×

Doubting Thomas

John 20:24-31

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Doubt from John 20:24-31


It is an enormous privilege to be back here at Southern again. I would like to invite you to turn in Scripture to the last few verses of John 20. I shall read from verse 24 to 31. This is 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.

Doubting Thomas. It’s rather stuck. It’s not quite fair in some ways when you think of other things the Bible says about Thomas, but he’s stuck with it. Yet it’s worth reflecting on the different kinds of things that actually call doubt into being. Sometimes in this fallen and broken world, doubt is a rite of passage into maturity. Someone is brought up in a safe, well-ordered, devout Christian home, Christian school, Christian church, and eventually goes off to university and suddenly faces questions and challenges that he or she has never heard before.

“Oh, you’re a Christian, are you?”

“Yes.”

“Your parents are Christians, are they?”

“Yes.”

“Have you met Abdul here?”

“Well, yes, he’s in my class.”

“He’s Muslim.”

“Yes, I know.”

“His parents are Muslim. Do you think maybe one of the reasons why he’s a Muslim is that his parents are Muslim?”

“Well, probably.”

“So is that why you’re a Christian? Your parents are Christian?”

Gradually things have to be thought through all over again. This young person begins to find out how much of the faith is merely inherited. In some cases, there is shipwreck because there is nothing that is real and genuine and personal. In other cases, it becomes a kind of passage in this fallen and broken world, under the good hand of God, to bring this person to a genuine, personal faith rather than merely inheriting the views of his or her parents.

Sometimes doubt is the product of a systemic moral choice. Here’s the famous atheist Aldous Huxley in his book Ends and Means:

“For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. We objected to the political and economic system because it was unjust. The supporters of these systems claimed that in some way they embodied the meaning (the Christian meaning, they insisted) of the world. There was an admirably simple method of confuting these people and at the same time justifying ourselves in our political and erotic revolt. We would deny the world had any meaning whatsoever.”

Well, at least he’s honest. I stumbled across a similar passage in Michel Foucault, one of the fathers of postmodernism, a few months back. Sometimes doubt is grounded is systemic moral choice. Sometimes doubt is grounded in sheer ignorance. When I was pastoring a church in Vancouver quite some years ago, we had in our church about 120 to 150 college-aged young people, 18 to 25 years. They were a great bunch; they were terrific.

One of the most interesting of all the people in this church was a young woman by the name of Peggy at the University of British Columbia. She was vivacious, colorful, interesting, enchanting in all kinds of ways. She couldn’t rub two linear thoughts together. She would have made a horrible engineer, but fortunately she was studying the arts. With all this energy and enthusiasm and transparent love for Jesus, she was, in her own way, a bold witness on campus.

She came to me one day and said, “There’s a chap in the football squad by the name of Fred who wants to take me out and wants to find out more about Jesus.”

I said, “Uh-huh.”

She said, “No, no, I’m not interested romantically. I’d like to talk to him about Jesus.”

I said, “Uh-huh.”

“No, no, really, really! My motives in this are pure. I would like to go out with him and, and …”

I said, “Fine. Go out and talk to him about Jesus, but watch your heart. You can be snookered same as anybody else.”

“I’m not really going to do that.”

“Fine. After you’ve talked to him about Jesus, bring him to see me.”

Well, she did. That Saturday night I was working in my study and there’s a knock at the door. It was 10:30 at night, and in bounces Peggy. “Hi, this is Fred. He wants to see you.” Looked to me as if Fred didn’t want to see anybody like me at all. I was merely a route to Peggy, but we went out to IHOP (International House of Pancakes). We were there until 2:00 in the morning as I was trying to find out more about Fred and began to introduce him to what the gospel was about.

The next Saturday night, 10:30 at night, there’s a knock at the door again. Out we went to IHOP. This time he had a list of questions. I gave him things to read; I tried to give him some answers, gave him some things to look up. The next Saturday night, he knocked again. He’d looked them all up. Another list of questions. For three and a half hours, Saturday night after Saturday night, for 13 weeks. (What this was doing to my sermons for the Sunday, I have no idea.) He just came in with his questions. He always did the reading. He always came back with more questions.

At the end of 13 weeks he said to me, “All right, Don, I’ll become a Christian,” and he did. What can I say? I baptized him. He’s now the deacon of a church, bringing up his children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. So much of his doubt was just grounded in sheer ignorance. Oh, I know it takes the converting, convicting work of the Spirit of God to open our blind eyes and all of that. Yet at the same time, a fundamental element of his doubt was just sheer ignorance; he didn’t know anything.

