospels. Thomas doubts. Peter sinks in the water AFTER Jesus already made him walk on it. James and John ask Jesus for the best seats before He's even been buried. These are not heroes. These are ordinary scared people and somehow that makes the whole thing more believable to me, not less.

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  Ravi1mo ago

  Honestly this whole thread is people talking past each other because half of us are asking a historical question and half are asking a devotional one. Are we asking 'did the disciples historically understand Jesus' or are we asking 'does their confusion affect my confidence in Scripture today?' Those are different questions and they have different answers.

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  Avery K.1mo ago

  okay now im crying at work thank you very much

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  Sam _x1mo ago

  Okay the comment about Pentecost explaining everything is a little too neat. Paul and Barnabas had the Spirit and THEY had a massive public falling out over John Mark. Spirit-filled people in the New Testament are still wrong, still stubborn, still human. The Spirit's presence doesn't make you infallible. If it did we wouldn't have the Jerusalem Council trying to figure out whether Gentiles had to get circumcised. They didn't already know the answer.

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  Marco S.1mo ago

  The disciples being confused during Jesus' earthly ministry is not even slightly controversial if you've read NT Wright. He argues that almost everyone in first century Judaism would have interpreted a crucified messiah as proof the candidate FAILED. The disciples expected a throne, not a cross. Their confusion was culturally normal. What was abnormal — what changed everything — was the resurrection. That's where you have to either believe or not believe. The confusion before it doesn't need an explanation. The transformation after it does.

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  Omar S.1mo ago

  okay professor but does the average person in the pew have any idea that's what mark is doing? because my experience is that most church members dont even know the gospels are four separate books with four separate theological agendas. we just kind of smash them together. so even if you're right it raises the question of whether the church is actually teaching scripture or just reassuring people

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  Iris T.1mo ago

  I think there's something genuinely important here that gets glossed over. The disciples operated under the Old Covenant until Pentecost. They didn't have the indwelling Spirit yet. Their confusion isn't a verdict on discipleship — it's a picture of what life looks like without the Spirit. The whole arc of Luke-Acts is designed to show that contrast. So yes, they were confused. So would you be.

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  Feli1mo ago

  This comment should be printed on the wall of every church board meeting room in America.

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  Elena1mo ago

  With respect, 'trust the church' is how a lot of abuse got covered up for decades. The institutional church's claim to authority is not self-evident to those of us who watched that unfold. Authority must be accountable.

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  Hana1mo ago

  Honest question for the people saying the disciples' confusion undermines doctrinal certainty: which doctrine specifically? Because 'the resurrection happened' is affirmed by every strand of earliest Christianity. 'Jesus died for sins' appears in what scholars date to within 5 years of the crucifixion. The core is remarkably stable even across confused and disagreeing disciples. So confusion about WHO gets the best seat doesn't tell us anything about whether the resurrection is historically reliable.

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  Jordan1mo ago

  guardrail lmao doctrine has been used as a weapon against more sincere believers than i can count. the pharisees had doctrine. lots and lots of doctrine.

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  Taylor T.1mo ago

  ok but this is where pentecost matters and im surprised nobody starts there. they were confused BEFORE the spirit came. after? peter stands up and preaches and 3000 people get saved in one day. the same guy who was hiding in a room. the holy spirit is literally the explanation the text gives you and we're just going to ignore that?

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  Liam1mo ago

  Jesus flat out told the disciples 'I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.' John 16:12. He KNEW they didn't have the full picture yet. He explicitly said so. This isn't a bug. It was the plan. The Spirit would guide them into all truth — LATER. So yes they were confused during the ministry years. Jesus anticipated it and addressed it. Can we please move past this like it's some scandalous discovery?

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  Priya1mo ago

  That's one of the most profound things I've read on this topic. Confusion is an invitation to keep seeking. Betrayal is a decision. Yeah. That hits.

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  Zara1mo ago

  "Cut them some slack" brother they literally fell asleep WHILE JESUS WAS SWEATING BLOOD in the garden. He asked them to stay awake for one hour. One. And they couldn't do it. That's not a learning curve, that's a failure of basic friendship.

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  Feli1mo ago

  But then that raises the question of whether the Spirit guided them into ALL truth or just enough truth for their context. Genuine question. Because they still disagreed with each other. Paul resisted Peter 'to his face.' Were they both being guided by the same Spirit to opposing conclusions?

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  Omar1mo ago

  ^ This. Right here. This is the comment.

