Easter: For Those Who Doubt (John 20.19-31)

I want to start today with a confession that may bother some of you and relieve others. I’ve said this before, but it’s relevant to today’s text.

I think I’m a reasonably intelligent guy. I love to read, I love to think, I love philosophy and reason and logic. I also love science-fiction and fantasy—stories about fantastical worlds and magical realms and supernatural creatures.

When I preach, I have a manuscript that I’ve prepared, and I’m reading the manuscript a sentence ahead of when I’m speaking, so obviously I know I’m about to say before you do. And literally every Sunday—every single time I get up to preach the Bible—there is at least one moment when I know I’m about to say something that even I find hard to believe. I hear these words coming out of my mouth and in the back of my mind I’m going, “Come on… That sounds insane.” A lot of what I say week after week when I preach sounds to my own ears like fantasy; it sounds like science-fiction.

Every week, I affirm as true things that even I myself find difficult to believe.

I know that sounds strange. But does the fact that I have a hard time believing certain things I say make me a hypocrite? Does it make me intellectually or morally dishonest?

I believe—and this I can say with absolute certainty—that the answer is, absolutely not. It does not make me a hypocrite; it does not make me dishonest. I can stand here, and say things even I have a hard time believing, and affirm these things as true, and I can do it with a totally clean conscience. 

The big question is, how is that possible?

That is the question with which this text confronts us.

So let’s remember where we are in the story. At this point, the disciples are coming out of the worst weekend of their lives. Jesus was arrested in the garden of Gethsemane, and they all ran away out of fear. Jesus was put on trial and crucified and buried. The disciples are now feeling what must be incredible guilt for letting it happen, and profound incomprehension over why Jesus let it happen, why God let it happen. He was supposed to be the Messiah, the Savior…and he died. 

And now Mary Magdalene comes with this strange and disconcerting story that she saw Jesus alive and well, outside the tomb. Peter and John both saw the empty tomb as well, but they haven’t seen Jesus. 

They know the news of Jesus’s body disappearing would have gotten the Jewish religious leaders all worked up, because if anyone was going to steal Jesus’s body to make it look like he’s come back from the dead, who would it be? The disciples. If the religious leaders are going to come after anyone for this, who will it be? The disciples.

So they’re terrified. They’re together in a house, and they’ve locked the doors.

I. Jesus Meets Us in Our Fear (vv. 19–23)

That’s the situation at the beginning of v. 19. And that’s where Jesus meets them.

19 On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 

John will make it clear a little later, when it happens again: the doors are locked, and yet Jesus is suddenly there, in the midst of them. This would have been frightening, to say the least, so what does Jesus say? He says, “Peace be with you.” Don’t be afraid.

V. 20: 

20 When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you.

So he says it again, after showing them his hands and his side, where they could still see the marks of his crucifixion. “Peace be with you.” The fact that he repeats the phrase twice shows us that the “peace” he’s referring to goes beyond simple reassurance. He’s telling them that now that he is raised, they have peace. 

The sin that separated them from God has been dealt with, once and for all. Jesus took it on himself and was punished for them; and now, through his resurrection, the disciples have the life that he’s been promising them for the last three years.

The cross obtained their peace with God, and the resurrection now delivers it.

But they don’t just have peace for themselves; he’s not just talking about emotional stability. They’ve been saved, and that is wonderful news; but they’ve been saved for a mission. 

As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” 22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”

When Jesus breathes on them and says “Receive the Holy Spirit,” he’s giving them a sort of object lesson of what will come very soon. In Acts 2, after Christ’s ascension, we see the Holy Spirit come to the disciples in a powerful way, and why does he do it? He does it to give them the power to begin and to lead the church. That’s what he’s saying when he talks about the disciples “forgiving sins”; their job will be to explain to the church what is acceptable and unacceptable for a Christian to do under the new covenant, to explain to the church how they can be forgiven, what it means to be a Christian. That’s what they did, and their writings and teachings—which we find in the New Testament—are still authoritative for us today.

But this object lesson is deeper than that. When Jesus breathes on them, it’s an echo of the very beginning of the Bible. In Genesis 2, when God creates man, he forms him out of dirt and then breathes into him in order to give him life. When Jesus breathes on them here, he’s indicating that through his resurrection, God’s people is becoming something entirely new: a new creation, a new people, a new humanity. 

We’re not superheroes…but we’re no longer in slavery to sin. We are free. And it is as free men and women that he sends us.

II. Jesus Confronts Our Doubt (vv. 24–29)

At this point comes what is probably the most relatable story in all of Scripture (for me, anyway). Let’s read the beginning and then talk about it. V. 24: 

24 Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.”

