Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Resurrection of Christ from John 20:24-31
Male: What a privilege it is to have Dr. Don Carson with us this morning. Now I am very purposefully not going to give a lengthy introduction this morning. There are many things that could be said. I could talk a little bit about the contribution that Dr. Carson has made to the church through his writings, which have been very extensive.
I could talk about his years of teaching and speaking regularly all over the world. Dr. Carson is regularly traveling all over the world, and folks, the glamor of that kind of travel fades very quickly. It becomes hard work. So this man has regularly given of himself to travel to speak and teach all over the world. We could talk about that. We could talk about very recent … in fact, current … work that Dr. Carson is doing to help shape a new generation of pastors. We could talk about how grateful I am, personally, for this man’s influence in my life.
I’m not going to talk about those things, but, Dr. Carson, I speak right now for the entire church, and we do want to thank you. We could thank you for many things, but I want to just isolate two things that we want to specifically thank Dr. Carson for this morning. First of all, Dr. Carson, I want to thank you for writing these two books.
Many, many people in our church have benefitted, for many years now, and more people are being added to the ranks every year (which I am so happy to see). These two devotional books, entitled For the Love of God, Volumes 1 and 2, have served so many people. These have been particularly useful in helping people love God more and love God better. So, Dr. Carson, thank you for writing. This is a very different kind of writing than he normally does, but we are grateful to you for doing this kind of writing.
Then we also want to thank you for the way that you have been particularly interested and particularly encouraging to us as a church. I mentioned to the congregation last week that when the idea of this church was introduced at Trinity, Dr. Carson was, I believe, the most encouraging of this endeavor. It wasn’t that the other folks weren’t encouraging, but his encouragement stood out.
So as a church, Dr. Carson, we are so glad that you are here this morning, not just because we are eager to receive God’s Word, but we’re glad you’re here because we want to say thank you to you. So would you join me in welcoming Dr. Carson to the pulpit this morning? We are so glad you’re here.
Don Carson: All of us stand on the shoulders of others, don’t we? I could give you a long list of people on whose shoulders I stand, and that’s the way the church continues (as we shall see from this passage). Turn, please, in your Bibles, to John 20, and I shall read verses 24 to the end. John 20:24–31. Hear, then, what Holy Scripture says:
“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.”
This is the Word of the Lord. Let us pray.
Now may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. Through Jesus Christ we pray, amen.
Doubt can have many, many causes. Sometimes, it issues primarily from just plain ignorance. People don’t know very much. When I was serving a church on the West Coast of Canada quite some years ago, we had in the church maybe a hundred or so college and career young people who were full of enthusiasm.
One of the people who stood out was a young woman called Peggy. If Peggy were at one end of the building, and the other 99 were at the other end, about 80 percent of the energy was at Peggy’s end. She was one of those. She had a keen and enthusiastic faith, but she didn’t think linearly. She was a student at the University of British Columbia, and I’m grateful she wasn’t in engineering.
Nevertheless, in her own enthusiastic, tangential, associative way, she was a wonderful young Christian woman. She came to me one day and said that there was a football hunk at the University of British Columbia who was paying her some attention, and she wanted to share her faith with him. What did I think? I said, “Well, by all means, share your faith, but be careful. Life is slippery.”
“Oh, I don’t want to go out with him. There’s nothing of romance in this. I just want to share my faith.”
“Uh-huh.”
“No, no, that’s really what …” I said, “Fine, bring him to me.” So the next Saturday night, I was in my study, rather late at night. At 10:30 at night, I heard a knock on the door. In bounced Peggy, and behind came Fred. He was as dour and as linear as she was vivacious and associative. She said, “I’d like you to meet Fred. He wants to meet you.”
Now I could tell right away that wasn’t the truth. I was merely a stumbling block on the way to Peggy, but we went out to IHOP (the International House of Pancakes). I was trying to put him at his ease and find out more about him. It turned out that he knew nothing about the Bible, absolutely nothing. He was bone ignorant. We started to talk, and he was clearly nervous. We talked until about 2:00 in the morning, and we barely touched on the gospel.
