Young John escaped the ravenous agnosticism tormenting the other disciples by insightfully seeing meaning in the evidence Jesus left in the tomb: the nearly undisturbed shroud meant Jesus had levitated through it, and the carefully folded headband lying apart meant Jesus had finished housekeeping before departing. It didn’t impact Simon Peter that way, however.
And Thomas embodied a calloused refusal to believe. Where the other men refused to believe the women, Thomas refused to believe the disciples, the witnesses he should have accepted by having shared with them so many conversations about Jesus. And where Peter’s testimony convinced any still wavering, Thomas proved a boundary stone to his testimony.
The “Twin’s” association with Christ’s death generated a sorrow that filled him with remorse no testimony could remove. It made him ashamed to contemplate anything good or happy or anything but the grief that plowed his brow, stooped his shoulders, and dropped his eyes to the ground, as if measuring the dirt for his own grave. While all disciples suffered agonies of despair in the hours before the resurrection, Thomas so internalized his desolation that no room for reflection occurred, meaning that Christ’s death had no meaning beyond Golgotha and the grave.
“Thomas so internalized his desolation that no room for reflection occurred.”
His naturally pessimistic nature anticipated the outcome when Jesus had gone back to Judea, raising Lazarus and provoking the final, unforgiving vengeance of the Sadducees. “Let’s go and die with him,” Thomas had mournfully stated (John 11:16). In Christ’s death, the nails and spear had mentally pierced Thomas’s own body. Driven to the brink of derangement, he moped for the next nine days, eating little, thinking only of seeing Jesus killed, dead, a corpse, gone. With Jesus dead, Thomas felt like a walking corpse.
Where he had been that first Sunday night no one knew. He never said; they never asked. He had intentionally avoided them, turning his melancholia inward. When he finally wandered into the Upper Room on Monday, the others descended on him like an avalanche, pumping his arm and shouting their delight. The Master was alive, they beamed, they had all seen him, he had been in that very room twelve hours before and, “Oh, Thomas, we missed you so much! Why weren’t you here?”
Their mirth offended him. Face twisted in anguish, he retorted: “Don’t be ridiculous…why start a tale like that?”
“Don’t be ridiculous…why start a tale like that?”
That collapsed their sails. The disciples looked at each other for a reply, hoping someone would find the words to convince him, to explain that they understood his feelings. Peter tried, telling of going to the tomb, seeing the evidence, but still disbelieving, and not being convinced till Jesus came to him personally. Not till then, he admitted, though he should have been convinced from the testimony of the women and of the clothes in the tomb. Not till then, though all of them should have been persuaded even before Jesus died. For how many times had he predicted his death, and nearly every time also predicted his resurrection? If only they had listened…but, no, like Thomas standing before them, they heard only of a death that terrified them and finalized their hopes.
All that was past, however, because Jesus LIVED! They had all seen him in that room the night before. Bedlam exploded when they were convinced HE stood there. They descended on him, hugging him, gazing into his laughing eyes, feeling his arms, touching his scars. Bewildered ecstasy suffused them.
Having banked his fire of rejection, keeping the coals alive, Thomas despised their festivity. Shrugging his head, he merely whispered, “No…You’re wrong…All of you…It can’t be…Leave me alone…I don’t want to talk about it.”
It astounded them. No one else responded to such good news with such unrelenting remorse. Indeed, whatever grief each felt the night before, he immediately leaped from gloom to ecstasy. Tears dried, smiles returned, and years vanished from them grown old in the three days that had seemingly aborted their dreams.
“No one else responded to such good news with such unrelenting remorse.”
Not Thomas. The testimony that banished tears in others intensified his. The joy they expressed only deepened his desperation. Every positive statement became, in him, a negative emotion that hardened him all the more against their joy.
In reality, Thomas had always been the last to react to good news and the first to tenaciously embrace the bad. But this…defied them. He had bolted whole under Friday’s darkness, which no evidence of Sunday’s light could remove. His faith had been caught, tossed, and emotionally gored violently to death on the horns of the cross. It had torn a jagged wound across his soul that no amount of evidence could heal. He sat alone, staring blankly at the floor, everything before him a blur as he poked into the tragedy of the cross seeking meaning in the ashes. Why would Jesus die? he kept asking himself. Since no one ever more deserved to live, why had he died?