Thomas gets a really bad rap; he even has the nickname “Doubting Thomas”. It’s a pretty big bummer to be remembered forever for one moment of weakness.

Doubt is one of the most universal states we see in the Bible. Everyone struggles with doubt, in some way or another. 

But some of us, it is true, cling more firmly to that doubt than others—and it looks like Thomas falls under that category too. Look at what he says: he doesn’t just ask for evidence of the resurrection (he has that, in the testimony of these people he knows well). He puts conditions on his belief. He says, “Before I can say I believe, I’ll need this, and this, and this.”

And the surprising thing is that when Jesus comes to him, he doesn’t ridicule Thomas for his stubbornness; Jesus actually meets Thomas’s conditions. V. 26: 

26 Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although 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, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” 28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!”

Thomas said, “Unless I see his hands and his side, unless I touch his wounds, I won’t believe.” So Jesus miraculously appears in a locked room and says to Thomas, “Here you go. Touch my hands. Touch my side.”

This proves a couple of things to Thomas. First of all, it proves that when the disciples saw Jesus, they didn’t see a ghost. They didn’t see a spirit. This is Jesus, physically present and alive, the same Jesus who died on the cross. That’s the most important thing.

But there’s a wonderful secondary truth that Jesus proves here. As Gavin Ortlund said it, this moment proves that Thomas isn’t Judas. Thomas’s doubt wasn’t betrayal; it wasn’t rejection. It was human. It was expected. It was perfectly normal. Jesus doesn’t shame Thomas for his doubt, but he does confront him with it. He does tell him, “Do not disbelieve, but believe.”

To which Thomas responds with the highest confession we see in the gospel: he calls Jesus “My Lord and my God!” Not just “my Lord,” but “my God.” I believe that you are the Messiah; you are God. 

At this point, I know what I thought the first time I read this—what I’m still tempted to think. 

Of course Thomas believes, now—he got his proof! He saw Jesus and touched his wounds. I didn’t get that. Jesus never appeared to me physically. Thomas and the other disciples do have a pretty incredible leg up on the rest of us, it would seem.

Then we come to v. 29. 

29 Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

This is one of the most mind-boggling verses in all of Scripture for a doubter like me. Jesus doesn’t say that it’s bad for Thomas to believe because he got to see Jesus. Thomas got proof, and he believes—good for him. 

But Jesus does say that those who haven’t seen, and who still believe, are “blessed”—literally, happy. In other words: it’s good that Thomas got his proof; but it’s even better for the rest of us who didn’t get that same proof.

Theologians have wrestled with this idea for centuries, because it is so hard to see why this would be the case. Why is it better to believe without seeing?

Part of the answer comes in Hebrews 11.1, which says: 

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

If you have to see something to believe it’s true, then it’s not faith you have, but a simple conclusion. But that still doesn’t really answer the question, because why is faith better than a conclusion based on proof? Why is it better to believe without seeing?

One of the best answers I’ve found—one of the answers that best reflects what we see in this passage, I think—comes from Blaise Pascal, in his Pensées. He says a couple of things that are very helpful. 

First he says that all of us are confronted with doubt by the world that we live in, because what we can see in creation, despite being visible and tangible, doesn’t help us understand its meaning. Pascal says: “Nature has nothing to offer me that does not give rise to doubt and anxiety. If I saw no sign there of a Divinity I should decide on a negative solution: if I saw signs of a Creator everywhere I should peacefully settle down in the faith. But, seeing too much to deny and not enough to affirm, I am in a pitiful state” (Pensées, 429).

In other words, nature is good, not just because it shows us God’s handiwork (as Paul says in Romans 1), but because it shows us that we cannot find truth on our own; if all we have is nature, and if we are honest, we will always be second-guessing our own conclusions about what we see.

According to Pascal—and, I’d say, according to Jesus—that’s actually intentional. God made it that way. He left some questions unanswered on purpose; he left some proofs hidden on purpose. Why would he do that? Pascal says: “It is not only right but useful for us that God should be partly concealed and partly revealed, since it is equally dangerous for man to know God without knowing his own wretchedness as to know his wretchedness without knowing God” (Pensées, 446).

It’s a good thing that God doesn’t give us all the answers, because if we had them, we’d be tempted to forget we didn’t find those answers on our own. The fact that God doesn’t give us all the answers keeps us humble; it keeps us always conscious of our own limitations—and that is terribly important, because the moment we think we have all the answers is the moment we forget where those answers come from. That’s when pride comes in; that’s when we start imagining we were so smart that we found the solution.

So it’s important that we not know everything, because if we did, then submission to the God of all things would be forced upon us; we would have no choice but to bow down to him. 