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  Riley K.1mo ago

  Comparing orthodox Christian doctrine to Pharisaism is the laziest move in progressive Christianity and I'm genuinely tired of it. The Pharisees were wrong about specific things. Having structure is not automatically Pharisaism. Jesus had doctrine too. He taught it. Constantly.

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  Priya R.1mo ago

  That's the clearest thing anyone has said. Both questions matter. Neither one destroys faith if you're willing to sit with complexity.

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  Taylor1mo ago

  I'm not sure the question is asking about salvation — it's asking about interpretation. Whether we can be confident about what we believe. And honestly? No. I don't think we can be as confident as most evangelicals act. That doesn't mean nothing is true. It means humility is underrated.

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  Nina1mo ago

  Good point. People conflate 'the disciples were confused about politics and hierarchy' with 'therefore we can't trust their theological testimony.' Those are completely different categories of claim.

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  Theo1mo ago

  This is why I'm Eastern Orthodox now. We don't just read Scripture in isolation. The confusion of the disciples is held inside the community of the church which has been guided by the Spirit across centuries. When you strip that communal discernment away and hand everyone a Bible and say 'figure it out yourself,' you get exactly the chaos the question is describing, and then some.

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  Liam _x1mo ago

  Yes. And God redeemed both of their perspectives in the canon. The tension between Paul and Peter is IN the Bible on purpose. Both letters are in there. Both perspectives enrich the whole. That's not contradiction — that's the Spirit preserving a genuine human conversation within Scripture.

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  Elena1mo ago

  That's fair criticism and honestly it's why expository preaching matters. Not to show off. But because if you just bounce around topics you never actually sit in a book long enough to see what it's doing.

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  Theo1mo ago

  Humility is underrated and overused as an argument. 'Be humble' is fine until someone uses it to silence every truth claim the church makes. At some point you have to say something is true or Christianity becomes a nice feeling and nothing more.

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  Marco1mo ago

  if you disagree that the disciples' failure matters, explain to me why you're okay reading the Great Commission as an absolute command when it comes from the same people who locked themselves in a room for fear of the Jews three chapters earlier. consistency matters.

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  Priya1mo ago

  Right but love without doctrine is sentiment. 'Just love Jesus' is how you get people following a Jesus they invented. The disciples needed correction AND they received it — from Jesus directly and later from the Spirit. Doctrine isn't the enemy of love. It's the guardrail.

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  Avery1mo ago

  You're reading failure into texts that are describing process. Learning is not failure. A medical student doesn't understand surgery in year one. That doesn't mean medicine is incoherent. Discipleship is formation over time and the disciples were in the middle of the most unprecedented thing in human history. Cut them some slack and stop using their growth arc to destabilize everyone else's faith.

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  Iris1mo ago

  The Emmaus road is beautiful and I don't want to minimize that but let's not use beauty to avoid hard questions. They still got it wrong for years. That has implications. I don't know what all the implications are but I think the church should be asking them honestly instead of reaching for the devotional escape hatch every time the historical questions get uncomfortable.

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  Iris1mo ago

  because the Great Commission comes POST-resurrection POST-appearances and is received differently than pre-cross confusion. you cannot flatten the entire narrative arc into one moment. context.

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  Taylor1mo ago

  Ive been Catholic for 60 years and this debate doesnt scare me at all. The church has always known the apostles were fallible human beings. That is why we have apostolic succession and a Magisterium. Individual interpretation of scripture is exactly what produces this anxiety. The church holds the tradition. Trust the church.

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  Zara B.1mo ago

  And the Eastern Orthodox have never had any internal disagreements or schisms, right? C'mon.

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  Elena1mo ago

  That's a real response to a real problem but it's also a non sequitur. The abuse crisis doesn't disprove apostolic succession any more than a corrupt judge disproves the legitimacy of law courts. Institutions can fail and still be valid.

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  Quinn1mo ago

  This is the most useful comment in this thread by far. More of this please.

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  Iris1mo ago

  what this post is really trying to do is use the disciples' confusion as a crowbar to pry apart doctrinal certainty. i see it every time. 'well even the disciples got it wrong so who are we to say X is heresy.' that's the endgame. the disciples' confusion is resolved in the text. it doesn't become an open license to rewrite what the church has always taught.

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  Nina1mo ago

  That's a pretty cynical way to read a theological question. Some of us just read the Bible and notice things.

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  Noah1mo ago

  First intelligent thing i've read today. Thank you.

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  Feli1mo ago

  Nope. Hard disagree with the framing of this question.

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