The next Saturday night at 10:30 p.m. there was another knock on the door, They had been to see a movie or something. Out we went to IHOP. This time, he had a list of questions. I went through the questions, suggested some readings, and loaned him some books. We were there till 2:00 in the morning. This went on every week for 13 weeks … at IHOP until 2:00 in the morning. What this was doing for my Sunday sermons, I have no idea! He brought his questions, and every week he read whatever I gave him to read then came back with more questions.
At the end of the 13 weeks he said to me, “All right. I’ll become a Christian.” Over the years, I’ve seen quite a few people come to know Christ, and I have never had a guy come to know Christ quite as directly, as taciturnly as that chap. But you see, he didn’t know anything. What he needed, first and foremost, was some information about what the Bible actually said. In due course he was captured by Christ, and he became a Christian.
I don’t want you to think that what I’m going to talk about now, the conversion of Thomas and his doubt, is a sort of a universal answer to every kind of doubt; it’s not that, but we have to look and listen very carefully to see what it is he is doubting and why, what kind of answer is brought to him by Jesus, and why he turns as he does if we’re to understand what the text says and how it bears on us. We’re going to look first at verses 24 and 25.
1. The cry of a disappointed skeptic.
John 20:24–25. When people were executed by the Romans in the first century, there was one of three methods of execution. Crucifixion was the worst. It was reserved for slaves and scumbags. No Roman citizen could ever be executed by crucifixion, apart from the explicit sanction of the emperor. It was considered not only painful, but shameful.
There were no convenient loincloths. You were stripped naked. It was always in a public place, at a crossroads or by a busy thoroughfare. You hung there … they either tied you or nailed you to the crossmembers, and then they put a spike through your feet that were overlapped one on top of the other.
You would pull with your arms and push with your legs to open up your chest cavity so you could breathe. Then the muscle spasms would start, and you’d collapse. Then you couldn’t breathe. So you’d pull and push again, and you’d breathe. Then the muscle spasms would start again, and you’d collapse. That could go on for days.
Then if, for some strange reason, they wanted you to die a little sooner (as was the case in this instance; there was a Jewish feast coming up, and they wanted to get the bodies buried), then they would come along and smash your shin bone. Then you couldn’t push anymore, so you couldn’t breathe, and you’d suffocate in a few minutes.
Yet when they came to Jesus on that fateful first Good Friday, they found he was already dead. They never broke his legs. Instead, one of the foot soldiers had a short javelin with him and shoved that up under Jesus’ rib cage. It pierced the pericardium, and out came blood and water. So Jesus not only had the peculiar marks of crucifixion, he had the peculiar wound in his side.
Thomas says, “Unless I see the marks in his hands, unless I put my fist in that wound in his side, I will not believe it.” What he demands, then, is the most explicit, undeniable proof that the Jesus who went into the grave is the same one who ostensibly came out, or he would not believe it. Here is the cry of a disappointed skeptic.
2. The adoration of an astonished skeptic.
John 20:26–28: “A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked …” That’s the way Jesus had appeared to the group the first week, too. He had never done anything like that during the days of his flesh, before his crucifixion. He just suddenly appeared, but in resurrection body. Now he suddenly appeared again.
“… Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you!’ ” Now probably, if you were speaking in Aramaic or Hebrew, it would be something like, “Shalom,” or in modern Arabic, “Salaam,” which at one level is just like, “Hello.” It’s just a greeting. Yet the word itself does mean “peace.” Not just psychological peace, but well-being. In its best connotations, it has the notion of well-being with God, with the universe, and with all that God has made. Peace in that ultimate sense.
Jesus was capable of saying a lot of pregnant things, enigmatic things, things that you could read at one level at a fairly simple sort of way, and then you start thinking about it a little more and realize, “Whoa, this is profound.” For what Jesus is wishing them is not simply, “Hello” but peace with God in the wake of the cross. “Peace be with you.”
Then, though he had not apparently been present when Thomas had made his demand, he now turns to Thomas and says, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” Thomas says, “My Lord and my God!” Now if we’ve been Bible readers for any length of time, we’re familiar with this response, aren’t we?
