Thomas and the Risen Christ

Well, let’s read together in John’s Gospel this evening. I said we’d turn the prism a little on the resurrection, and we want to do that, going to John’s Gospel, to chapter 20, and to the section that begins in verse 19:

“On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you!’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

“[And] again Jesus said, ‘Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.’ And with that he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.’

“Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord!’

“But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.’

“A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you!’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.’

“Thomas said to him, ‘My Lord and my God!’

“Then Jesus told him, ‘Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.’

“Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

When you read chapter 20 of John’s Gospel, you wonder why it wasn’t the last chapter, almost. It seems to tie a bow around it quite nicely, especially with the concluding two verses: “Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” It’s a reminder to us, isn’t it, that the Scriptures have been given to us in order that we might meet Christ and, in encountering Jesus, that we might become believers? And some of us tonight are believers in the truest sense of the New Testament understanding of that: that we have moved beyond the position of the demons and the devil, which is an orthodox view of Christianity and who Jesus is and why he came,[1] to the place where, by God’s goodness, we have laid hold on his “great and precious promises,”[2] and his Spirit has come to live within us, and we have become members of his family.

But probably in a room like this, there are some who are unsure of where they sit with that issue; some who are perhaps even doubting concerning the foundation upon which faith is built; some young people brought up in Christian homes and kept buoyant largely by the faith of their parents and surrounding family members but who in the quiet of their own bedroom, in the silence of their own thoughts, will be honest enough to say, “I’m not sure that I truly believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Well, the Gospels were written in order that we might come to believe. And here in the Gospel of John (which is so evangelistic in its thrust, and particularly in this chapter, which is all about the resurrection), we have essentially four little sections—and don’t be alarmed; we’re not going to go through them all—but four sections that identify the evidence that has been presented to individuals and their testimony on the basis of that evidence.

First of all, in verses 3–9, the record of Peter and “the other disciple”—John refers to himself in that quite humble way, “the other disciple.” He doesn’t say, “Peter and myself started for the tomb,” although he is referring to himself. And you have these two fishermen confronted by the empty grave and the burial clothes that have all been found lying as if the body had simply passed directly through them.

And then, in verses 10 and through to verse 18, we have the record of Jesus’ appearance to Mary Magdalene, as it says there in the heading in the NIV. You have this story of a tearful and fearful woman in the garden and the encounter that she has with Jesus, leading to her testimonial in verse 18: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these various things to her.

And then, in verses 19–23, the fearful disciples in the upper room, “with the [door] locked for fear of the Jews,” and the evidence that is presented to them—and finally, in verse 25, the disciples make their testimony to Thomas, saying, “We have seen the Lord!” And then, finally, in verses 24–29, the record of how this hardened skeptic—none other than Thomas himself—finally reaches the point where he declares in verse 28, “My Lord and my God!” And then John wraps it up by saying there were all kinds of miraculous signs done in the presence of the disciples, and these are written that you may believe.

J. B. Phillips, in a book entitled Ring of Truth, which is an old book now, says,

Over the years I[’ve] had hundreds of conversations with people, many of them of [a] higher intellectual calibre than my own, who quite obviously had no idea of what Christianity is really about. … This I find pathetic and somewhat horrifying. It means that the most important Event in human history is politely and quietly by-passed. For it is not as though the evidence has been examined and found unconvincing; it [has] simply never been examined.[3]

Now, here in chapter 20, you have the examining of evidence on the part of all these individuals. And what I want to do is focus directly on Thomas this evening and the place of Thomas in these events.

