The Training of the Twelve

The primary element of a triumphant life in Christ is a life of holiness and power that manifests itself in likeness to Christ. That, after all, is what discipleship is about, isn't it? And the proof of it is in the transformed character of the redeemed individual.

A.B. Bruce gives a marvelous summary of the effect of Jesus's mastery over his closest disciples. Let's read a few sentences of that summary: 

The teaching conveyed, assuming that we have even an approximately correct account of it in the Gospels, was fitted to make the disciples what they were required to be as the apostles of a spiritual and universal religion: enlightened in mind, endowed with a charity wide enough to embrace all mankind, having their conscience tremulously sensitive to all claims of duty, yet delivered from all superstitious scruples, emancipated from the fetters of custom, tradition, and the commandments of men, and possessing tempers purged from pride, self will, impatience, angry passions, vindictiveness, and implacability.

This is the effect of the course of experience through which Jesus led his earliest disciples. What a marvelous character, and so characteristic of Christ. 

When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.
Acts 4:13