John 20:25
“Unless I see in his hands the marks of the nails, and place my finger into the marks of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.”
Thomas declares himself to be an empiricist in this verse. He says that he won’t believe God has raised Jesus from the dead unless he personally examines the wounds. He’s on dangerous ground – demanding that the Lord God put himself in the dock to be examined.
We must note that this entire event – Jesus’ arrest, torture, murder and resurrection – was foretold by Him throughout His ministry, yet the disciples, we’re told, didn’t quite apprehend what He was saying. Moreover, they were reluctant to ask. You’d think that they were embarrassed by their simplicity and didn’t want to appear stupid but, to that end, they asked far more shameful questions on other occasions such as which one of them was greatest. So, no, their reticence appears to have been motivated by their flawed presuppositions rather than humility, which is usually the case with us too. When there is something in the Word of God that flies against our ignorant or even sinful conceptions of life, we do our best to ignore it. All Christians have had that experience if they’ve followed the Lord long enough on that great trail of sanctification. Indeed, we’ve come to a part of our life trail that’s grown over with weeds, the path partially obscured, and we realize it was our own doing all along. There was no mountain in our way, nor a great beast of evil…just our neglect and refusal to face the facts of Christ. In such cases it’s common that it’s our insistence that life ought to be easier that makes us determined to not hear something the Lord is saying in Scripture.
Thomas clearly should have known for the simple reason that Jesus told him. The sticking point, more than likely, was that it was literally inconceivable to him that the Messiah who walked on water and raised the dead would be arrested and crucified. Wasn’t the Messiah going to throw off Roman rule and set the Jewish people free? Wasn’t He coming on the clouds of glory? If all that’s true, then why were they hiding in a room from a hostile world that had just murdered the Son of God?
Thomas’ perplexity isn’t very dissimilar to our own as we’re all in the body of Christ, the church. We often play our own life experiences over against the larger mission of God in history, which is the eradication of sin through the work of Jesus Christ. How great a treasure it is for us when we discover, through the Spirit’s light, Christ in a passage of Old Testament Scripture! How wonderful, how sweet to the soul, and beautiful it is to understand anew that plan of God in history and that you’re a part of that family of believers now, planned from eternity past. This is the answer to all of these questions – those in the mind of Thomas and our own too.
The sticking point for Thomas is likely why Jesus had to die in the first place. Why couldn’t He have come and instituted His reign and then we could be done with suffering at once? Let’s review it quickly.
It’s remarkable that so little is written in Scripture about Adam, the first man. But we know enough about him to know that he was a type of the One who was to come. In the flesh we are in Adam, who is our federal head; through faith we are joined with Christ. Romans chapter 5 speaks of this union with either Adam or Christ. The Bible doesn’t speak of race as having anything to do with a man’s status. All people everywhere, regardless of external distinctions are either in Adam or in Christ.
To be in Adam is to be under the sin curse. Adam was placed in a garden, surrounded by plenty, and given a mandate by God to work the earth, to multiply in marriage with Eve, and to obey Him. The mark of this was the tree in the middle of the garden of which he was told not to eat. It was his mark of obedience to and dependence on God alone. The covenant was simple: obey and you shall live, eat and you will surely die. All who are in Adam are still in this covenant of works, which demands perfect obedience.
Out of this great serenity, in a garden of bliss and peace, Adam disobeyed God and that one trespass, of course, set humanity on a course full of unspeakable horrors – war, cruelty, murder, starvation, theft, rape, and every kind of dishonor. All of it followed the one sin. Adam and Eve, driven by shame and fear, ran to hide from God after they ate the forbidden fruit but He came to them, clothed their nakedness and promised their redemption. Ultimately, they died, though they didn’t recognize the pattern right at the moment. Their bodies began to decay and grow old and that’s how God carried out the death sentence upon them. God’s hatred of sin, and the proof that all men everywhere are in Adam, is that death reigns over us all – pitiless, remorseless, without exception. More still, sin is so evil that even this apparently small transgression – eating the fruit of the forbidden tree – warranted a cosmic death penalty. God is that holy and the slightest sin is a deadly provocation against His righteousness.
Well, surely there isn’t a man or woman alive that hasn’t sinned in far worse ways than Adam. Do we understand this? Do we comprehend that the gross sins of unbelief are taunts to the Almighty God to judge us? The very fact that a single sinner has had the slightest love or beauty in their life is evidence of God’s mercy and patience. But, lest we be confused, this patience and forbearance is meant to lead us to Christ. God will surely not overlook our sins which are far greater in volume and intensity than Adam’s. The whole point of history is, therefore, the cross of Christ, which is both a blessing and a warning to mankind. It’s a blessing to those who put their trust in Him and a harsh and dreadful warning to those who continue to spit in His face. The non-Christian calls God a liar, they insist that they aren’t so bad as God says and that, gasp, He isn’t so holy either.
The fall happened because of Adam’s sin. He cast mankind, of which he is the representative, into death and judgement due to his taking fruit from the forbidden tree. This is why Christ was punished on a tree – a cross. Christ went to the Garden of Gethsemane and prayed until He bled; Adam didn’t pray in the garden before he disobeyed God. Christ obeyed even to the point of death on the cross; Adam fell with nary a shot of protest.
And now, what of this business with Thomas? He hides from earthly powers and yet demands proof from the ultimate power. He insists on putting his hand on the side of Jesus where the spear had pierced Him. You know what’s funny about that? God caused a deep sleep to come over Adam and then He took a rib to make his bride, Eve. Now, out of Christ’s side, out of that wound He took for us, he comes to His bride, which is the church. But still, the pattern of unbelief is still alive in Thomas and, sadly, in us too. We are all slow to believe everything the Bible says because we don’t understand that resounding tragedy of sin, the horrific ugliness of it and, therefore, the majesty and splendor that is the grace of God in Jesus Christ. Thomas fixated on the little tyrannies like Rome or a hundred other things and forgot the great slavery that is sin from which he had been saved through faith.
Jesus Christ went to the cross because God is both righteous and merciful. And He alone is God and every single sin, no matter how great or small, is of infinite offense to Him. To lose this context is to lose the gospel and it’s exactly what the world doesn’t want to hear. Men say, “well…no one’s perfect…” and things like that in order to hide the awful truth. So, Thomas, like all empiricists, and modern men of so-called science who demand proof of God on their terms, forget the ultimate proofs.
There is life. We want proof, which is evidence that truth matters. And there is death. Only Christianity makes sense of these facts of reality.
Why is there life or anything? Why does anything matter? Why is there confusion? Why do all men die? What am I supposed to do about death and truth?
The Bible is the only book/philosophy that makes sense of all this. It’s all rather obvious, really. The reason we make mysteries out of it, though, is precisely because we insist on keeping our sinful attitude about ourselves (we aren’t so bad as the Bible says) and God (He doesn’t have the right to be God over me!). Thomas demanded proof precisely because he’d lost his focus on how bad sin was, which led him to believe that his problems didn’t need to be solved by God sacrificing His Son for him and for sin.
It’s in this way that no man or woman can ask a single question about life that doesn’t at someplace or in someway come back to Jesus Christ and the cross. All history runs through Calvary. All men are either in a covenant of works, which requires absolute perfection, or the covenant of grace, which requires faith in Jesus. There is no escape from the decision and the evidence of it is clear since we’re already under the penalty of sin in the first place – death. Thomas demands to see Jesus and the wounds. Today, all around us, people demand a sign as proof but neglect to look at the fact of death as evidence that God’s Word is true and that Jesus Christ is Lord.
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