John 20:31 is the main point of this passage, and indeed of the whole book: “These are written [the story of Thomas and Jesus] 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.” To say it another way, this text and this Gospel are designed by God to be the means by which the miracle of a believing heart comes into existence and perseveres.

Surprising Request

Eight days before the encounter between Jesus and Thomas, the ten disciples were gathered behind locked doors when Jesus suddenly stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he showed them his hands and his side (John 20:19–20). Thomas wasn’t with them. So, in verse 25, the disciples say to him, “We have seen the Lord.” To which Thomas responds, surprisingly, “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.”

The reason I say this is a surprising response is because it’s ten to one. And these are his friends. He has served side by side with them through thick and thin for three years. What’s he saying? Surely he’s not saying, “You’re all liars.” Surely he’s not saying, “You’re all trying to play a trick on me.” What’s he saying?

I think the clue to what he’s saying is in the details of what he demands in verse 25 (in the middle of the verse): “I have to see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails.” In other words, “I don’t care what you’ve seen — a spirit, a ghost, a vision. You may be telling the truth. But what I can’t believe is that the man hanging on that cross — with nails in his hands and feet and spear thrust into his side to make sure he was dead — that man, that very man, with those wounds, is alive.”

Now, this is no tribute to Thomas. But it is helpful to us. It’s not a tribute because ten reliable eyewitnesses all testify not only that Jesus is alive but that he did in fact show them his hands and his side. This was why they were so happy. That was enough, Thomas! You should have believed. Jesus is going to say in verse 29, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Eyewitness testimonies from ten reliable friends is enough, Thomas. So, Thomas’s rejection of their testimony is not a tribute.

Eyewitness testimonies are God’s plan for how the miracle of a believing heart comes into existence. Recall John’s testimony in John 19:35: “He who saw it [the crucifixion] has borne witness — his testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth — that you also may believe.” Or in John 1:7, John the Baptist “came . . . to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him.” Or John 4:39 says, “Many Samaritans . . . believed in him because of the woman’s testimony.” And here in John 20:25, Thomas has ten reliable friends saying, “We have seen the Lord.” Thomas’s unbelief is not a tribute to courageous skepticism.

“Jesus’s grace is powerful. It goes beyond ordinary human possibilities.”

But it is a help to us. That’s why John records it. It’s a help to our believing. It’s another testimony of the apostle John, another part of the written witness designed to be a means to the miracle of a believing heart not only coming into existence, but persevering. Recall John 8:31: “Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, ‘If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples.’” There was a good deal of temporary, flash-in-the-pan believing in Jesus’s day, as there is today. That was not the kind of believing that saves. John is bearing witness, even of Thomas, to help people begin believing and keep on believing.

How does this story help us? I’ll mention three ways.

Jesus, Crucified and Risen

First, it is the strongest and clearest evidence in John’s Gospel that the very Jesus who was crucified, dead, and buried is in fact alive. When I was in seminary, it was a burning question: If someone brought the bones of Jesus in a wheelbarrow into this classroom, would you still be a Christian? And we were reading people in those days who answered, “Of course. The memory of the resurrection is a symbol of hope. The spirit of Jesus lives on, and Christianity bears witness that life is not hopeless.”

To which, of course, Paul responds in 1 Corinthians 15:14, “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.” And in Romans 8:11, “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.” And in the Gospel of John, Jesus says,

This is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. . . . No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. (John 6:39–40, 44)

Eternal life in the Gospel of John is not disembodied life. The crucified Jesus was raised from the dead bodily and will raise us up on the last day. Years ago, I heard a sermon by a major evangelical leader that most of you would know, and he said that the Jesus in heaven today does not have a physical body. I was flabbergasted. So, I emailed him, because I know him. And I pointed him mainly to Philippians 3:20–21:

Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.

Regardless of how slow to believe Thomas was, we owe to him one of the clearest demonstrations of the bodily resurrection of the very Jesus who is crucified under Pontius Pilate. Because when Jesus showed up in John 20:27, 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.” Our Lord Jesus is alive with his glorious body at God’s right hand, and he is the same person who was crucified. Great hymns have captured this for us. For example,

Crown him the Lord of love;
Behold his hands and side:
Rich wounds, yet visible above,
In beauty glorified.

Or the hymn “Arise, My Soul, Arise”:

Five bleeding wounds he bears,
Received on Calvary;
They pour effectual prayers;
They strongly plead for me.
“Forgive him, oh forgive,” they cry,
“Nor let that ransomed sinner die!”

So, the first way the story of Thomas helps us is by making plain that it was the very crucified Jesus that is alive today.

Peace in Our Midst

The second way this story helps us is by giving us a beautiful example of the power and patience of the grace of Jesus. And how personal it is.

Compare John 20:19 and John 20:26:

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.”

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.”

In verse 19, Jesus is approaching the ten disciples as a group for the first time since the crucifixion. In verse 26, he is approaching that same group plus Thomas. How will he approach this group after his crucifixion? Will he come in anger, or will he come in mercy? Will he come in judgment, or will he come in peace?

Three things are exactly the same in these two verses (John 20:19 and John 20:26). The first is that the doors were locked in both cases. Second, it says he stood among them. And third, it says he spoke to them peace. “Peace be with you.” He spoke peace, not judgment. And he stood among them, not over against them. And he went beyond what is humanly possible by simply nullifying the obstacle of the locked doors.

