It’s quite interesting (and most encouraging!) that is what we commonly call Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer, recorded in John 17, Jesus utters these words concerning His disciples (minus Judas Iscariot): “I have revealed You to those whom You gave Me out of the world. They were Yours; You gave them to Me and they have obeyed Your Word.”
By this Jesus obviously didn’t mean the Eleven had obeyed Him flawlessly (e.g. Matthew 26:31; Mark 6:45-52!). What He meant was that, for the most part, they stayed with Him; they hung in there when most of Christ’s “followers” had abandoned Him (cf. John 6:66-69).
We also know the disciples didn’t fully understand the gospel — obvious in that they clearly didn’t grasp everything Jesus had been teaching. What they did grasp was that Christ’s teachings were of God (17:7) resulting in their believing Jesus had been sent to earth by the Father.
As one commentator has encouragingly noted, Jesus identified the disciple’s basic knowledge of His origin and source of His ministry as what it meant for them to have obeyed God’s Word. This shows us that ignorance and misunderstanding can coexist (to some degree) with true faith! This is great news indeed because every one of us misunderstands at least some portions of the Bible and are ignorant on at least some aspects of doctrine — regardless of how long we have been believers; regardless of how familiar we are with the things of God. Thankfully our salvation is not dependent on perfect knowledge of God’s truth(s)!
Having said this, we mustn’t use this as an excuse to be lackadaisical in our study and understanding of Bible doctrine! We must never be content with what we know today; rather our goal ought to be a striving to know more tomorrow! Paul’s instruction to Timothy in II Timothy 2:15 certainly applies here: “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.”