Sometimes doubt is grounded not so much in ignorance, and not so much in systemic moral choice, as in ten thousand little choices. Someone is a member of a church for a lot of years and has prayed and borne witness and started to rear his family in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and then somewhere along the line the pressures of middle management, college bills, the attractiveness of going higher in the world of business, bigger income …

Well, the meetings get squeezed out, and private devotions become dull, and then they’re diluted, and then they disappear. Pretty soon: “You know, my wife doesn’t really understand me.” Somewhere three years, four years, five years down the road, he finds himself in bed with someone he shouldn’t be in bed with, and he wakes up and looks himself in the mirror and says, “You know, I don’t believe all that rubbish anyway.” How has he gotten here? Has there been some big philosophical assessment? No, ten thousand tiny decisions.

Sometimes, it has to be said, doubt is introduced simply by want of sleep. We are whole beings: moral, spiritual, physical. You put people under enough stress, and they can go really cynical, skeptical, on you. Sometimes the godliest thing in the entire universe is to go to bed, not pray all night. Go to bed; get some sleep. Did you hear that students? Not always, but sometimes.

Now why have I spent so much of these few minutes outlining some of these patterns of doubt? All of these can be found in one fashion or another in the Scripture. The reason, of course, is that although this passage in front of us deals with certain kinds of doubt, it doesn’t address all kinds of doubt. It is important to understand exactly what lies at the heart of Thomas’ doubt here if we are to understand how well and acutely Holy Scripture answers this kind of doubt in this context.

Jesus, of course, has been crucified. Quite frankly, his own disciples had not expected this to happen. After all, once Jesus had been crucified, we find them in the upstairs room, and they’re not saying, “Yes, I can hardly wait till Sunday!” Despite the fact that Jesus had made his announcements again and again and again, they hadn’t put it together. They thought he was speaking enigmatically, metaphorically. They really had no category yet for a crucified-and-resurrected Messiah.

Then the first reports came in. The women at the tomb, Peter, Peter and John racing to the tomb, the two on the road to Emmaus, and eventually on that first Sunday, Jesus appearing to the 10. Thomas wasn’t there. That brings us then to the first emphasis of the text: the cry of a disappointed skeptic. Verses 24 and 25:

“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.’ ”

What kind of doubt is this? This is not the doubt of a philosophical materialist, someone who thinks that all that exists in the universe is matter and energy and time and space; that’s all there is. After all, Thomas was a first-century devout Jew. He believed the Scriptures, what we call the Old Testament. He believed that God is personal, that he had made all things. He believed that he had made promises regarding a coming Messiah. He believed all of this.

Nor was this the doubt of someone who gradually was snookered by moral decay. What kind of doubt is it? This is the doubt of someone who has suffered massive religious disappointment and doesn’t want to be had. He doesn’t want to be snookered again. He really had high hopes for this Jesus. There’s a huge part of him that admires and respects, reverences, everything he has known about this Jesus, yet his hopes are in the tomb with Jesus.

You can almost hear the agony in his thinking. “I’d love to believe that Jesus is alive, but you know you can want something so badly you can almost talk yourself into it. I’m going to need the kind of evidence that will convince me that the pre-death Jesus, the Jesus who went into the tomb, is exactly the same Jesus as the Jesus who came out. No swap. No twin hidden in the background. No misty, fuzzy edges blurred with a nice camera. Unless I see the marks, unless I put my hand into the wound, I will not believe it.”

After all, in the ancient world, a lot of crucifixion was done without nails. You were hung up, with ropes tying you there, because the worst physical pain in crucifixion was muscle spasm. You had to pull with your arms and push with your legs to open up your chest cavity to breathe. Then the muscle spasms start and you collapse. Then you have to breathe, and you do it again. So sometimes they didn’t nail you; sometimes they just hung you there. This could go on for hours, even days, but Jesus was nailed.

Not only so, but if for some reason (religious or otherwise), the soldiers had to get rid of you a little sooner, they’d come along and simply smash your shinbone. Then you couldn’t push any more, and you’d sag, and you’d suffocate in a few minutes. Well, when they got to Jesus, they found he was already dead. Instead of breaking his bones, they took a short javelin and shoved it up under his ribcage, so he had a unique wound. Thomas says, “Unless I see the scars, unless I put my hand where his nails were, unless I put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.”

