By Judy Laredo
John 20: verses 24-31.
V24 Now Thomas, called the Twin, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came.
V25 The other disciples therefore said to him, “We have seen the Lord.”
So he said to them, “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.”
V26 And after eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, “Peace to you!”
V27 Then He said to Thomas, “Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.”
V28 And Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!”
V29 Jesus said to him, “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
V30 And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book;
V31 but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.
In v24, we read that Thomas, called the twin, one of the twelve was not with them. The name Thomas, in other bible translations such as the NIV or the NASB, was also known as Didymus.
According to both Warren Wiersbe's Commentary and Blue Letter Bible, “Thomas” is Aramaic which means "twin" and “Didymus” is Greek, which means, "double, or two-fold. So, Thomas and Didymus both mean "twin."
Now, the Bible makes no mention of the identity of Thomas's twin. In Warren Wiersbe's commentary. He asked the question "who was Thomas's twin?" Wiersbe answered his own question with, "We do not know—but sometimes you and I feel as if we might be his twins! How often we have refused to believe and have insisted that God prove Himself to us!"
But as 2 Corinthians 5:7 states, "For we walk by faith, not by sight." We walk by faith by believing / trusting in the Person of Jesus Christ and His finished work on the cross.
And we also trust in His promises. 2 Corinthians 1:20 (NIV) "For no matter how many promises God has made, they are "Yes" in Christ. And so through him the "Amen" is spoken by us to the glory of God."
The word "said" used in v25 means that the disciples "kept on saying" that they have seen the Lord. They kept telling Thomas, over and over, but he remained unconvinced.
Thomas said to them, “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.” Thomas wanted bodily proof. He said, unless I see the evidence, and touch the nail prints in His hands and the wound in His side, I will not believe. He wasn't doubting. Doubting Thomas was in unbelief.
There is a difference between doubt and unbelief. Doubt says, 'I cannot believe', where unbelief says 'I will not believe'. But what is so puzzling about Thomas not believing is that he knew these people. He had been with them for years. These were his friends. Yet Thomas would not believe --he refused to believe-- their eye-witness accounts of seeing Jesus.
But, in all fairness to Thomas, he wasn't the only one who struggled with believing. If we look at Mark's gospel, it says, Mark 16:11-14 (NKJV) "(11) And when they (the disciples) heard that He was alive and had been seen by her (Mary Magdalene), they did not believe. (12) After that, He (Jesus) appeared in another form to two of them as they walked and went into the country. (13) And they went and told it to the rest, but they did not believe them either. (14) Later He (Jesus) appeared to the eleven as they sat at the table; and He rebuked their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they did not believe those who had seen Him after He had risen" (Emphases mine).
Let's look at Luke's gospel. Luke writes Luke 24:36-43 (NKJV) "(36) Now as they said these things (these are the Emmaus Road disciples), Jesus Himself stood in the midst of them, and said to them, "Peace to you." (37) But they were terrified and frightened, and supposed they had seen a spirit. (38) And He said to them, "Why are you troubled? And why do doubts arise in your hearts? (39) "Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have." (40) When He had said this, He showed them His hands and His feet. (41) But while they still did not believe for joy, and marveled, He said to them, "Have you any food here?" (42) So they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish and some honeycomb. (43) And He took it and ate in their presence" (Emphases mine).
The Greek word used for disbelieve is APISTEO. It implies that the unbeliever has had a full opportunity of believing and has rejected it. This Greek word, APISTEO, is used in both Mark 16:11 and Luke 24:41. They all struggled with doubt and unbelief. The only difference was, Thomas stayed in his unbelief.
By the way, in Warren Wiersbe's commentary, he points out that "There were at least five resurrection appearances of our Lord on that first day of the week: to Mary Magdalene (John 20:11–18), the other women (Matthew 28:9–10), to Peter (1 Corinthians 15:5 and Luke 24:34), the two Emmaus disciples (Luke 24:13–32), and the disciples minus Thomas (John 20:19–25)."
V26 And after eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, “Peace to you!” The Greek word for "SHUT" is KLEIO. The doors being "shut" means: to shut fast, to bar the door; it's expressing the impossibility of entrance after closing. The Greek word KLEIO for "shut" is used in both verses, 19 and again here in verse 26.
But if you notice, in verse 19 it says, "the doors being shut…for fear of the Jews." But in verse 26, there is no mention of the disciples being fearful. Could it be that it's because they saw their risen Lord?
