Thank you for supporting Peace Devotions with your prayers and by sharing it with others.
If you’d like to help us make more devotions, you can donate to the Peace Devotions fund.
Thomas
John 14:3-6
When you hear the disciple’s name Thomas, your mind might immediately add the prefix doubting. Certainly, this disciple of unknown origin finds his most prominent moment after Jesus resurrection. Jesus appears to the disciples the evening of Easter and shows them all that he’s risen from the dead. Thomas wasn’t there, and later, when Thomas hears about it, he says, unless I can put my fingers into the holes in Jesus hand and my hand into his side where the spear pierced, I will not believe. Well, a week later, Jesus appears to all the disciples. Thomas is there, and Jesus invites Thomas to touch his living, risen body and believe. And at that, Thomas gives us one of the clearest outright statements of Jesus divinity in the Gospels, “my Lord and my God,” Thomas said.
From this account we can say a couple of things. First, Thomas did follow the evidence. His doubt was not stubborn. It was just skeptical.
Speculating a little bit, but maybe he did understand that his role as a disciple was to witness all that Jesus did, including ostensibly this greatest miracle of the resurrection. He had to be able to see this so he could give his eyewitness testimony later on in a way that could be verified and trustworthy.
Second, from another account, we get the sense that Thomas’s doubt or his questioning was not only because of doubt, but because of his candor. He was willing to say things that the other disciples were maybe thinking, questions they had, or questions they would have had if they were in his shoes. So this other example comes from Maundy Thursday. And here’s the exchange we have. Jesus says,
if I go and prepare a place for you
And he’s talking about going to the cross and death, but also then ascending to heaven and leaving,
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (John 14:3-6)
In many ways good on Thomas for asking. There’s also one other instance that isn’t brought up in connection with Thomas and should be more often. That is several times before Jesus went to Jerusalem to suffer and die, he predicted that he would. And on one of those occasions, it’s Simon Peter, this great leader and bold, faithful confessor among the disciples tries to dissuade Jesus from going. No, Jesus, don’t let that plan unfold. It’s Thomas who at that moment steps forward and says, let us go to so that we may die with him. So Thomas may have required verification at various instances, answers to his questions, but he was not soft in his commitment to Christ.
So Christianity is a religion that invites questions not in unbelief, but in faith. So you repent of any times when you’ve maybe demanded of God an airtight explanation for something in Scripture, or something going on in your life. God doesn’t owe us an explanation for everything, but take comfort in the things he has revealed to you so clearly. Take comfort in the forgiveness and life that Christ won for you when he paid for all of your sins on the cross. Take comfort from the fact that Jesus resurrection gives you innocence before God now, and also a place prepared for you with Thomas in heaven.