We’ve read it a lot of times, but have you thought how strange it is? At a certain level, it seems over the top. Why is Thomas inferring so much? Why doesn’t he simply say, “You are alive!” or even, “Oops.” Lazarus has come back from the grave, and nobody said “My Lord and my God” to him. Why, therefore, this extraordinary confession?
In fact, this extraordinary confession is so strong that it embarrasses people like friendly neighborhood Jehovah’s Witnesses and other people in the Arian tradition (going back to a fourth-century chap called Arius who did not believe that Jesus was truly God). So people in this tradition have to give other explanations for this sort of text.
If you talk to friendly neighborhood Jehovah’s Witnesses, they give one of two explanations. One says what Thomas really said was, “My Lord, my God!” This would mean that the first thing out of Thomas’s lips, when he sees the resurrected Christ, is blasphemy, for which Jesus then blesses him in the next verse.
Even if you could swallow that that’s likely, you’re going to have a hard job with the little word “and.” Even if you could believe that a first-century devout Jew like Thomas could blaspheme in this particular way by saying, “My Lord, my God!” how does that generate “My Lord and my God”? It’s a hideous explanation. There are others, but I needn’t give you the whole history of debate in this regard.
Yet, it still is a very strange confession. Why does Thomas infer so much from the resurrection? You have to project yourself back into Thomas’s place and remember what the book has said in advance. He’s had a whole week now to think about it. Just a few days earlier, on the night that Jesus was betrayed, Jesus had said things like, “Have I been with you such a long time and have you not known me? He who has seen me has seen the Father.”
Undoubtedly, when the disciples heard this, they were not thinking, “Oh yes, this is the foundation of the Trinity.” They just didn’t have the categories for it. They were probably muttering under their breath again, “Deep, deep,” but they really wouldn’t understand a whale of a lot about it until after Jesus had risen from the dead.
In fact, John repeatedly remarks on how little the disciples understood. All the way back in chapter 2, there’s the whole pattern of noting how little the disciples understood. When Jesus said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days, I will raise it again,” John remarks, “The disciples did not understand, but after Jesus rose from the dead, then they remembered his words and they believed the Scripture.” They understood that Jesus was the ultimate Temple, but they didn’t get it the first time around.
Now Thomas. You could almost hear the wheels turning during that week before Jesus meets with his disciples again on that second Sunday. “Oh, it can’t be true. It can’t be true, but supposing the guys are right, supposing that it is true. Oh, it really can’t be. They’re deluding themselves. Yet supposing it is, what would that mean? Well, he did say some strange things, like, ‘Have you not known me?’ This, ‘He who has seen me has seen the Father’ stuff is so strong. Is there any word for that anywhere in Scripture?”
Christians can give that answer today, can’t they? In words that we quote every Christmas, words written by the prophet Isaiah more than 700 years before Christ, where the Davidic king is promised. “He will sit on his father David’s throne. Of the increase of his kingdom, there will be no end.” He’s a Davidic figure, and yet he’s also called “the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.”
You can almost hear the wheels turning. In chapter 8, Jesus has said, “Before Abraham was, I am.” In chapter 5, he’s insisting that God’s determination is that all should honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Granted what the Bible says about God, that makes Jesus a lot more than just one more prophet.
It’s not just material in John’s gospel, though that’s crucial for understanding John’s gospel as a book. Remember this in history. Thomas has seen all of the events at which he was present as recorded in the Synoptic Gospels as well. Think through one or two of those that undoubtedly raced through his mind. Just pick one.
Do you recall the account of the paralytic who was brought by his friends? Or maybe he’s a quadriplegic. He’s certainly a paralyzed man. He’s brought to Jesus by his friends. Jesus, at this point, is preaching in a house. It’s packed. There were no chairs down. The bodies are squashed in there. These friends try and bring this bedridden man to Jesus because, by this point, Jesus has a reputation for healing people.