So, now, all the disciples, including Thomas, are in the room, except of course, Judas Iscariot. And Jesus just appears in the room. It says, "Jesus came, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst." It didn't say He climbed through a window. He just came; He just appeared in the room.
God's word tells us, that we will be like Him when we are in our glorified bodies. 1 John 3:2 (NIV) "Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is."
For the second time, Jesus came and stood in the midst of the room where the disciples were gathered together and says, "peace to you." This time, Thomas was there. Then Jesus then turns and says to Thomas,
"Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side."
Thomas “doubted” and wanted physical proof that Jesus was risen from the dead. He wanted to see, hear and touch Jesus. Just like the other disciples did the week before. In a bible study by David Guzik, he said that "Jesus gave Thomas assurance by saying to him, here, look at my wounds." He said, "Doubt is not the destination for the believer. It may be a necessary thing for you to pass through, and we’ve all been there, but doubt is never the destination. Our destination…is faith. When you want assurance, look to the wounds of Jesus. They are evidence of His love, of His sacrifice, of His victory, of His resurrection."
Then Jesus says to Thomas, "Do not be unbelieving, but believing.” Jesus didn't rebuke Thomas for his doubts. He rebuked him for his unbelief.
Charles Spurgeon wrote, “The whole conversation was indeed a rebuke, but so veiled with love that Thomas could scarcely think it so.” Wiersbe wrote, "Our Lord’s words translate literally, “Stop becoming faithless but become a believer.”
Hebrews 3:12 (NASB20) "Take care, brothers and sisters, that there will not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God.
In the Blue Letter Bible, the word "believing" in v27 means, "worthy of trust, can be relied on, convinced. It speaks of one who trusts in God's promises and of one who is convinced that Jesus has been raised from the dead, and one who has become convinced that Jesus is the Messiah and author of salvation."
By seeing the risen Lord, Thomas was persuaded, and he was no longer in unbelief. And that's why, as we read in v28 Thomas was able to respond to Jesus with, "my Lord and my God." Thomas was absolutely convinced that it was His Lord, Jesus Christ, risen from the dead.
In John Walvoord's Bible Knowledge Commentary, he said "Thomas' response to Jesus --my Lord and my God!-- is the high point of John's Gospel. Thomas, "a skeptical man, confronted by the evidence of Jesus' resurrection announced that Jesus, the Man of Galilee, is God manifest in the flesh."
Manifest: It means plain, open, clearly visible to the eye or obvious to the understanding; apparent; not obscure or difficult to be seen or understood. Manifest - is made known.
How great and generous the grace of God is towards us. How gracious of the Lord to grant Thomas' request. His unfailing love truly endures forever. Ephesians 3:18-19 (NLT) "And may you have the power to understand, as all God's people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is."
In v29 Jesus said to him, “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” 1st Peter 1:8-9 (ESV) "(8) Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, (9) obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls."
Charles Spurgeon wrote, "That blessedness can be reached by all of us who believe in Christ. Those who lived in this world before Christ came, saw his day by faith, and they were blessed; those who lived in his day, and saw him in the flesh, and trusted him, were blessed; but we who cannot see him, yet believe in him, are the most blessed of them all."
Alexander MacLaren said of the Lord’s words, ’Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed!’ wrote that it's "-the last Beatitude." Albert Barnes wrote, "All faith is of things not seen; and God blesses those most who implicitly rely on his word." It is only by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit within us, and by reading the Word of God, we too can overcome doubt when it starts to arise in our thoughts and hearts.
The remedy for doubt is faith, and faith comes by hearing the Word of God, as it says in, Romans 10:17 (NKJV) "So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God."
In verse 30, John said that "Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book." He also said in, John 21:25 (NKJV) "And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written..."
Wiersbe said, "The emphasis throughout the gospel of John is on believing. The signs that John selected and described in this book are proof of the deity of Christ. They are important. But sinners are not saved by believing in miracles; they are saved by believing on Jesus Christ.” “Faith in His miracles should lead to faith in His Word, and to personal faith in Jesus as Savior and Lord."
In John Walvoord's "Bible Knowledge Commentary, he wrote, The Apostle "John selected 7 miracles for special consideration in order that people might come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the promised Messiah, and the Son of God."
In Walvoord's commentary, there is a list of 35 different miracles performed by Jesus that are documented in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Of course, we know that there were way more miracles than that. We just read where the apostle John himself wrote in 21:25 of the "many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written..."
