John 20:28

And Thomas answered and said unto Him, My Lord and my God

My Lord and my God

Let us consider

I. THE EXCLAMATION OF THOMAS. It is as much as a man could say if he wished to assert dogmatically that Jesus is God and Lord (Psalms 35:23). To escape from the force of this confession some have charged Thomas with breaking the third commandment, just as thoughtless persons take the Lord’s name in vain and say, “Good God!” or “O Lord!” This could not have been the case. For, in the first place, it was not the habit of a Jew to use any such exclamation when surprised. The Jews in our Lord’s time were particular beyond everything about using the name of God. In the next place, it was not rebuked by our Lord, and we may be sure He would not have suffered such an unhallowed cry to have gone without a reprimand. Observe, too, that it was addressed to the Lord Jesus.

1. It was not a mere outburst, accepted by our Lord as an evidence of faith, but a devout expression of holy wonder at the discovery that Jesus was his Lord and God, and probably also at the fact that he has not seen it long before. Had he not been present when Jesus trod the sea? &c. Now on a sudden he does know his Lord, and such knowledge is too wonderful for him. How I wish you would all follow Thomas! I will stop that you may do so. Let us wonder and admire!

2. An expression of immeasurable delight. He seems to take hold of the Lord Jesus with both hands, by those two blessed “my’s.” There is here a music akin to “my beloved is mine, and I am His.” I pray you follow Thomas in this. Before you Jesus now stands, visible to your faith. Delight yourselves in him.

3. An indication of a complete change of mind, a most hearty repentance. Instead of putting his finger into the print of the nails, he cried, “My Lord and my God.”

4. A brief confession of faith. Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he be able to unite with Thomas heartily in this creed.

5. An enthusiastic profession of his allegiance to Christ. “Henceforth, thou art my Lord, and I will serve Thee; Thou art my God, and I will worship Thee.”

6. A distinct and direct act of adoration.

II. HOW DID HE COME TO THAT EXCLAMATION?

1. He had his thoughts revealed. The Saviour had read them at a distance. Notice that the Saviour did not say, “Put thy finger into the nail-prints in My feet.” Why not? Why, because Thomas had not said anything about His feet. We, in looking at it, can see the exactness; bat Thomas must have felt it much more.

2. All the past must have risen before his mind, the many occasions in which the Lord Jesus had exercised the attributes of Deity.

3. The very manner of the Saviour, so full of majesty, convinced the trembling disciple.

4. But the most convincing were our Lord’s wounds.

III. HOW WE MAY COME TO IT. If ever any one of us shall cry in spirit and in truth, “My Lord and my God!” the Holy Spirit must teach us. We shall so cry

1. At conversion.

2. In deliverance from temptation.

3. In time of trouble, when we are comforted and upheld. There have been other occasions less trying.

4. While studying the story of our Lord.

5. In the breaking of bread.

6. In times when He has blessed our labours, and laid His arm bare in the salvation of men.

7. In the hour of death.

8. In heaven. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

My Lord and my God

I. THIS IS NOT AN EXCLAMATION

1. Because such exclamations were abhorrent to the Jews.

2. It would be without warrant in Scripture.

3. It is by its form necessarily an address--“Thomas said to Him.”

II. THE MEANING OF THE WORDS.

1. Lord, κύριος, means owner, and as ownership includes control, it expressed

(1) The idea of ownership founded on possession, as Lord of the Vineyard, Lord of Slaves, Lord of the whole earth.

(2) The Lordship without reference to its ground; hence kings are also called lords. So also heads of families, husbands, &c.

(3) Hence a mere title of courtesy as dominus, mister, &c.

(4) As applied to God it retains its relative meaning--the relation of God to His creatures as their Owner and absolute Ruler. It is substituted in the

LXX. for Jehovah, Shaddai, Elohim, and not only for Aden or Adonai. Hence in the New Testament it is used for Christ. He is our Lord in the sense in which Jehovah was the Lord of the Hebrews. Christ owns us both as Creator and Redeemer.

2. God. What this means passes all understanding and imagination. It is easy to say, “God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal,” &c. But who can comprehend the Infinite? We know that one infinite in His Being and perfections must be

(1) The object of adoration, supreme love, absolute submission.

(2) The ground of confidence.

(3) One in whose favour is eternal life. All that God is, Christ is. All that is due to God is due to Christ.

3. My means not only that Christ is the Person whom we acknowledge and confess to be our Lord and God, to the exclusion of all other persons out of the Godhead; but that He stands in the relation of Lord and God to us, and that we stand in a corresponding relation to Him; that we recognize His ownership and authority; depend on His protection, adore, love, trust, and serve Him as our Lord and God. This it is to be a Christian. (C. Hodge, D. D.)

The confession of Thomas:

The words imply

I. SELF-KNOWLEDGE.

1. When Thomas says this he is confessing that his past life has been a mistake. The arrogance of his former speech contrasts strikingly with the lowliness of this. A new revelation had been given him, making known the one great need of his souls Lord to control his will, and form his judgment, and give law to his inmost spirit. Our great want is a ruler; submission is one of the deepest of human needs.

(1) Let self-will be ever so successful, the heart is still unsatisfied. Ambition is soon sated; and the “head that wears a crown” is “uneasy,” not more because of the cares of government than because the monarch is tired of himself. Even the partial stimulus which self-seekers have, while yet they are striving for their object, witnesses to the same truth; a man may choose his aim, but when he has chosen it, it controls him. No man ever found rest till his aim in life was decided on. Seeking an object, men for a time are tranquil, for they are freed from self; but when their object is secured, they fall again into the restlessness of bondage to a self that is insufficient for them.