What he wants is the strongest possible evidence that the pre-death Jesus is none other than the resurrected Jesus. That’s what he wants. Now this is really a kind of faith that eschews gullibility. There are all kinds of Christians around who are ready to believe almost anything. Thomas isn’t one of them. In the name of faith (as if faith by itself is a virtue, regardless of faith’s object), they are prepared to believe almost anything.

Sometimes they believe all kinds of things, let us say, about the universality of healing. Then when they discover that their own loved one dies, they are doubly shattered because it feels to them as if their faith has been betrayed. Thomas feels somehow as if he’s been betrayed, and he doesn’t want to have that kind of faith again. He wants to distinguish between faith and gullibility. He wants to be sure that what he believes is true. Here’s the cry of a disappointed skeptic.

Then we hear the adoration of an astonished skeptic. Verse 26: “A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked …” That’s what had happened the first week as well, something that Jesus had never done during the pre-death days of his flesh. “… Jesus came and stood among them, and he said, ‘Peace be with you.’ ” Probably shalom, modern Arabic salaam, well being. Yet the words are now pregnant with an overtone of so much more now that Jesus has died and borne our sins in his own body on the tree.

Then, though apparently he hadn’t been there physically when Thomas had made his demand, he 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 said to him, “My Lord and my God.” Now that is a remarkable confession. Those who deny that Jesus is God have to explain this passage in some other way.

Contemporary Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example (as far as I’ve been able to determine) have three different explanations. You can read them in different parts of their literature. Let me just mention one. On one account, some will say that what Thomas really said here was, “My Lord! My God!” which means that Thomas’s initial response to seeing the resurrected Christ was blasphemy. To make things worse, Jesus then blesses him for it. Now every culture has vulgarity and blasphemy, but that particular kind of blasphemy simply was not known amongst Jews in the first century. They had their own kinds, but that wasn’t part of it.

In any case, even if you could imagine a devout Jew like Thomas would utter this particular blasphemy, you’re going to have a hard job with that little word and. Even if, by the furthest stretch of your imagination, you could believe that what Thomas said when he saw the resurrected Christ was “My Lord! My God!” how do you turn that into “My Lord! And my God!” This is daft, past finding out.

Yet in all sobriety, isn’t this a strange utterance? Doesn’t it seem to be a confession which, on first reading, goes over the top, goes beyond what the evidence demands? I mean, there had been some people in the Old Testament (Thomas would know full well) who did come back from the dead, and no one bowed before them and said, “My Lord and my God.” Why doesn’t Thomas simply say, “You are alive!” or “Oops!” or “The disciples were right after all!”

Why does he say this? Doesn’t it seem on first reading that it’s just a little bit more than what the evidence demands? How do you make sense of this? You must remember, of course, that a whole week has elapsed. That’s what the text says. Undoubtedly, Thomas has been churning this sort of thing over in his mind. He’s had a whole week to think about it.

No, it can’t be. There’s no way he can be alive. But you know, it’s not just the ten; it’s those women and the Emmaus pair. I mean, I mean, supposing he is alive.… No, he can’t be alive. But supposing he is.… What does that mean? How can the Messiah be crucified? He’s supposed to win. Besides, he could do all these miraculous things. How are you going to kill somebody that can walk on water, still storms, and raise people from the dead? How do you kill somebody like that? No, he can’t be alive. But suppose that he is …

Then he could not help but play back all the things that Jesus had said. What did he say, even on the night that he was betrayed, reported in this book? “Do you not know that he who has seen me has seen the Father?”

More enigmatic stuff from Jesus. You can’t possibly make sense out of that. But suppose he’s come back from the dead …

Then back in chapter 8, “Before Abraham was, I am” or in chapter 5, “Whatever the Father does, the Son also does.”

All of these utterances from Jesus.… Do we now take them just at face value? What does that look like?

Now all these references are from John’s gospel; but historically speaking, of course, Thomas has been with the disciples during the years of Jesus’ ministry. So all the kinds of accounts that are reserved for us in the Synoptics, they’re all part of what is going in Thomas’s mind as he thinks through all of this too. Let me mention just one. I don’t know if this was one of the ones that convinced him or not, but it was certainly part of his mental baggage, part of his package. He was there.

Do you remember the account in the miracle listing of chapters 8 and 9 of Matthew’s gospel, where Jesus is preaching to a crowd in a house? They’re all stuffed in there, and this man who’s either a paraplegic or quadriplegic is brought with his friends on a mat. They try to get in so that Jesus would heal this chap, and the people say in effect, “Wait your turn; wait your turn. The Master is preaching. We got here first; just wait outside.”