You can just see them trying to make their way through the crowd. “Wait your turn, wait your turn! The Master is speaking. Oh, just shut up and wait. Wait!” These fellows won’t wait. So they go up the outside stairs to the flat roof. (That was pretty common construction in those days. There was no air conditioning, so in evening you’d go up on the roof and enjoy the cool fresh air wafting over the Kidron Valley.) They walk across the roof, listen, and find the place where Jesus is speaking down below. They then start taking off the tiles.
They lower this bed, on a rope, so that if the crowd won’t give way because of need, they’ll give way because a bed is coming on their heads! They lower this chap in front of Jesus, and then Jesus says, “My son, your sins are forgiven.” Whoa. What does that mean? Some of the theologians who were present figured it out. “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” they said.
Do you understand what’s going on there? Supposing, God forbid, on your way home today, you are stopped by a gang of thugs and beaten up viciously, maybe gang raped. I hear about it, and three or four days later, I go and visit you in the hospital. I come to you and say, “Be of good cheer. I found your attackers, and I have forgiven them.” What would you say to me? I doubt I’d get another invitation back.
“Who do you think you are? You weren’t the one that was gang raped! How can you talk like that? How can you forgive them? I’m the one that was hurt. I’m the one that’s lying here with three casts on me. How can you possibly speak of forgiving them?” Isn’t that what you would say? Wouldn’t you have every right to say it? It’s only the offended party that can forgive, isn’t it?
You know, that accounts for one of the most moving books that came out of the Holocaust, written by Simon Wiesenthal. Wiesenthal’s entire family was wiped out in the Holocaust. He’s the only one who survived. He was at Auschwitz. He wrote a little book called The Sunflower. He only wrote 85 pages, but it’s still worth reading to this day. It’s one of the most moving books I’ve ever read.
He describes how, in the closing weeks of the war (while the Russians were advancing from the East to Auschwitz, which, of course, is in Poland; the Russians got there first), he was pulled out of a work detail and shoved into a room where there was a young dying German soldier (maybe 19 or so, just a kid) with wounds so bad that clearly he wasn’t going to live very long. Apparently, this young Nazi soldier had asked to speak to a Jew. In the peculiar providence of God, the guards had pulled Wiesenthal out of the line and shoved him in this room.
Gasping for life, this young Nazi soldier begged Wiesenthal for forgiveness, not only for what the Nazis as a whole had done but for some things that he himself had participated in. He asked Wiesenthal for forgiveness. Wiesenthal, in his book The Sunflower, goes through what is rushing through his mind. He’s thinking, “Only the offended parties can forgive, but most of the Nazis’ most offended parties are dead. No one else has the right to pronounce forgiveness. Therefore, there is no forgiveness for the Nazis.”
He listened to this young Nazi soldier crying for forgiveness. He said not a word, and he turned and walked out of the room. After the war was over, he wrote up the account, called The Sunflower. He sent it to ethicists all over the world, with a simple question: “Did I do the right thing?” You know, Wiesenthal almost got it right. He was very close to getting it right, because it is always true that only the offended party can forgive. The additional bit that the Bible insists on, however, is crucial. The additional bit is that God is always the most offended party. Always.
You cheat on your income tax; God is the most offended party. You fan bitterness; God is the most offended party. You become cruel and harsh; God is the most offended party. You commit adultery; God is the most offended party. You fan yourself up in pride; God is the most offended party. Always, always, always.
David understood that. After committing adultery with Bathsheba and then arranging for her husband, Uriah, to get bumped off, he’s finally confronted. In his famous psalm of contrition, Psalm 51, he actually addresses God and says, “Against you only, have I sinned and done this evil in your sight.” There’s a certain level of reading that says, “That doesn’t make any sense at all.”
He has certainly sinned against Bathsheba. He certainly sinned against Uriah; he had him killed. He sinned against the military high command; he corrupted them. He sinned against the baby in Bathsheba’s womb, and that baby dies. He sinned against his own family; he betrayed them. He sinned against the people for whom he’s the covenantal monarch. It’s hard to think of anybody that he hasn’t sinned against!
