Encounters with the Risen Savior: Overcoming Disbelief

This is part of our Thursday series on the encounters with the Risen Savior that are shared in the four gospels. Today’s encounter is shared with us by John.
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Last week we looked at Jesus appearing to the disciples. As John finishes his account of that event, in chapter 20 verses 24- 29 he then goes on to say this:

But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples were saying to him, ‘We have seen the Lord!’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.’ After eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors having been shut, and stood in their midst and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then He said to Thomas, ‘Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing.’ Thomas answered and said to Him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said to him, ‘Because you have seen Me have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.’

I’m just going to say it. I think Thomas gets a bad rap. For centuries he has literally been referred to as “Doubting Thomas.” But based on last week’s readings, if we call him Doubting Thomas, then we should be calling the other apostles Doubting Peter, Doubting John, Doubting Andrew, Doubting James and so on. All of the disciples had two opportunities to believe without seeing that Jesus is alive, but they hadn’t. They didn’t believe Mary and the women. They didn’t believe the disciples from the Emmaus Road. None of them believed until they saw Jesus. In fact in Mark’s account of Jesus’s appearance to the disciples he says that Jesus “reproached them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who had seen Him after He had risen.”

Thomas was not alone in his disbelief, and when he saw Jesus like the others had he immediately confessed, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus’s response to Thomas doesn’t come across too harsh, but still echoes that “reproach” that Mark talks about. Jesus said to Thomas:

Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.

The ones who were closest to Jesus, those He’d been teaching for three years, had been hesitant or scared to believe He had been resurrected. They had to see for themselves before they believed, but Jesus said that those who believe without seeing are blessed.

That is you and I if we are believers. We had to accept and come to the point of saying you are “My Lord and my God” to Him without physically seeing Him or being able to touch His wounds. It is what we call faith. As the writer of Hebrews says in Hebrews 11:1,

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

​We did not see Him resurrected as the disciples did, but we have conviction of things we didn’t see. We have assurance in the hope of salvation, and Jesus calls us blessed.

But just as the disciples were far from perfect, so are we. We all have times and areas where we struggle with belief. We may not doubt His resurrection or our salvation, but maybe we have moments where we struggle to believe His love for us, His goodness, His faithfulness to equip us to do what He has called us to, and more. In those moments we need to show ourselves a little grace and realize that moments of unbelief didn’t disqualify the disciples and they don’t disqualify us either. In those moments we need to place our eyes on Jesus and cling to Him until we can find ourselves in midst of our struggles and disbelief finally recognizing the Truth and confessing as Thomas did, “My Lord and my God!”