John 20:27

John 20:27

(with Hebrews 4:3)

St. Thomas Faith Triumphant in Doubt

I. Two sorts of language are held respecting faith and belief; each combining in itself, as often happens, a curious mixture of truth and error. The one insists that belief is a thing wholly independent of our will, depending simply on the greater or less force of the evidence set before our minds; and that therefore, as faith can be no virtue, so unbelief can be no sin. The other pronounces that all unbelief arises out of an evil heart, and a dislike to the truths taught; nay, that if any man even disbelieves any proposition not properly religious in itself, but generally taught along with such as are religious, he cannot be considering the truth or falsehood of the particular question, simply as it is in itself true or false, but must disbelieve, because he has a dislike to other truths which are really religious. The two passages which I have chosen together for my text, will illustrate the question before us. The belief by which we enter into God's rest is clearly something moral. The unbelief of the apostle Thomas, which could not at once embrace the fact of the Lord's resurrection, assuredly arose from no wish or feeling in his mind against it.

II. The unbelief which is a sin is, to speak generally, an unbelief of God's commandment, or of anything which He has told us, because we wish it not to be true. The unbelief which may be no sin, is a disbelief of God's promises, because we think them too good to be true; in other words, the believing not for joy; or again, the disbelief of such points about which our wishes are purely indifferent; we neither desire to believe nor have any reluctance to do so, but simply the evidence is not sufficient to convince us. Is our unbelief that of the apostle Thomas? No, I believe most rarely. Our unbelief is an unbelief of anything rather than of the truth of Christ's promises; our difficulty lies anywhere else but there. Our unbelief relates to Christ's warnings, to His solemn declarations of the necessity of devoting ourselves wholly to His service, to His assurances that there will be a judgment to try the very heart and reins, and a punishment for those who are condemned in that judgment, beyond all that our worst fears can reach to. It is not to such unbelievers that Christ reveals Himself. The gracious words, "Reach hither thy finger, and behold My hands," will never be spoken to them. The faith we need is a faith not of words but of feeling; not contented with merely not denying, but with its whole heart and soul affirming.

T. Arnold, Sermons,vol. v., p. 223.

The Place of the Senses in Religion

I. A first object of our Lord's words in the text was, we may dare to say, to place the truth of His resurrection from the dead beyond doubt in the mind of St. Thomas. It was more important to Thomas that he should be convinced of the truth of the resurrection than that he should first learn the unreasonableness of his motive for hesitating to believe it; and therefore our Lord meets him on his own terms. Thomas, though unreasonable, should be gratified; he should know by sensible pressure of his hand and finger, that he had before him no unsubstantial phantom form, but the very body that was crucified, answering in each open wound to the touch of sense, whatever new properties might have also attached to it.

II. And a second lesson to be learnt from these words of our Lord is the true value of the bodily senses in the investigation of truth. There are certain terms which they, and they only, can ascertain, and in verifying which they may and must be trusted. It is a false spiritualism which would cast discredit on the bodily senses acting within their own province. It is false to the constitution of nature, for if the bodily senses are untrustworthy, how can we assume the trustworthiness of the spiritual senses? Religion does touch the material world at certain points, and the reality of its contact is to be decided, like all material facts, by the experiment of bodily sense. Whether our Lord really rose with His wounded body from the grave or not, was a question to be settled by the senses of St. Thomas, and our Lord, therefore, submitted Himself to the exacting terms which St. Thomas laid down as the conditions of faith.

III. And we learn, thirdly, from our Lord's words how to deal with doubts of the truth of religion, whether in ourselves or other people. Our Lord's prescription for dealing with doubt may be summed up in this rule make the most of such truth as you still recognise, and the rest will follow. Thomas did not doubt the report of his senses. Well, then, let him make the most of that report. There is an intercommunication between truth and truth which lies in the nature of things, and the sway and guidance of which cannot be resisted by an honest mind; so that when any one truth is really grasped as true, the soul is in a fair way to recover healthiness of tone, and to put an end to the miserable reign of vagueness and doubt.

H. P. Liddon, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxi., p. 257.

References: John 20:27. Contemporary Pulpit,vol. v., p. 278; R. Maguire, Church of England Pulpit,vol. i., p. 252; Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Gospels and Acts,p. 169; E. Boaden, Christian World Pulpit,vol. i., p. 404; J. Keble, Sermons on Various Occasions,p. 177; Three Hundred Outlines from the New Testament,p. 104; T. Birkett Dover, A Lent Manual,p. 54.John 20:27; John 20:28. G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines,p. 68; T. J. Crawford, The Preaching of the Cross,p. 156. John 20:27. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. i., p. 341.