Doubt - Reunion with the Disciples

“Let not your hearts be troubled. You believe in God. Believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you into myself that where I am, there you may be also. And where I go, you know and the way you know.”

And Thomas said, “ Lord, we don’t know where you are going. So how can we know the way?”

And Jesus said to him, “I am the Way, the Truth,and the Life. No one comes to the Father except by Me.”

John 14:1-6

Thank goodness for Thomas! He asked all the right questions. Scoffers have labeled him “Doubting Thomas,” but he asked what may have been on the minds of the other disciples. How could they know the way if they did not know the destination? And his questions prompted one of the most comforting answers in scripture. “I am the Way,” Jesus explained to him.

Later, after the crucifixion, on the first day of the week—the day the women found the tomb empty and Mary Magdalene had actually encountered the risen Christ, the day when Peter and John had investigated and found the stone rolled from the entrance of the tomb and the grave clothes left behind—John’s gospel says the disciples gathered in a room with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish authority and Roman power. It was here that the risen Jesus appeared to them, showing them His hands and side (John 20:20). And seeing, scripture says, they believed.

Unfortunately, Thomas was not in the upper room that night. And so he asked for proof, the same proof that the other ten had received—physical verification of the horrors of crucifixion. “Unless I see in His hands the mark of the nails and put my finger where the nails were and put my hand into His side, I will never believe.” Eight days later, the disciples were again in the upper room, Thomas included, and Jesus appeared to them. He told Thomas to touch His hands and His side and to believe. He added, “Because you saw, you believed. Blessed are they that have not seen and yet believe.”

Crucifixion was a method of punishment, a horror indicative of a cruel society. We shudder when we read the description of Jesus’ death. But to those living in that time—to the disciples, to Mary His mother, to those who followed and believed—crucifixion was a reality. Roads were often lined with the crosses of those who had conflicted with the Roman Empire. To have seen the tortured body of Christ, to hear Him question why He had been forsaken, to see the spear pierce His side—how could one believe the resurrection unless they saw proof? And yet, Jesus said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”

That's us! Living centuries after the resurrection, we have not seen and yet we believe. And believing without seeing takes us into a realm of faith, that profound trust in God that His Word is absolute, reigning over even the laws of nature and human intellect. Paul says it is the "evidence of things not seen." For us to believe in the resurrection, we must overcome the constraints of experience. It is letting go of the material and holding on to the "evidence of things not seen."

After the death of Lazarus, Thomas had encouraged his fellow disciples to go with Jesus to Bethany, even knowing the danger of death existing there from the religious establishment. “Let us all go with Him so that we may die with Him” (John 11:16). He is not mentioned again in scripture after he encounters the risen Christ in the Upper Room. But history indicates that he migrated to India after the ascension, spreading the gospel and dying a martyr’s death.