Doubting Thomas
Then he [Jesus] said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” (John 20:27)
Jesus' encounter with doubting Thomas was interesting. First, Jesus extends his peace (i.e., "peace be with you" in verse 26). Second, he corrects his disciple with a simple sentence translated in English as, "Stop doubting and believe." Furthermore, the Greek is a little bit more colorful with a translation more like this, "Stop your unbelieving (apistos - ἄπιστος) but believing (pistos)."
Pistos is the word for faithful or believe. Apistos is a (not) + pistos (believe) that appears twenty-three times in the New Testament.
To be fair to famous doubt Thomas, he was not the only one who doubted the Resurrection. Other people had their doubts too. Read Matthew 28:16-17 and Mark 16:9-13.
How can your questions and doubts strengthen your faith?
For Thomas, and maybe for you, starting with doubts can lead to deeper belief. Doubts and hard questions can lead to more committed beliefs.
Maybe you’re wrestling with similar questions:
- Do I believe this whole Christianity thing because my parents were believers?
- Do I believe Jesus rose from the dead?
Author Timothy Keller wisely said, “A faith without some doubts is like a human body without any antibodies in it. People who [blithely] go through life too busy or indifferent to ask hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of … probing questions.”*
God sometimes lets you wrestle with your questions for some time. A day. A week. A few years.
Look at John 20:26-27, 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.”
Jesus lets Thomas wrestle with his questions for an entire week. The rest of the disciples are rejoicing, but God let Thomas process his doubts for seven days. Why is that? I think God gave Thomas a week of questioning to help make his faith stronger.
That first Easter evening when all the disciples were electric about the Resurrection… God knew that Thomas needed more time to wrestle in his doubts.
Questions
Is it possible that God gave Thomas what he needed at that moment not what he wanted? Thomas would have wanted Jesus to appear to him that Easter evening too. But God knew that Thomas needed more time to process his doubts and questions. Sometimes a week of questions helps make your faith stronger.
- Why did Jesus NOT show himself to Thomas that Easter evening? Why did he skip Thomas?
- Why did Jesus NOT wait until Thomas was there with the rest of the disciples before appearing that Easter evening?
Questions
- Do you have questions or doubts that you're waiting for an answer to?
- Is it possible that God is giving your more time processing your questions to strengthen your faith much like Thomas had to wait a week before seeing the Resurrected Jesus?
- Discuss.
In the book, Raised? Finding Jesus by Doubting the Resurrection, author Jonathan Dodson writes, "The resurrection is a dividing line—a parting claim." Here's how he illustrates that "dividing line":
The resurrection is like a river that parts a road. People are on the road approaching the river. Arriving at the river of the resurrection, you look across it to where the road continues and see quite a few cars are there. In your doubt, you can't imagine how people got to the other side of the river. How did they get across? How can rational people come to the belief that Jesus died and rose from the dead?
Faith is the unnoticed ferry, lying hidden near the bank of the river that can take us from the riverbank of doubt … to the other side of belief in the resurrection. [But] it's not blind faith … You don't cross by closing your eyes and wishing Jesus' resurrection was true. No. You cross with your eyes wide open. This is an informed faith, faith in a historical plausible resurrection, attested by hundreds of witnesses, one proven to be worth believing.**
Even doubting witnesses like Thomas had his doubts resolved.
When Thomas finally sees Jesus, he worships him by saying, “My Lord and My God” (John 20:28).
Thomas doesn’t simply say, “You are alive! Or forgive me for my doubts.” His response is worshiping the Lord. He acknowledges the Risen Jesus as worthy of worship.
Thomas’s doubts didn’t lead him away from Jesus, instead, it led him to be a strong, faithful believer. History records Thomas traveling thousands of miles from Israel, and sharing the Gospel in India. What Thomas missed seeing on that first Easter Sunday strengthened his lifelong faith to bring the Gospel to Asia.
Additional Resources
Why did Jesus rebuke his disciples for “their unbelief and stubbornness”? I am understanding that faith is God’s gift; one cannot produce it by oneself.
It's not the first time Jesus rebuked the disciples or Jerusalem. Read Matthew 8:26; 14:31; 17:17; 28:16-17; Mark 9:24 ("I do believe, help my unbelief").
Maybe some of their doubt is a "hesitation to believe" or a better way to put is shifting between belief and unbelief. At times in the New Testament the disciples seemed to have "low in quantity" of faith. The Greek word for doubt in Matthew 14:31; 28:16-17 is distazo. In Mark 9:24 it is apistia. In Matthew 17:17 it is apistos (related to apistia). In Matthew 8:26 it is oligiopistos. Koine Greek has a few words to describe doubt or unbelief. See below for definitions.
distázō (from 1364 /dís, "two, double" and 4714 /stásis, "stance, standing") – properly, going two ways, shifting between positions; choosing "a double-stance" and hence vacillate (waver); (figuratively) uncertain at a crossroad because refusing to choose one way over the other – "wanting to have our cake and eat it too"; to halt between two opinions (views, beliefs).
apistía (the negated form of 4103 /pistós, "faithful") – properly, without (divine) persuasion, "no-faithfulness" (unfaithfulness); "want of faith" (betraying a trust)" (J. Thayer)
oligópistos (from 3641 /olígos, "little in number, low in quantity" and 4102 /pístis, "faith") – properly, few occurrences (applications) of faith. 3640 (oligópistos) occurs five times in the NT, each time with Jesus rebuking the problem of failing to hear His voice (cf. Jn 10:3,4,27).
Craig Blomberg commentary on Matthew says,
"Distazo refers more to hesitation than to unbelief. Perhaps, as elsewhere, something about Jesus’ appearance makes him hard to recognize at first. Perhaps they fear how he may respond to them. Perhaps their Jewish scruples are still questioning the propriety of full-fledged worship of anyone but Yahweh. Or (most likely?) they may simply continue to exhibit an understandable confusion about how to behave in the presence of a supernaturally manifested, exalted, and holy being. There is no clear evidence that more than the Eleven were present, but the particular grammatical construction hoi de (“but some”) does seem to imply a change of subject from the previous clause (“they worshiped him”). So “they” probably means some of the Eleven, while “some” means the rest of the eleven. Some of the disciples worshiped Jesus at once; some were less sure how to react."***
How can anyone be sure that he/she has a saving belief?
Read Ephesians 2:8-9. Faith, big or small, strong or weak, as long as it trusts in Jesus' merits, will SAVE. Saving faith is not contingent upon the number of works one does but is a gift of the Holy Spirit through the Gospel.
Click this link to read some good reflections from Martin Luther and John Calvin regarding this question.
Read this article on Luther's Breakthrough in Romans on salvation.
Why do you think Jesus did not appear to a multitude of people? Why only to so few?
Jesus appeared to many people after the Resurrection. Read 1 Corinthians 15:1-8 (notice verse 6); Luke 16:19-31 (pay attention to verse 31).
Sources
** Jonathan K. Dobson and Brad Watson, Raised? Finding Jesus by Doubting the Resurrection (Zondervan; 2014), pages 17, 37-38
*** Craig Bloomberg, New American Commentary: Matthew, page 430