The more he propounded the question, the more clouded his perplexity became; until not even a resurrection could make the crucifixion right.
So it went, day after day that week: their assurances, his denials; their contentment, his inner furies. They talked convincingly; he listened, unconvinced. He stayed with them, knowing by leaving he would surely commit suicide. Yet, amazingly, even as he stayed, he grew increasingly disconsolate, using their merriment as a scourge to flog himself.
“Even as he stayed, he grew increasingly disconsolate.”
The boil in his soul broke Thursday night. They all sat on the couches discussing the Lord’s ministry, their role in it, the excitement they felt on seeing him Sunday night, the delirium in the room when finally convinced it was he. Everyone wanted to talk about it at once, and all welcomed the interruption each brought.
Thomas sat, listening, seething with frustration. He listened and frowned, full of anger. He listened and looked hard at the floor, and finally exploded. “No, no, you’re dreaming, all of you. It’s just not possible. He’s dead, I tell you. Dead. And there’s nothing we can do about it. Not all your wishing and imagining will ever bring him back!”
The violence seemed to purge his hardness, as Peter’s tears had purged his pride, and he continued, eyes misty, speaking longingly, mystically, trying to right a fatal wrong. “No one hates it more than I do, because I loved him so much. I feel responsible for his death, because I insisted we come back to Judea with him. Maybe if we hadn’t agreed to return, he would have stayed away, and he wouldn’t have been killed. You men wanted to stay away. I was the one who insisted we come back. I! He would be alive but for me!”
“He would be alive but for me!”
They expostulated kindly with him, assuring him it wasn’t true. They all knew very well that Jesus alone made the decisions in his ministry; they simply followed. Besides, it had all been resolved because Jesus LIVED!
Thomas’s head fell and hung several minutes. Then, speaking quietly, tremulously, and obviously not listening at all, “I knew it. I just knew he would die when we came back. I knew he would get killed. In my heart I knew that would be the end.”
He bit his bottom lip, trying to squeeze from it an answer his brain couldn’t supply. “I don’t understand it at all. Jesus was so good. So kind. He helped everyone. But now he’s gone…He’s gone and I’m alive, and it should be the opposite. Oh, I wish I had died with him.”
The other disciples saw in him the darkest part of their former unconverted, ambitious, competitive humanity that had miraculously vanished the previous Sunday evening. To him, death meant extermination: Jesus dead and gone he could understand, if never accepted. Dead each day, filling empty weeks with dread. Thomas could get a handle on the Lord’s death; he had been at the cross, standing alone. But, not being with any of them, he had fatally turned his doubts inward to systematically destroy faith in possibility! Unlike the rest in the crisis, who sought out other disciples, he sought only solitude. Unable to relate easily in normal circumstances, he found communicating impossible when life collapsed around him. Like them, resurrection had no basis in his experience. Unlike them, he wouldn’t allow the testimony of men he knew to convince him. Thomas HAD to see Jesus alive to believe.
“Thomas HAD to see Jesus alive to believe.”
He summarized his convictions: “I know Jesus died. I was there. I saw it and I’ll never forget it. I watched them put him in the tomb. Long after dark, I stayed and watched that stone. It never moved. Behind it I knew my Lord was buried. And, Simon, you say you saw his wounds. Very well…I can’t dispute you. But I guarantee you, only when I see them myself and put my hands into them will I believe. Only then. Not till then!”
They couldn’t persuade him. Nothing they said made any difference. His doubt couldn’t be stormed by testimony or assurances. He refused to be consoled or convinced. Sometimes, when he railed at their joy, they patiently explained that they could be joyous while he lost himself in cynicism because they accepted the truth he resisted. The truth set them free—the resistance of which kept him imprisoned in despair. But their reasoning struck stone.
When they claimed to be eyewitnesses of Christ’s resurrection, while he as yet hadn’t had the privilege, they patiently replied: he hadn’t been in the Upper Room with them where he could see Jesus. For reasons they could understand, but which could never alleviate or eliminate his sorrow, he had separated himself from them just when they all most needed each other.