1st John 5:9-13 (NIV) "(9) We accept human testimony, but God's testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son. (10) Whoever believes in the Son of God accepts this testimony. Whoever does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because they have not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. (11) And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. (12) Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. (13) I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life."
Albert Barnes said, "The whole scope or end of the book is to accomplish two objects: 1) To prove that Jesus was the Messiah; and, 2) That they who looked at the proof might be convinced and have eternal life." Our hope is in the living Savior alone. Not on any physical objects or miracles, or works, but only on the person and work of Jesus Christ our Lord, who died for our sins and conquered death and offers eternal life to all who believe.
John 11:25-26 (NASB20) "(25) Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life; the one who believes in Me will live, even if he dies, (26) and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?"" Jesus is Life Himself, and death has no dominion over Him, nor does death have dominion over those who are in Him. Because He lives, we live. Because He is Life, we have life eternally.
Exhortation: Pondering what we just reviewed, the most important lesson I received from this was: Do not miss out on fellowshipping together. The bible doesn't say why Thomas wasn't there with the disciples when Jesus first appeared to them in the room. But because Thomas wasn't there with the disciples, he missed out on the blessings.
- He missed the blessing of receiving the gift of assurance by seeing that his Lord was alive and indeed, risen from the dead.
Instead, Thomas remained in unbelief for another week. - He missed the blessing of receiving the gift of peace.
Instead, Thomas remained in deep sorrow, defeated and in fear. - He missed the blessing of being given a mission (v21) and the privilege of continuing to serve the Lord and doing His work.
Instead, Thomas remained demoralized and was ineffective, fruitless.
- Thomas missed the blessing of receiving the indwelling Holy Spirit and becoming born-again.
Instead, Thomas remained spiritually dead in his unbelief.
The same Holy Spirit that was bestowed upon the disciples then, is the same holy spirit that indwells us now. What an incredible gift. A gift freely given to all who will receive. John 1:12 (NIV) "Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God…"
Warren Wiersbe exhorted his readers saying, "Thomas is a good warning to all of us not to miss meeting with God’s people on the Lord’s Day. Because Thomas was not there, he missed seeing Jesus Christ, hearing His words of peace, and . . . had to endure a week of fear and unbelief when he could have been experiencing joy and peace!"
Thomas reminds us that missing out on church gatherings can rob us of blessings and opportunities. Alexander McClaren said, "The worst thing that a man can do when disbelief, or doubt, or coldness shrouds his sky, and blots out the stars, is to go away alone and shut himself up with his own, perhaps morbid, or, at all events, disturbing thoughts. The best thing that he can do is to go amongst his fellows. If the sermon does not do him any good, the prayers and the praises and the sense of brotherhood will help him. If a fire is going out, draw the dying coals close together, and they will make each other break into a flame."
Hebrews 10:24-25 (NIV) "(24) And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, (25) not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another--and all the more as you see the Day approaching."
When Thomas saw and heard the risen Lord Jesus, he believed. All the disciples, including Thomas, had unwavering faith. And we too can have unwavering faith in the Lord Jesus.
We can have unwavering faith: by keeping our focus on Jesus, looking unto Him; by abiding in His love and abiding in His word; by looking to the cross of Christ and His resurrection.
Do not be like "Thomas" and miss the opportunity to fellowship or attend a church service. Whether it's coming to church on Sunday, mid-week bible study, small home-groups, the women's weekly bible study, or whatever other ministry . . . even just having coffee or lunch with a sister-in-Christ, if it’s in your power to go, do it. Do your very best to fellowship. Hebrews 3:13 (NASB20) "But encourage one another every day, as long as it is still called "today," so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin."
Oswald Chambers has a devotional called, "My Utmost for His Highest." Let's do our "utmost - for His Highest" to not miss out on assembling together in His name. Because like Thomas, you never know what special blessing or opportunity you might miss.
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Bibliography:
Albert Barnes Notes on the Whole Bible; Alexander MacLaren's Expositions of Holy Scripture; The Bible Knowledge Commentary, Walvoord and Zuck; BlueLetterBible.Org; Pastor Skip Heitzig; GotQuestions.org; David Guzik, Enduring Word Commentary; Charles Spurgeon Expositions Commentary; Truth According To Scripture; Warren Wiersbe, Bible Commentary