We’re used to referring to Thomas as “the doubter” or “the pessimist.” I’ve just referred to him as “the hardened skeptic.” However, Thomas is a good fellow to have around on account of his straightforwardness and his honesty. This kind of person usually asks the question that everybody else wishes they were brave enough to ask. So, for example, classically, in John 14, Jesus has said, “You know the way to the place where I am going.” And you remember it is Thomas who says, “Lord, we don’t know where you[’re] going, so how can we know the way?”[4] “You know the way to the place where I[’m] going.” “We don’t know where you[’re] going, so how can we know the way?”—thus eliciting from Jesus the wonderful statement in John 14:6: “[Well,] I am the way and the truth and the life. [And] no one comes to the Father [but by] me.” Humanly speaking, we wouldn’t have that fantastic verse were it not for Thomas—were it not for the fact that Thomas put up his hand and said, “Excuse me! I don’t get it.”

And for those of us who became adept at school and nodding in the right way—at least, we thought we were. Our teachers could see through us all the time, I know. They told me afterwards. They used to tell my parents, “Alistair does a good job of nodding. He hasn’t a clue what’s going on at all. He thinks that I don’t know, but I know entirely.” And I got through a lot of classes on account of brave souls who were prepared to do what I was unprepared to do—namely, raise their hands and acknowledge their complete cluelessness, so that I was able to say, “My, my! That’s terrific! There are at least two of us in the class.” So before we jump, as it were, on top of Thomas here, let us be honest enough to thank God for him.

And what I’d like to do is just examine these three little pictures that are given to us that begin on verse 19.

When Thomas Is Missing

The first picture takes place when Thomas is missing.

It’s “on the evening of [the] first day of the week.” The disciples are together, and we’re told that “the doors” are “locked for fear of the Jews”—Easter Sunday evening, the day of Christ’s resurrection, which is very quickly becoming chief among the days of the week. And as you read this little section, you realize two things.

First of all: that the atmosphere was charged. There was an electricity about the event. They were not just simply staring at the wall. They were there, and fearfulness had caused them to closet themselves away. Presumably, the events of the day—involving the empty tomb, the appearances of Jesus, the story that had come to the apostles from the women themselves that we gave consideration to this morning from Luke’s Gospel—all of this would have had an impact on them. And perhaps they said, “Well, why don’t we get together this evening, and let’s just try and hash this out? Let’s discuss it.”

And if the atmosphere was charged with fear, then it was even more charged with the arrival of Jesus and this dramatic and sudden appearance of Jesus, pointing to the fact that his resurrection body is in some measure different from the body that he had prior to the resurrection. He is now described as being able to move in and out of places in a kind of a transcorporeal fashion. And so he comes, and all of a sudden, he’s in the room.

Very appropriate greeting, wouldn’t you say? “Shalom”—customary greeting, of course. But if they were agitated by fear, they’re sure agitated by the arrival of Jesus. Suddenly, he’s not there, and all of a sudden, he’s there. So he says to them, “Fellas, peace!” “Peace be with you!” And “after … this, he showed them his hands and [his] side.”

Jesus is wonderfully gracious. Let’s not miss the obvious. Into their fearfulness he comes to bestow his peace, and into their cluelessness he comes to reveal his purpose, and into their emptiness he comes to grant his power.

Incidentally, there is another sermon there, isn’t there? And I suppose we could have stayed with that one if I had only thought. For still this evening, into our fearfulness he comes to bestow his peace, and into our cluelessness he comes to reveal his purpose, and into our emptiness he still comes to reveal his power, so that those of us who fear things this evening—imagined things and real things—may know Christ’s peace. Those of us who are clueless in relationship to our plans and purposes—we feel ourselves unsettled as a result of the difficulties of life and the things that have been thrown against us—he comes to remind us of his purpose. And those of us who feel empty and alone, discouraged, dispirited, perhaps even completely disillusioned—Jesus still comes to grant his power.

Jesus is wonderfully gracious. Let’s not miss the obvious.