The friends can’t wait, so they went up on the flat roofs that were typical of those days. People went on the outside stairs, and sort of took in the coolness of the evening air. They went up and walked across the roof and listened to where Jesus was speaking and then started taking off the tiles. If the crowd wouldn’t move out of courtesy, they begin to move when a bed comes down on their heads. Gradually they make space, and the bed comes down before Jesus; and Jesus says, “My son, your sins are forgiven.”

The theologians present say, “Who can forgive sins but God alone? This man is blaspheming!” Well, they just about have it right. Let me approach this through the side door. Supposing you were brutally, brutally attacked by a vicious gang. Maybe you were gang raped, brutalized horribly, bones broken. You wake up in the hospital barely living. It’s going to be months and months for the physical wounds to disappear, and the psychological wounds, never.

I saunter into your room, and I tell you, “Be of good cheer. I have found your attackers, and I have forgiven them.” What would you tell me? Will you not say, “You’re grotesque”? “What right do you have to forgive my attackers? You’re not the one who was brutalized. You’re not the one who was attacked and raped. What right do you have to forgive my attackers? Only the person who has been attacked can forgive the attacker. Only the offended can forgive the offense!” Isn’t that what you would say? You’d be right.

That simple truth lies at the heart of a fair bit of the Holocaust literature. Simon Wiesenthal, in his very moving book (an 80-page book) called The Sunflower, relates how toward the end of World War II, when he was still a prisoner of the Nazis, all of his family was gone, wiped out in Auschwitz and Birkenau. All gone. He’s pulled out of a chain gang and brought into a room by the Nazi prison guards. There he sees a young German soldier, 19 or so, just a lad, bleeding to death, certainly going to die. Nothing can be done for him.

It transpires that this German lad had asked that a Jew be brought to him before he died, and in the mysteries of Providence, Wiesenthal was the one who was pulled out of the line and shoved into this room. This young Nazi begged for forgiveness, not only for what the Nazis had done to the Jews, but what he himself had participated in personally. Wiesenthal in his book tells how he reasons this out in his head.

“Most of the victims of the Nazis are dead. Only the victims can forgive; and since the victims are dead, there is no forgiveness for the Nazis!” Wiesenthal just stared at the man. He didn’t say a single word. Then he turned and walked out of the room. Wiesenthal, too, almost had it right.

What is forgotten in all of this is that God is always the most offended party. Always. David understands this. Even after the horrible sin with Bathsheba where he sinned against Bathsheba, sinned against Uriah, sinned against the commanders of the army, sinned against the people, sinned against the baby conceived in Bathsheba’s womb, sinned against his own family (there’s nobody he hasn’t sinned against), he can nevertheless cry, “Against you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight.” Because in the most profound sense, God is always the most offended party.

What makes sin sin, what makes sin so odious, is always with reference to God. When you cheat on your income tax, the most offended party is God. When you nurture bitterness, the most offended party is God. When you sleep with somebody you shouldn’t be sleeping with, the most offended party is God. When you puff yourself up in arrogance, the most offended party is God. When you cheat on your final exams, the most offended party is God, which is why we must have God’s forgiveness, or we are undone.

So when Jesus says, “My son, your sins are forgiven you” (and there’s no personal rancor against Jesus so far as we know, some sort of offense in the past), Jesus is making some very sweeping claims. Does Thomas remember that one? Then all of the images in John’s gospel: he’s the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world; he’s the Bread which loses its life so that others might live.… The penny begins to drop. If he is the King, if he is the Messiah and he dies, what kind of Messiah is this? It breaks all the categories of normal expectation.

At the end of World War I (that bloodiest of wars where ten million troops on each side simply fired howitzers and machine guns back and forth across a long ditch, gaining a few yards, losing a few yards, for three and a half years, killing 20 million young men with machine guns and howitzers for the gain of a few yards), out of this came a handful of English poets: Wilford Owen, Rupert Brooke, and Edward Shillito, who wrote a poem based on this passage.

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 Thy balm?

O Jesus, by Thy scars we claim Thy grace.

If, when the doors are shut, Thou drawest near,

Only reveal those hands, that side of Thine;

We know to-day what wounds are, never fear,

Show us Thy wounds; we know the countersign.

The other gods were strong; but Thou wast weak;

They rode, but Thou didst stumble to thy throne;

And to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak,

And not a god has wounds, but Thou alone.

Which is why, for the first three centuries of the Christian church, Christians spoke with profound irony of Jesus reigning from the cross.

