Being With Jesus:
John 20:29
Jesus said to Thomas, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
We get it backwards—understandably. The advancement of the scientific method in our day has taught us that empirical proof must come first, then we can place belief in the certainty of something. There is no room, or even need really, for faith, which requires trust rather than evidence. We have been steeped in that dogma for generations now, so it is no wonder that we wrestle with not having physical, visual proof for our faith in Jesus Christ.
According to our line of thinking, Peter, John, Mary and Thomas were most fortunate. On that first Easter Sunday, Simon Peter ran with John to the tomb, and seeing that the stone had been rolled away, he pushed past John and went straight in, where he saw the strips of linen lying where a body should have been, just as if the corpse had magically risen through them, leaving them to float silently back to earth, sans body. Then John, who had reached the tomb first, followed Peter inside. He then saw what Peter saw, and he believed. Mary Magdalene was at the tomb as well, and after Peter and John left, she encountered Jesus. Mary then went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” Later that day, the disciple Thomas responding to the dubious news that Jesus was alive, said, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” A week later, Jesus suddenly appeared before his very eyes, and Thomas exclaimed, “I believe!” (John 20: 6,8,18, 25)
They had literally, physically and visually seen the resurrected Lord. No wonder they all believed!
Yet their belief is not met with the highest praise that Jesus would offer in that encounter. Rather, he said to them, “You have seen me—and for that, you have experienced something most blessed. Now I want you to go and tell others what you have seen. And those who hear and believe will in turn tell others. But here’s the deal: Those who believe your eyewitness testimony will be telling my story not based on their own visual proof; their witness will be on the basis of pure faith. They have not visibly seen, yet they have spiritually believed. And for that, they are even more blessed than you who have literally seen.”
Did you catch that? You and I want so badly to hold the literal evidence of resurrection in our hands, believing that physical proof will somehow make our case for Christ even more rock solid than it already is. Jesus begs to differ. He says the strongest proof of all is to believe, for out of believing faith comes indisputable knowledge of the resurrected Lord, evidenced in the transformed life of the one who has believed.
In the eleventh century, St. Anselm, arguably the most brilliant Christian thinker of all time, wrote, “Credo ut intelligam”; that is, “I believe, in order that I may understand.” Two centuries later, Thomas Aquinas said, “In order that men might have knowledge of God, free of doubt and uncertainty, it is necessary for divine truth to be delivered to them by way of faith, being told to them as it were, by God himself who cannot lie.” In the seventeenth century, Blaise Pascal wrote, “Reason’s last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things that are beyond it. The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know at all.” But it was another brilliant thinker in the fourth century, the North African bishop, Augustine, who best captured the essence of what Jesus meant when he said, “Faith is to believe what we do not see; and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe.”
After Jesus revealed himself to his disciples, he said to them, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” (John 20:21) He sent them out with the story of his life, death and resurrection, and with the commissioned authority to invite those who would believe their message into an experience of the Kingdom life, both in time and for all eternity.
Since you have believed their message, you, too, have been commissioned to tell the story of the resurrected Jesus. And while you did not see the risen Lord with your own eyes, you have something even more powerful: indisputable faith evidenced in your transformed life. You are a satisfied customer, and there is nothing more indisputable—and blessed—than that.
You have believed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now tell your story. As you do, your faith will be increasingly rewarded with the evidence of things not seen.
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“A good witness isn’t like a salesman, emphasis is on a person rather than a product. A good witness is like a signpost. It doesn’t matter whether it is old, young, pretty, ugly; it has to point in the right direction and be able to be understood. We are witnesses to Christ, we point to him.” (John White)
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