And so, if it’s a charged atmosphere, you will notice that that in turn gives way to a changed attitude. In verse 20, after he had shown them his hands and his side, “the disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.” Of course they were! Up until this point, the two fishermen who had gone to the empty tomb only had the grave clothes and the absence of a body to go on. That’s the only evidence that they had that would produce faith within them and instill life within them. And now they were able to take what they had themselves seen, what they had had reported to them from the women, and this was combined with the appearance of Jesus himself. Well does John say, “The disciples were overjoyed”—they were completely beside themselves—“when they saw the Lord.” Because amongst other things, they now realized that death is not the end and that the message that Jesus has declared is absolutely true.

And it is this, you see, that marks Christianity out from the other religions of the world tonight. And you don’t need me to go through this again and again; I sound like a broken record. But Christianity does stand alone in this: that it is founded on the historic claim of the resurrection appearances of Jesus of Nazareth. Buddhism needs none of this. Islam needs none of it. Confucius has no interest in it; he’s dead and gone, and his followers stumble along in his wake. But Christianity stands or falls on the strength of the resurrection.

Auguste Comte, the French philosopher, on one occasion, you will recall, met with Thomas Carlyle. And he told Carlyle that he intended to found a new religion which would sweep Christianity away—sweep it in its wake. And Carlyle replied in these memorable words, which I’ve quoted to you before. He turned to Auguste, and he said to him, “Well, splendid! All you need to do is speak as never a man spoke, to live as never a man lived, to be crucified, rise on the third day, and get the world to believe that you’re still alive, and then your religion will have some chance of success.”[5]

So their attitude was changed on account of the joy they discovered and on account of the task that they received. What was the task they received? Well, look at verse 23. It’s an alarming little verse on first reading, isn’t it? “If you forgive anyone his sins, they[’re] forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” Didn’t Jesus somewhere else say that it needs to be known that only the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins?[6] So is he here contradicting himself? “I’m the only one who can forgive sins. But you go ahead. You can forgive sins now.”

No. What he is saying is simply this: that the church, the apostles, the followers of Christ, have the right to convey forgiveness to the penitent heart and to warn the impenitent heart that by their impenitence, they are forfeiting the mercy of God. It is in that sense that we have every right to say to somebody, “Your sins may be forgiven. If you will come with a penitent heart to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, I want you to know on the authority of God’s Word that your sins may be forgiven. However, if you choose to remain in your sins and to go your own way, then your sins will be retained, and you will not be forgiven.”

And so, with that promise of peace and that straightforward commission, they go out to let it be known that they have seen the Lord.

Thomas’s Response

Now, the second picture—the first one having taken place with Thomas absent—the second picture now provides us with Thomas’s response. Verse 24: “Thomas …, one of the Twelve, was[n’t] with the disciples …. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord!’” But the peace that had been bestowed upon these others made no impact upon Thomas. He remains absolutely stubborn in his conviction. For Thomas, like the rest, his universe has collapsed. And while he had no reason to doubt the testimony of his friends, he just wanted to examine the evidence personally.

I say again: It’s good to have somebody like this around, isn’t it? Because it’s helpful. You get bits and pieces that you wouldn’t otherwise have. And some of you may be here tonight, and that’s exactly how you feel. There’s perhaps a young person here, and you’ve been taking on barrel loads of this material. People have been giving you books, and you’ve been reading them, and you’ve been listening to your youth leaders and the pastoral team and… But somehow or another, you’re at the point where you say, “I’ve got to get this sorted out for myself.” And you know what? You’re absolutely right. You do, and you must. And Thomas can be a help to you.

Will you notice that the issue is volitional? In other words, he doesn’t say, “I cannot.” He says, “I will not.” The problem is not his inability to believe. The problem is his unwillingness to believe. And that we ought not to overlook. There are those who don’t believe on account of never having examined the evidence personally, and there are others who resist the evidence willfully because they don’t want any changes in their lives. That’s often true for someone who has been around the things of faith: They know enough of the evidence to be able to sidestep it, and if you press them, the reason that they don’t want to believe is because they know flat-out it will turn their life upside down.