Yet he has the cheek to say, “Against you only, have I sinned and done this evil in your sight,” At the deepest level, that’s exactly true. What makes sin, sin? What makes sin so heinous? What makes it so odious? What makes it so foul? It is defying the God who has made us and to whom we must finally give an account, which is why whatever other forgiveness you get from anybody else, you must have God’s forgiveness or you have nothing.
Thomas understood that. He remembered that Jesus said to that paralytic, “My son, your sins are forgiven you,” even though that paralytic had never offended Jesus personally, as far as Thomas knew. The theologians understood. “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Just so. The cascading memories of all of those things in Jesus’ ministry and the events that brought Jesus to the cross come to Thomas’s mind, and he falls down before Jesus and says, “My Lord and my God!”
You know, there’s another component that’s built right into this account. What kind of a God is it that goes to a cross?
At the end of World War I, which was the bloodiest and most stupid of wars, without moral justification at all, even for the strongest just war theorists. In it, you had 10 million people mowing each other down with Howitzers and machine guns across a 2,300-mile area across Europe. There were 10 million young men, just mowed down, for the gaining of a few hundred yards this way or a few hundred yards that way. It was bloody mayhem. An entire generation wiped out.
Out of this horrible war, this “war to end all wars,” came some very remarkable poetry by Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen and others. One of the most remarkable pieces was a poem by Edward Shillito. He is not very well-known, but his poem on the war reflects this account of Jesus’ resurrection. As soon as you read it, you realize this had to be something that Thomas had to think about. It’s called “Jesus of the Scars.” Shillito writes:
If we have never sought, we seek thee now;
Thine eyes burn through the dark, our only stars;
We must have sight of thorn-pricks on thy brow;
We must have thee, O Jesus of the Scars.
The heavens frighten us: they are too calm;
In all the universe, we have no place.
Our wounds are hurting us; where is the balm?
Lord Jesus, by thy Scars, we claim thy grace.
Then these lines, taken from this account of Thomas:
If, when the doors are shut, thou drawest near,
Only reveal those hands, that side of thine;
We know today what wounds are; never fear,
Show us thy Scars, we know the countersign.
The other gods were strong, but thou wast weak;
They rode, but thou didst stumble to a throne;
But to our wounds only God’s wounds speak;
And not a god has wounds, but thou alone.
You see, if you confess that Jesus is God, if you bow before him and say, “My Lord and my God,” you’re bowing before a crucified Messiah. It changes everything. God of the universe may be; damned malefactor, he also is under the curse. Thomas bows before him and says, “My Lord and my God.”
You mustn’t even forget the little word “my.” This is not a liturgical confession, “Our Lord, our God.” At some point, this must become personal or it is pretty meaningless. At some point, you must individually bow before him and say, “My Lord and my God.” So here is the adoration of an astonished skeptic, and finally …
3. The function of a converted skeptic.
John 20:29–31: “Jesus told him, ‘Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.’ ” How do you understand that verse? I think this verse, verse 29, is today one of the most misunderstood verses in the gospel of John. This is because today there are so many unbiblical notions of faith around, and they tilt us in a certain direction.
The way this verse is pretty commonly understood today is something like, “All right, Thomas, you got your evidence, and now you believe. Great. You’re blessed because you had the evidence, and you believed, but you know what, Thomas? It’s a whale of a lot better to believe without having any evidence.
Blessed are those who do not see and believe. That’s what you really need. You need to believe because you believe, to believe because you trust me. It’s a whole existential relationship. You just trust me and stop all this endless apologetics and evidence and all of that. Just trust me!” Isn’t that the way it’s often portrayed today?
That goes along with today’s notion of what faith is. You ask people on the streets of Kenosha, if they have no strong Christian background, what faith is, and they’ll tell you something like this (they may use slightly different words, but in substance what they’ll tell you is this): “Faith is a personal, subjective religious choice. That’s what it is. It’s a personal, subjective religious choice.”
That is, it’s not tied to questions of truth. It’s not tied to questions of validation. It’s not tied to questions of the historical universe or the empirical world or anything like that. It’s tied to personal, subjective religious choice. So it’s not testable. “You have your faith, and I have my faith. I’m a pretty spiritual person, you know. I mean, I personally find crystals really wonderful because they somehow capture me deep within, and the vibrations draw me out so that I feel connected to the universe. You believe in Jesus. It’s really all the same thing, isn’t it?”