But God has shown us time and time again that this is not how he earns the allegiance of his people. He doesn’t strong-arm us; he invites us, and he draws us to him, and calls us to make the decision to believe. 

This is Pascal again: “God wishes to move the will rather than the mind. Perfect clarity would help the mind and harm the will” (Pensées, 234). He’s absolutely right. Perfect clarity takes the will out of the equation—and a lot of the time, that’s a good thing. When I understand how gravity works, I no longer want to jump off of a tall building, because I know I’ll fall. My will is altered by my understanding.

But part of the joy of life—of starting a new job, of meeting a new best friend, of starting a family, of moving to a new city, of becoming a missionary, of beginning a new hobby—is not knowing exactly how it’s all going to play out. If we had every answer to every question, how dull would our lives be! 

And that’s what God wants for us. He doesn’t want forced submission; he wants our lives with him to be voluntary. He calls us to believe, and he gives us what we need to believe… but not necessarily everything we want. Because he knows the value of taking a leap of faith.

Go back to Thomas, in v. 25.

“Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” 

This is what we do all the time, and it betrays what we really want. I can’t tell you the number of people I’ve known over the years who are (if they’re honest) pretty well convinced that the gospel is true, but because they can’t show proof, because they can’t quantify or measure their conviction, they hesitate for far too long to actually say it out loud. Because they still have unanswered questions, they can’t bring themselves to say that they believe.

We, like Thomas, put conditions on our belief because, at our core, proof isn’t what we really want. What we really want is control. We don’t want to take a leap unless we can control our own descent. But at a certain point, continuing to demand proof stops being honest and becomes refusal. Faith actually requires us to make the decision to say, “I don’t know everything I want to know; but I know enough to trust that this is true.” It’s a hard decision to make; it can be scary. But it’s the only way our decision will be ours to make.

And it is an incredible decision to make. It’s an incredible experience to make that decision to trust, without all the answers we want…and to find after a while that God really is worthy of that trust. That when we made a leap of faith, he held us up. 

It’s a risky choice to make, but it is a marvelous choice to make too, because God is trustworthy, and rewards the faith of his people. 

III. Jesus Calls Us to Believe (vv. 30–31)

This is the faith to which God calls us. I would love to see Jesus face-to-face, like Thomas did; and I know I will one day. But if Jesus is telling the truth, it is better for now to believe even though I haven’t seen. 

That is the realization that came to me far too late: that the disciples didn’t have a leg up on me. They had a different experience than me, but they didn’t have it better. We have everything we need. 

And John says explicitly that his entire purpose in writing this gospel is to give us what we need to take that leap of faith, and believe. V. 30: 

30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

Notice what he doesn’t say. He doesn’t say, “These things are written so that you can think about them,” or “so that you can admire Jesus’s teaching,” or “so that you can debate them until you have an opinion.” He says, “These are written so that you may believe.” 

Faith in Christ is both a gift and a command in the Bible. God gives us faith in Christ, causing us to be born again (as Jesus explained earlier in this gospel, in John 3). At the same time, the Bible gives the repeated command to believe—to actively make the decision to trust in what God has revealed to us in his Word.

And he doesn’t call us to believe in some vague kind of spirituality, or believe in the possibility of moral improvement, or believe in the right group of people to belong to. He gives us his Word—“these are written, so that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

Not so that we might develop better habits, or have less anxiety, or have a more comfortable situation. 

So that we by believing we may have life. Real, eternal, present life.

Before we see, before we have all the answers, before we have proof, we have everything we need to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing we may have life in his name.

Conclusion

Let me come back to the question I asked at the beginning. Every week I affirm as true things that even I have a hard time believing. Does this make me a hypocrite? No—it makes me an imperfect human being who has made the choice to trust in a God who knows far more than me. I don’t know everything I’d like to know. But I know enough to believe I can trust him. I know enough to make the choice to call him “My Lord and my God,” and to believe I can trust him with all the questions I don’t yet have answers to.

What about you? Where are you in this story?

Are you still standing behind locked doors, afraid of what will happen if you open? Jesus offers the peace of God that he purchased on the cross.

Are you stuck in doubt, circling your unanswered questions like water going down a drain? Jesus calls you to believe.

Are you comfortable in your Christian life, but relatively inactive? Jesus sends you on his mission to make disciples of all nations, and gives you what you need to fulfill it.

Do you already believe? Jesus calls you to even deeper life in his name.

All of that is enough. We have to stop negotiating terms with Jesus, because it isn’t a negotiation. He never promises to give us unlimited evidence, or perfect emotional clarity, or total control. 

What we do get is a risen Savior; a call to believe; a purpose and a mission; and the promise of life.

So the question is very simple: Will we keep on doubting, or will we believe? Will we stay in the locked room, or will we step into life?