I remember some years ago now, back at the high school, speaking on a Sunday morning and giving an opportunity for people to respond—a thought that I’d had earlier in the week. I think on the Monday of that week, I was prompted in my spirit. “Next Sunday,” I said to myself, “I’m going to give people an opportunity to respond at the end of the morning service.” And there was this great, huge response when I mentioned this, and so much so that if you were present, you may recall I stopped it, and I said, “Please! Please don’t do this!” I said, “Let me explain to you what I mean!” And even having explained what I meant, there were seventy or eighty people that came forward and through into the choir room. We didn’t know quite what to do.

But in the process, I noticed one of my friends, a Scotsman, who stood up and left—out the back door and gone! And within the next month, at one of the clubs in downtown Cleveland, we sat and had lunch together. And in talking with one another about the nature of faith, I mentioned to him that I’d seen him slip out the back door. “Oh, yes,” he said. “I understood perfectly what you had said. And I realized that if I were to do what you suggested, my life would be revolutionized in a way that I do not want. And so I left.”

Now, that’s the kind of honesty that you get from Aldous Huxley in his Ends and Means. Huxley, the great atheist, said, “I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning. It allows the philosopher to do what he wants. It is essentially an instrument of sexual and political liberation.”[7]

Now, clearly, Thomas is not saying any of that. He’s not actually laying down reasons for his unbelief. He’s actually establishing conditions for belief: “Unless I see the nail marks, put my finger where the nails were, put my hand into his side, I’m not going to believe.” Some of us have got a little list like that ourselves, and our pride is a forceful barrier to faith.

When Thomas Was with Them

So, picture number one: Jesus’ appearance when Thomas is absent. Picture number two: the reaction of Thomas to the record of the appearance of Jesus. And then finally, picture number three, beginning in verse 26: “A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas,” this time, “was with them”—same time, same place.

Don’t you think it just seems a tiny bit possible that the Lord Jesus waited until Sunday evening to establish a pattern for his disciples to regard this day and not some other day as the day of the new creation, as the day of rest and worship? In fact, when you consider this, there is probably an easier basis for establishing a New Testament pattern for evening services rather than for morning services. But it’s just traditional that everyone has to get out of their bed in the morning and do what they do. There’s a thought, huh? One morning service for the faithful and three evening services for the rest of us!

Incidentally, there is nothing sacrosanct about times of services. I don’t care if the service is at four in the afternoon, two in the afternoon, seven in the evening, nine in the evening, three in the morning, ten in the morning. There’s nothing in the Bible about what time the services are. And the only reason we do as we do is in order to try and establish some kind of balanced existence for those who desire to be fed and to be prepared for the week that lies ahead.

Verse 27 is staggering, isn’t it? “Jesus came”—verse 26—and he “stood among them.” “Shalom!” he says. And “then he said to Thomas…” He might justifiably have rebuked Thomas. He might have come in—if it had been me, probably I would have come in and said, “Now, Thomas, I believe you’ve been making a fuss about things. I don’t know what’s wrong with you, Thomas. I preached the same to you, I told you the same as I told the rest, and somehow or another, it’s got back to me”—and so on we might have gone. But Jesus deals gently. He deals graciously. And the demands of Thomas are more than met by the commands of Jesus. And the very fact of his knowledge of Thomas’s longing would probably have made a huge impact on him.

Incidentally, for those of you who are here, and you’ve got your little list in your mind—“Unless this and this and this…”—I want you to know that Jesus knows your list and that he is more than willing to meet you where you are. He won’t come and cater to your intellectual arrogance, pander to it, but he will come and cater to your intellectual integrity. And if you’re wired in such a way that you have this kind of Thomas factor going on before you can get to the heart of things, then rest assured that the Lord Jesus is able to deal with that. And he may have a whole series of verbs for you just as he had for Thomas: “Put, see, reach, put, stop, believe.”

The demands of Thomas are more than met by the commands of Jesus.