You have to even focus on this little word my. This is not sort of a liturgical profession: “Our Lord and our God, we bow in Thy presence …” This is intensely personal, the kind of personal confession we must make again and again and again. We must never distance ourselves from the Christ of the text, but in all of our study still bow before him and cry, “My Lord and my God.”

May I press the limits of your endurance for three or four minutes more? I do want to say something about the last couple of verses, not only the cry of a disappointed skeptic, but the role of a converted skeptic. You see, we are inclined to look at verse 29 now as if God, in this passage, blesses the faith of Thomas because he has seen but he blesses far more the faith of everybody else because they have not seen. It’s better to have faith based on nothing than faith based on evidence. Isn’t that the way verse 29 is often understood, not least in our culture?

There’s no way on God’s green earth that that’s what that means. No way. For a start, in our culture, the word faith regularly means something like subjective, personal, religious choice abstracted from any truth claim. That’s why you’re not supposed to be able to argue about faith. It’s a subjective, personal, religious choice. But of the various ways in which the word faith is used in the New Testament, not once is it used that way. Not once. Not once.

Moreover, the book of John remains in the same tradition as Paul in this respect. In fact, Paul’s handling of the resurrection casts light on this; although, I think I could show you exactly the same thing from John’s gospel. Do you remember the resurrection passage in 1 Corinthians 15? Paul teases out what would be the case, what would be the entailments, if Jesus really hasn’t risen from the dead. “Suppose for a moment,” he says,” Jesus hasn’t risen from the dead. What are the things that follow?”

First, he says, the apostles are all a bunch of liars because our access to the truth that Jesus rose from the dead is through the first witnesses. If they all said he rose from the dead, and they saw him, and they touched him, and they ate food with him, and they were sometimes on a mountain in Galilee and sometimes in Jerusalem, and so on.… It’s not true; it’s all deception!

The second entailment is that you’re still in your trespasses and sins. What Paul presupposes is the rest of the Bible is true, but now Jesus hasn’t risen from the dead. We are still cursed by God. The Christian hope is that Christ has borne our sins, and Christ’s death has been vindicated by Christ’s resurrection. If Christ hasn’t been risen from the dead, what do we know of vindication? What do we know of Christ being proved right? What do we know of any sufficient sacrifice for sins? The resurrection stands with the death as one great, victorious triumph. If Christ hasn’t risen, you’re still damned.

Not only so, he says, but your faith is futile. Did you hear that? The Bible never asks you to believe something that isn’t true. Never. Part of faith’s validation is the truthfulness of faith’s object. Now faith is more than believing something that is true. After all, the Devil believes that Jesus rose from the dead. Faith also includes elements of trust and self-abandonment to God. Yes, that’s all true, but never ever is faith valid where faith’s object is not true.

Indeed, in the fourth place, Paul says, if you believe something that isn’t true in this regard, you’re of all people most to be pitied. That’s not very postmodern. I have my belief; you have your belief. You’re spiritual through Jesus; I’m spiritual through crystals. No, Paul says, it doesn’t work like that. Faith is not a subjective choice. It’s a God-given ability to perceive what is true and hang all that you have on it. Here, the object of faith is Christ’s resurrection.

Now this text makes sense, don’t you see? Thomas is part of this long line of witnesses. Many will come after Thomas who will not have access to the glorified body of Christ. You and I have come to believe that Jesus has risen from the dead, but we have never seen him; we have never touched him; we have never put our hands in the side. Our access to it, because it is an historical event (something that has happened in space, time, history) is through the first witnesses, the multiplicity of them. Those first witnesses, their witness, and their report, has come down to us in Holy Scripture. That’s the connection between verse 29 and verses 30 and 31.

“Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples which are not recorded in this book, but these are written …” These, including the witness of Thomas now borne in this book … “… that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and that by believing, you may have life through his name.”

Do you see? We have access to God’s spectacular self-disclosure in the person of his Son, in his deeds, in his works, in his death, in his resurrection through historical witness, borne along, carried by the Spirit of God, and preserved in written form so that we may come to believe the truth. That is why in the New Testament, you increase faith by increasing the truth. You magnify faith by explaining and expounding and living the truth. It is the articulation and defense and living out of the truth that increases faith.

One of the ablest contemporary hymn writers is Christopher Idle …

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

The church would live a lie;

His name would nevermore 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.

Increase by your grace, by the power of your Spirit, our ability to perceive and trust the truth, indeed, him who is the Truth, for Jesus’ sake, amen.