John 20:24-31

Jesus Appears to Thomas
24 Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 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."

26 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!" 27 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."

28 Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!"

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

The Purpose of John's Gospel
30 Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31 But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.


Dig Deeper
This past winter I had the unique opportunity to coach my five-year old son in a basketball league. This was quite a different experience from the coaching experiences that I’ve had in the past. There’s a big difference between coaching high school basketball and coaching five-year olds. As a high school coach I never had to yell to a player that he was dribbling towards the wrong basket, I never had to remind a player that they couldn’t dribble directly towards their mother every time they got the ball, and I certainly never had to take the team for a potty break in between quarters. Yet, the biggest difference is that the coaches actually go out onto the playing floor during the game. We run up and down the court with the players and are able to shout directions to them and help them out during each play. We could even stop play momentarily if we needed to in order to explain or teach something to a player. In the early part of the season, I was always very near the players and shouted out directions constantly. I really praised the players who listened to my direction and learned what to do and when to do it. As the season wore on, however, I got further and further away from the players and gave out less directions. I began to praise the guys who listened to the instructions at time outs and before quarters and the guys who were doing the right things without being told or reminded on every play. Some guys still needed some help, but the emphasis began to shift to praise for those who didn’t need constant reminders. The reason for this was simple. Next year they will be in the six-year old league and coaches don’t go on the floor during that league. They’ll be on their own much more and expected to know what to do. Things were changing and we needed to encourage the type of behavior that would fit into their soon to be reality.

In a much more profound way, things are changing for Jesus’ followers. Up to the point of his death, they were able to observe his life, his signs, his wonders, his words and follow him closely. They were able to see what he was doing and follow in his footsteps. That was fine for the time, but Jesus increasingly stressed the importance of having belief based on his word, the logos, rather than because they could observe something. It has now reached a climax. Jesus’ disciples need to embrace and highly value belief apart from observation because the ability to directly observe Jesus will no longer be an option. They are about to lead and be part of communities that are based on faith and the subtle guidance of the Holy Spirit. Things were, after all, changing, and they needed to encourage the type of behavior that would fit into their soon to be reality.

We’re not told where Thomas was during the amazing events of the first day of the week of the new creation, but we do know that he wasn’t there. The disciples eagerly tell him that they have seen the Lord, but Thomas is skeptical. We’ve seen descriptive aspects of Thomas’ blunt nature before (Jn. 11:16; 14:5) and his response here fits with what John has sketched for us in describing his personality. Thomas’ demand to see empirical proof before he believes isn’t so much a skepticism about Jesus’ potential resurrection as it is likely a lack of confidence to some degree in the accuracy of the disciples report.

John uses his desire for proof as an opportunity to combat a docetic heresy that was beginning to take shape by the time he writes his Gospel. Docetism was the belief that Jesus was a spirit being that only looked human but was not a truly flesh human being. John will have none of that. Nor will Thomas. He wants to see the nail marks and put his hand into his side. Thomas is a practical man who is not about to be taken in by any fraud or hysteria.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that Jesus did not appear again, says John, until the next Sunday. It was another first day of the week, just like Jesus’ first appearance to the disciples The doors are locked again just like before. The disciples may have been encouraged and filled with joy at seeing the risen Jesus but they evidently aren’t filled with the kind of boldness that we see them display without fail in the book of Acts. They will need the indwelling of the Holy Spirit for that. As Jesus appears, again declaring "peace be with you," as he had before, he gives Thomas the proof that he needed. He then gives Thomas a gentle rebuke to stop doubting and believe.

Thomas marveling both at receiving the proof that he desired and the realization that Jesus knew that’s what he wanted without being told is the first person to say what John has been getting at since the opening verse. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Here is the Word become flesh. We should not miss the fact that this passage provides ample evidence that the early church considered Jesus to be God. Thomas responds by worshiping Jesus as Lord and God (cf. Ps. 35:23-24). The TNIV obscures the fact that Thomas literally calls Jesus "the Lord of me and the God (ho theos) of me, leaving no doubt that he is recognizing Jesus as the one, true God. Jesus does not rebuke Thomas for carelessly misapplying such a lofty title to him, nor does he chide him giving worship to him that belongs to God alone. Jesus willingly accepts Thomas’ declaration and praise. Thomas, John no doubt wants us to see, has rightly identified Jesus and given him the proper respect.

Jesus’ response to Thomas has often been taken as a rebuke to Thomas for wanting evidence that Jesus had been resurrected, and perhaps, as earlier, there is a mild rebuke there, but that is hardly the primary point of Jesus. He is not so much concerned with denouncing the type of faith that Thomas has demonstrated but he is marking a transition from faith based on seeing Jesus and his signs to those who will believe on the basis of the message, the logos, of the disciples. They are the ones that are the recipients of Jesus’ blessing. Jesus knows that his time is short and the option of believing Jesus by sight is over. In the future, the body of Christ will be built around faith in the message and word of the disciples testimony. Thomas’ behavior is still acceptable to this point, but that kind of "faith" will not be an option in the future. We must remember, in all fairness, that Thomas still did not have available to him the guidance of the Holy Spirit that leads believers into truth.

As John brings this chapter to a close, it does, admittedly, seem very much like a fitting and proper ending to the Gospel. Yet, we know that there is one more chapter. There are two main theories that we will briefly mention to explain this. One theory says that chapter 20 is the ending of the book proper, where the book proper begins in 1:19. They argue that chapter 21 is intended as an epilogue to balance the prologue of 1:1-18. The other theory says that chapter 21 was added a little later, either by John himself or by his immediate disciples shortly before or shortly after his death. There does seem to be something to the idea that there are several points of contact between this passage and the opening chapter of the Gospel (including Jesus finally being identified as God and the similarities between this encounter with Thomas and Jesus’ encounter with Nathanael in 1:47-51) which might indicate that, at least, for a short time, this was the original ending of the Gospel of John. We will discuss the possible purposes of the addition of chapter 21, if it was indeed added, although it must be said that this is all speculation because there has never been a manuscript of John’s Gospel without chapter 21. If it was added, it was likely added almost immediately, and almost surely by John himself or at his direction.

As John winds the chapter down, he points out that Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples which are not recorded in this book. John’s intent was not to write a biography or history of Jesus. He wrote selectively in order to fulfill the purpose of inducing faith in those who read this Gospel. John’s self-stated purpose in writing is overtly evangelistic.

John wrote this book for the specific purpose which is obscured a bit by the TNIV and most English translations. The original language does not convey that John wrote so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, but that the readers might believe that "the Messiah, the Son of God, is Jesus." The difference is subtle but important. John’s point is not that, after having followed and observed Jesus, the disciples were left to find an appropriate category for him and decided upon Messiah and Son of God. They were waiting for the Messiah, with all of their preconceived notions of what he would be. It took time and much modeling of who the true Messiah was by Jesus, but they eventually discovered that the Messiah was Jesus. He was the one that had life in him (Jn. 1:4). If we remember that the Jewish concept of "name" carried with it the meaning of nuance of the word "life," that John’s concluding thought is that those who believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God will have "life in his life." As John had hinted in the opening prologue, "In him was life, and that life was the light of men."


Devotional Thought
Jesus blessed those that would come to belief in him without seeing and in the book of Romans 10:14, Paul says that people cannot come to belief without hearing the message and that they cannot hear unless someone preaches to them. Do you know the message well enough to help bring someone to belief? Have you, through constant study of the word, prepared yourself to be used by God to spread the message of faith in the life of Christ?