And confronted by the evidence, Thomas says what he can only say, “My Lord and my God!” This is a tough little piece for the Jehovah’s Witnesses, incidentally: “My Lord and my God! Jesus, you are God.” Mere men do not rise from the dead. Mere men do not appear through locked doors. Mere men are unable to speak at this peace that comes into our hearts.

And then, in verse 29, Jesus says, “Because you[’ve] seen me, you[’ve] believed; [but] blessed are those who have not seen and [have yet] believed.” Faith, in other words, which results from seeing with their own eyes the way that Thomas did is good, but faith which results from hearing alone is apparently more excellent.

Well, I want to stop there. That’s enough. I prayed that God would give me clarity and brevity, and I’m not sure about the clarity, but I can do something about the brevity.

Three little pictures. Do you find your face in any of those pictures? And if you’re tempted to run away and put your fingers in your ears, let me ask you whether you honestly think that the agnostic account of man is going to be able to satisfy you intellectually and morally, spiritually. Does it really satisfy?

Have you read your newspaper this week? It struck me forcibly Thursday, I think it was. Two things coalesced in my mind. One was the words of Francis Shaeffer when he addressed us in London in the early ’70s. I was present with a group, and he spoke to the group. And he said what I’ve reported to you before. He said once a culture breaks the link between an infinite, personal creator God and God’s creation, then the destruction of that culture will eventually be swift. And he made what I thought at the time was a most bizarre statement. He said, “It may not be in my lifetime, but I believe in your lifetime,” he said to us as a group of students, “you will live to see not only the destruction of human sexuality depicted on stage and screen but the destruction of life itself.” And he said, “I believe the day will come when people will actually be killed in full view of humanity.”

Now, he was talking about the theater. But did you see the sentence that was handed down in Germany? The children present almost forbids me from mentioning this. I say this discreetly as I can: eight and a half years for a gentleman who solicited via the internet willing individuals to undergo torture and eventual killing. He had a significant response, and one individual went through with the whole event, and it was all videotaped. And he followed the death with cannibalism and created this huge legal dilemma in Germany, because it had no existent category for such an unbelievably despicable proceeding.

I ask you, my friends: Do you really think that life without God can possibly satisfy you intellectually, morally, emotionally, spiritually? And why would you want to run from someone whose message is peace, is love, is forgiveness, is life?

Thomas got to see it with his own two eyes. We don’t. Our faith rests on the testimony of those who were witnesses to the resurrection, who were present to see Christ in all of his physical power.

I’ve used my time. Those of you who have the commentary on John by Don Carson will be greatly helped by reading his comments on verse 29, which are too long for me to read. They come on page 659 of the commentary in the Pillar New Testament Commentary series. And I don’t suggest you take it home and try to read it from the beginning, but if you’re interested in that comment, then you’ll find it there on page 659 and 660.

Well, let’s pray together:

God, we bless you that, again, the Bible has been written in order that the evidence may be presented, that faith may result, and that life may emerge from faith. We thank you that although we do not see with our physical eye, that the Word of God comes to us, and “faith come[s] by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”[8] I pray for every skeptic present tonight and for those of our family and friends who fit the Thomas mold. And we pray, O God, that you will give to us wisdom and insight in seeking to speak well of Christ so that we might see our unbelieving young people and friends become the committed followers of Jesus. We offer our lives to you as best we know how. We bring our evening offerings to you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

[1] See James 2:19.

[2] 2 Peter 1:4 (KJV).

[3] J. B. Phillips, Ring of Truth: A Translator’s Testimony (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1967), 11.

[4] John 14:4–5 (NIV 1984).

[5] Charles Reynolds Brown, Have We Outgrown Religion? (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1932), 26. Paraphrased.

[6] See Matthew 9:6; Mark 2:10; Luke 5:24.

[7] Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means: An Inquiry into the Nature of Ideals and the Methods Employed for Their Realization (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1937), 312, 316. Paraphrased.

[8] Romans 10:17 (KJV).