Maybe that was why Jesus kept them together the last three years, they suggested, despite the ambition and ego that often kept their horns locked. While individuals can always appeal for God’s personal intervention to save, inform, or correct them, he more often provides those benefits through the fellowship of believers. On other believers, individuals can lean; from them they can learn; borrowing from their strengths can compensate for personal weaknesses, doubts, and questions.
“He had separated himself from them just when they all most needed each other.”
They suggested that Thomas made his greatest mistake as a disciple by withdrawing from his fellow believers just when the Master’s catastrophe left them all devastated. If he had been with them the Sunday before, his questions would have been answered, for theirs were answered by seeing the Lord Jesus alive from the dead. Indeed, the disciples concluded, since believers never know when, in the company of other believers, answers come, no believer should intentionally absent himself from those who share the same hope. God’s people, as they had all proved, could be difficult and obnoxious, but they weren’t meant to be alone; not even in times of joy, absolutely not in times of loss or sorrow. They needed each other.
Thomas remained unmoved, unconvinced.
It made no difference to the rest. They loved him, without reservation, though he returned raw intolerance, without apology. They had learned, by refusing to believe till seeing, not to judge his refusal to believe without seeing. So he stayed with them, and they welcomed him. They trusted their peace of mind to at least benefit, if not convince, him. Their joy to be contagious enough to overcome his doubt. Even as he ridiculed them, they prayed that their new life in Christ would buoy him until faith returned. That he could see the unmistakable triumph the living Lord had brought them. No one scolded him or treated him as an outcast. In that week, their lonely brother began to find in them the forbearing support such doubters need as they struggle with the contamination unbelief inflicts on the soul.
“No one scolded him or treated him as an outcast.”
Finally, Sunday evening came again, and they were all together in the Upper Room, behind closed and locked doors. Thomas sat by himself, brooding. They talked and laughed. He sat, once again angry that they could be so frivolous while he felt so abysmal.
Then, magnificently and dramatically, Jesus came. Through the walls or door he came. And all but Thomas sensed it and turned to see. Pre-occupied with himself, his dark despair eclipsed the glory of Christ’s presence.
Instinctively, the rest shifted their laughing eyes between Jesus and the doubter.
The Master spoke his name softly, with a whisper, but it sounded in his ear like a ram’s horn…. “THOMAS!” He stiffened, knowing from the tone who spoke. Without looking around, he backed off his couch, dropped to his knees, and quietly, reverently repeated, “Jesus…Master… Jesus…Master!”
The Lord noiselessly crossed the room and stood close to him. “Thomas, you demanded to see the scars in my hands and side. You said would never believe until you saw and felt. Come here, see and feel.”
“Come here, see and feel.”
Challenged in the same words he had used, Thomas could see how irreverent, arrogant, and sinful they sounded.
He at length crawled the few steps to Jesus and, bending down, clutched his ankles, exclaiming in tears of relief and penitence: “My Lord and my God, My Lord and my God.”
They all watched and listened intently as heads nodded and hands wiped at eyes moist with joy. All the disciples at last had been convinced. Each went to Thomas and hugged him, welcoming him back. And, shaking hands with and hugging Jesus, they reveled again in his companionship.
Never ignoring a teaching moment, Jesus turned to Thomas’s disbelief. “Thomas, you experienced agonies I understand. These men shared your grief. They were impossibly hard to convince that I had really conquered death. Even Simon needed my personal appearance. But I can think of no reason to excuse your doubt. The testimony of these men,” his arms swept the room, “should have persuaded you. It was enough for others. In my kingdom, Thomas, the blessed are those who believe in me from the testimony of others, not those who have to see death scars. People can’t always see miracles, Thomas. They can, and must, believe the testimony of eyewitnesses who have. I won’t keep repeating my physical life in every generation, Thomas, but the testimony I leave with you men will convince all succeeding generations if you men believe the proofs I offer.”
“The testimony I leave with you men will convince all succeeding generations.”
Thomas absorbed it all. He dropped his head, as he had so often that week. But this time in penitence, not in grief. “Yes, Lord. I’m sorry. So very sorry. I didn’t know I could be so wrong. Perhaps my weakness for seeing the worst in any situation can warn others to subject all impossibilities to faith in you. I promise to let the Holy Spirit instill his presence in me.”
“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.”
Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:26b-29, NIV)
Excerpted from Virgil Hurley’s book Face to Face with Jesus. For more, check out his resource page here.