The ground of it is personal, subjective religious choice. Isn’t that what faith is? Although the word faith and the verb to believe in the Bible are used in slightly different ways and different contexts (that’s true), not once is it ever used that way. Not once. The most telling display of the fact that faith is never used that way is found in another resurrection passage: 1 Corinthians 15.
There, there are some Christians in Corinth who are having a hard job believing that Jesus actually rose from the dead. They could believe that but not believe there’s a resurrection at the end. Just where they are in all of this is not quite sure. Paul begins to track back. “Suppose,” he says, “Jesus is not really risen from the dead. What follows? First, you’re still in your trespasses and sins.”
What he means by that is if you grant that everything else is true in the Bible, except the account of the resurrection of Jesus, then all that the Bible says … about our lostness, about being under the wrath of God, and about facing the final judgment of God … still remains in place. The only thing that gives us hope is the fact that Jesus died in our place. He bore our sins in his own body on the tree. This sacrifice was acceptable to God. That’s proven by the resurrection.
He doesn’t just die on a curse and is himself damned to hell. No, he’s vindicated. That’s part of what the resurrection was about. He comes back and has God’s full approval for all that he’s done. He cries on the cross, “It is finished!” and it is. The proof is the resurrection. If, in fact, Jesus is not risen from the dead, how do you know what he has done on the cross? You’re still in your trespasses and sins.
“Not only so,” he says, “but the apostles and all those witnesses …” He says there are up to 500 of them, and a lot of them are still alive when Paul writes. He says, “You go and have an interview with them.” He says they’re all a bunch of liars. They’re either out to deceive you or they are themselves deceived. They’re not telling the truth.
“Then,” he says, “that means your faith is futile.” In other words, if you believe that Jesus rose from the dead, when, in fact, he has not risen from the dead, then you’re believing something that isn’t true. That means your faith is futile, because one of the conditions for valid faith is the truthfulness of faith’s object. Let me repeat that. It is blisteringly important. One of the criteria for valid faith is the truthfulness of faith’s object.
Now that’s not all that faith is. Faith is not just believing something that is true. Faith, in the Bible, also involves this element of personal trust in him who is true, self-commitment, and abandoning oneself to God, but it is never, ever at the expense of the truthfulness of faith’s object. Never. Not once. Which is why Paul also says that if, in fact, Christ hasn’t risen from the dead, and you believe that he has, then you are of all people most to be pitied. He says you’re just a joke.
A year and a half ago on Easter, the Anglican primate of Australia, the archbishop of Perth, was asked, on national Australian television, “What would happen if, somehow, they found the grave where Jesus was buried and, beyond any shadow of a doubt, this was really his tomb? Moreover, what if they found his body there with all the wounds, they found the marks, and you have proof, beyond real cavil, that Jesus never did rise from the dead? What would this do to your Christian faith?”
The archbishop said, “It wouldn’t do anything to it. I believe Jesus is risen in my heart.” In other words, it’s not touchable. It doesn’t depend on objective truth. It doesn’t depend on something written in history. It’s merely experiential. It’s private, subjective religious choice. Paul is much more rigorous than the archbishop! Paul says, “Well, if that happened, then Christianity is a load of bunk, and everybody who believes in it is, quite frankly, a bit of a joke, just to be pitied, and a screwball.”
That’s why, in the Bible, the primary way for increasing faith is by articulating and defending the truth. You don’t come to the Bible and say, “Believe, believe, believe, believe, believe,” as if, somehow, yelling it, repeating it, or exhorting people toward it is itself likely to ground faith properly. No, the way you ground faith, in the Bible, is by articulating and defending the truth.
Now there are moral dimensions to faith. We’ve already seen those in the introduction. There is a blindness to human life that really finally does depend on the gift of the Holy Spirit coming to us and opening our blind eyes. Yes, there is an existential decision in all of this. I understand all of that. Yet, at the same time, belief is never, ever encouraged in the Bible in something that is not true.