This is a picture of what I mean by the powerful, personal patience of his grace. The power is seen in the fact that locked doors are no hindrance to him. If he aims to be with us, he will be with us — wherever we are: on the land, on the sea, in a cave, or in a prison. Nothing can hinder him from being with his disciples. His grace is powerful. It goes beyond ordinary human possibilities. That’s the point of the locked doors.

His grace is also patient and personal. The slowness of these eleven apostles to understand and believe throughout Jesus’s ministry pushed Jesus’s patience farther than any ordinary human could endure. You can hear it in his words to Philip on John 14:9: “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip?” Or in John 16:12: “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” Worst of all, Jesus told them ahead of time, in John 16:32, “Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone.”

And in spite of all that slowness to comprehend (which more than once he called “hardness of heart”) and that final desertion, here he is in triumphant power over a sealed grave and locked doors, standing among them and declaring peace.

This is a great help to us. It helps us keep on believing. Because one of the reasons people give up on Christ is the persistence of our own indwelling sin. Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy years into our walk with Jesus, we keep feeling things and saying things and doing things that make us cry out, “Oh wretched man that I am.” And the devil tempts us to take that cry and think, There’s no hope for us.

May I encourage you, younger people? Not only will you never cease to need the powerful, personal, patient grace of Jesus, but his resources of patience will always be greater than your need. My own testimony to you is that progressive sanctification never puts you beyond sin in this life. And I have found that in spite of my sinful feelings, sinful words, and sinful deeds, this same living Jesus walks through locked doors, stands by me, and says, “My peace I give to you, if you will have it.” The powerful, personal, patient grace of Jesus is very precious to me. It is one of the great ways that he has kept me believing.

So, the first way the story of Thomas helps us believe is by graphically portraying the wounds of the living Christ. The second way the story helps us is by graphically portraying the powerful, personal, patient grace of Jesus.

‘My Lord and My God’

The third way this story helps us believe in Christ is by giving us the most exalted personal testimony of his deity: “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28). In verse 27, after saying to the eleven, including Thomas, “Peace be with you,” Jesus says to Thomas directly, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!”

Besides the grace of Jesus in giving Thomas more evidence than he deserved, two things are striking. The first and most obvious is the height to which Thomas soared in his believing. Nobody else in this Gospel said, “Jesus, you are my Lord and my God.” In John 1:49, Nathanael had said to him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” That’s almost the same. But the greatest personal testimony spoken in this Gospel belongs to Thomas.

“Lord” can mean “sir” (John 4:11), “master” (John 13:16), or “God” (John 1:23; Yahweh in Isaiah 40:3) in this Gospel. But “my Lord” paired with “my God” does not mean a polite “sir” or a mere earthly “master.” This is Thomas going low to say, “I’m not my own. I am not my master and lord. I am bought. I am owned. I am subject. I have no authority anymore in myself. It belongs entirely to Jesus, my Lord. And more than that, he is my God, my Creator.”

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. (John 1:1–3)

Whom have I in heaven but you?
     And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
     but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (Psalm 73:25–26)

“My Lord and my God!” That is the first and most obvious striking thing about Thomas’s response in verse 28 — the height to which Thomas soared in his believing: “My Lord and my God!”

“Jesus’s resources of patience will always be greater than your need.”

The second striking thing is that there is no record that he touched Jesus. Thomas had said plainly and forcefully in verse 25, “Unless I . . . place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will not believe.” So, in great patience and grace, Jesus said in verse 27, “Here they are. Put your finger in my hands. Put your hand in my side.” But all we hear is, “My Lord and my God!” (verse 28). There is no statement that he touched Jesus.

Why? He demanded the evidence — more than he needed or deserved. In undeserved, abounding mercy, Jesus gave it to him. And he didn’t use it. What are we to make of that?

What we are to make of it is this: In the Gospel of John, believing is a divine miracle, not a mental calculation. To be sure, believing is based on evidence, especially the evidence of eyewitness testimony. As John said in 1 John 1:3, “That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” So, this living, believing fellowship with the Father and the Son, based on the testimony of the apostles, is a divine miracle, not a calculation.

John 6:35–37 records,

Jesus said, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.”

They saw (many saw!) and did not believe. Why? Because believing is more than calculating the evidence: “All that the Father gives me will come to me” (John 6:37). So, when Jesus says to Thomas in John 20:29, “Have you believed because you have seen me?” the answer is, “Yes, but seeing me in the flesh was not decisive.” And Thomas knew it. He knew in that instant that he didn’t need to touch Jesus. “This battle is over. I don’t need to see anymore. I don’t need to touch. I’ve been given new eyes. Everything is changed. My Lord and my God!”

And oh, how clearly then it follows in verse 29, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Why? Because the blessing of believing is a divine miracle that comes through the testimony of eyewitnesses. Do you remember how Jesus prayed in John 17:20? He says, “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word.” Now John says, “These [things] are written [by one who saw] 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” (John 20:31).

The composite testimony of the Gospel of John (and how much more the whole New Testament) is the means by which the miracle of a believing heart comes into existence and perseveres. Thomas thought he needed more evidence than the testimony of ten reliable friends who said, “We have seen the Lord.” But he didn’t. You don’t either. What he needed was a miracle: “My Lord and my God!”