Now come back to this passage, and you see right away what is being said. You must read verse 29 in the light of verses 30–31. Jesus says to Thomas, “ ‘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.”
Do you see what Jesus is saying? “Thomas, you’ve seen and believed. That’s a good thing. That’s a wonderful thing.” Jesus is about to return to heaven. He’s only going to be here 40 days and 40 nights. He is not accessible to people in Kenosha today in resurrection body just to check out those wounds again.
Jesus knows full well there will be generation after generation, generation after generation, men and women of every tribe and people and nation who will come to believe that Jesus rose from the dead. Many will believe, even though they have not seen. So does that mean they believe without evidence? That they believe merely as a private, existential decision that is merely subjective, personal religious choice? No, of course not.
The point is that Thomas has seen. So has Peter. So has John. So has Paul. Five hundred of them! These things, now, have been written down, including this account. They’ve been written down, we’re told, in order that you may believe: the readers to whom John was first writing at the end of the first century, who had not seen the resurrected Christ, and in order that you, the people in Kenosha, might believe, even though you have not seen personally.
Thus, the historical disclosure in real space-time history to those first people who did touch and see and handle. They saw Jesus by the lake and ate food with him. They saw him on the mount in Galilee. They saw him in ones and twos in Jerusalem. They saw and touched and handled, and they wrote. Borne along by the Spirit of God, they wrote, “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
I don’t know you. This is the first time I’ve ever been to this church. I know some of you because you have connections with Trinity. Yet, I imagine, in a church this size, there are some people who are being exposed to Christianity for the very first time, and some of this stuff really does seem weird. I don’t blame you for thinking so. If you’ve come from a secular background, it is pretty weird. Belief is not an obvious thing. In this fallen and broken world, this love of self-autonomy is such a huge hurdle to overcome.
I want to tell you, with all the passion of my being, that biblical Christianity at its best never, ever, ever encourages you to believe something that isn’t true. It never, ever encourages you to believe for belief’s sake, as if belief were an end in itself. It insists that Jesus is none less than a human being and God, that he died to bear our sins, and that he rose again. If it is the truth, then it is folly beyond calculation not to believe it. The issue is the truth.
The purpose of this belief is not just so that you can earn brownie points or something like that, but “that you might have life,” the text says. That you might have life, the life that only God himself can give, life that is secured because Christ bore our sins in his own body on the tree, life because he bequeaths his Spirit to us which transforms us and pulsates within us, and life in anticipation of the resurrection life that will one day be ours at the end of the age: all because Christ died and rose again.
If you are a believer, my dear brother or sister, understand that the book of God does not encourage mere existential faith, though it does demand personal faith. It demands faith that is grounded in truth. So what we must come back to again and again and again is the truth and bow before him who ultimately said, “I am the truth.”
Christopher Idle has written some of our best contemporary hymns, such as:
If Christ had not been raised from death
Our faith would be in vain,
Our preaching but a waste of breath,
Our sin and guilt remain.
But now the Lord is risen indeed;
He rules in earth and heaven:
His Gospel meets a world of need
In Christ, we are forgiven.
If Christ still lay within the tomb
Then death would be the end,
And we should face our final doom
With neither guide nor friend.
But now the Savior is raised up,
So when a Christian dies
We mourn, yet look to God in hope
In Christ, the saints arise!
If Christ had not been truly raised
His church would live a lie;
His name should never more be praised,
His words deserve to die.
But now our great Redeemer lives;
Through him we are restored;
His word endures, his church revives
In Christ, our risen Lord.
Let us pray.
We remember the anguish of the man in the temple who can scarcely believe the good news and cries, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” So open up our eyes, Lord God, to see your sheer goodness in coming to us in the person of your Son, to see the truth of who Christ is and bow before him, and to see the truth of the empty tomb and the resurrection appearances, that he was touched and seen and handled, not least by Thomas himself.
Work in us, by your Spirit, faith. Give to each one here the gift of faith, we beseech you, faith, not in some merely subjective sense but faith to see what the truth is and then to bow before you and say, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” For Jesus’ sake, amen.