(2) Look now at another class of men of nobler character. The truth-seeker is freed from self, for he feels truth to be absolute, independent of him, and he yields allegiance to it. The lover of right is under an eternal law of rectitude; righteousness is not something that he invents. Right is, and is his lord. Duty is what we owe, not what we choose to give. But what is truth? Its seekers are all in disagreement. What is right? The standard of rectitude in our England is very different from that of ancient Rome. Has duty any higher standard than statute law, or regard for the greatest happiness of the greatest number? These very words set us again upon a drifting sea of self-will. Truth, duty, rectitude--these are cold words. To stir passion and control affection they must be seen embodied in personal form. Love, reverence--these are the heart’s deep wants. Cold abstractions can never deliver us from self

2. Thomas had found all he needed in Christ. Christ was “the Truth;” His will absolute righteousness; duty was what he owed to Him. There was no coldness nor vagueness in these names when summed up in the person of His Lord. Love rises to worship in his confession; his heart is at rest when he says, “my Lord.”

(1) This is the secret of Christ’s power over men. He comes among them as their Lord; He claims authority and submission. Christ does not allure men by pleasures, flattering their self-will. He simply bids them “Follow Me,” and they leave all and follow Him. He speaks to those to whom self-will is barrenness, and there is fruitfulness. He speaks to those whose selfishness is weakness and disease, and in obedience to Him come health and energy. And herein do we see the meaning of “Come unto Me all ye that labour Take My yoke upon you,” &c. For in meekness and obedience our spirits find their end and purpose, and herein is rest.

(2) In Christ, too, we see how blessed to yield our wills to the will of God. He who came to tell us that we are ruined, because we seek our own wills and not the will of God, must Himself be submissive. He who came revealing absolute truth and righteousness, claiming our homage for them, must Himself yield them homage. Christ can rule because He knows how to obey.

II. KNOWLEDGE OF THE MEANING OF LIFE.

1. It was Christ’s perfect knowledge of Thomas which brought from him the confession.

(1) Christ had heard the sceptical words; He had been with Thomas, though Thomas had not been with Him. But Thomas could not stop here; as none can rest in one separate instance of His knowledge and grace. He who knew this must know all. All his past life would flash upon him, and he would recognize it all as Christ’s plan to educate and bring him to Himself.

(2) Christ had done infinitely more than to simply give Thomas his own test for the resurrection; He had brought Thomas to a better mind, and made that test appear absurd. The touch would only have convinced that the risen Jesus was here; Thomas, without touching Him, calls Him “My Lord and my God.” Underlying Thomas’s wish for sensible proof there had been the unquenchable longing for personal intercourse. That John and the others had seen Christ was nothing to him. Nothing can reveal a personal Lord to us but that Lord’s communion with ourselves. Thomas’s heart was satisfied now, and to Christ’s guidance he could absolutely submit.

2. It is such a guide we want; one who can read our heart and supply every need. It is such a guide we preach in Jesus; not one who lived a few years in Palestine; but One who was “before all things,” and who is ever with His people. He knows you, for He formed you for Himself; your life, with all its difficulties and perplexities, is His plan for educating you for Himself and God. Each doubt He is waiting to clear away; even your wilfulness does not drive Him from your side.

III. KNOWLEDGE OF GOD.

1. Thomas recognized the character of God rather than the dignity of Christ, and herein lay the true value of his confession. The mere confession that Christ is a Divine Person is barren; the knowledge that God is come into actual fellowship with us in Christ is new life to the spirit. The looking for God in awful grandeur obscures the perception of God in the perfection of moral excellence, the influence by which goodness sways the heart. It was to deliver men from this very error that Christ came. The disciples were ever expecting that Christ would communicate some stupendous truth concerning God. Gradually their conceptions of Him became exalted; Christ’s own words were fulfiled, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” Here at length from Thomas breaks the full confession that this is God.

2. Thomas could not say, “My Lord,” without saying also “My God;” for it is shocking to yield the whole heart to any other than God. In the fact that he could not but adore Jesus, that Jesus claimed and had won his homage, it was revealed that Jesus was Divine. If He be not God, then are we idolaters; for idolatry is the love and service of the creature as though it were supreme; and higher love and service than Christ has won from Christian hearts is impossible. If He be not God, then have we two Gods: the one a name, a cold abstraction; the other the Jesus who sways our spirits and to whom we render the consecration of our lives.

3. We may now see why so much importance is attached in the New Testament to the Divinity of Christ. The confession of Christ is not an act of the speculative intellect, it is the movement of the heart and the submission of the life to Him. There are Christian Unitarians who call Christ “Lord,” though they hold back from calling Him “God.” There are un-Christian Trinitarians who call Christ “God,” and yet He manifestly is not their “Lord.” It is sad that the words “My Lord and my God” should ever be separated. But he is a Christian, whatever the articles of his creed, who finds Christ sufficient for the soul’s need, and whose life reveals that it is under His rule. (A. Mackennel, D. D.)

Thomas’s confession of faith:

These words imply

I. JOYFUL RECOGNITION. Partings are painful; but the bereavement of the ten was over. And now the restored fellowship of Christ brought Thomas peace. So every new revelation of Christ brings joy to His disciples now. But recognitions are not always joyful (1 Kings 21:20; Mt Mark 1:24; Revelation 1:5; Revelation 6:15). How different the meeting of loved ones (Acts 12:14, Acts 28:15; Genesis 45:26; Genesis 46:30). So Thomas and all disciples rejoice in Christ who, though He was dead, is alive again, and crowned with glory and honour.

II. DIVINE HOMAGE. Friends rise in our estimation as we know them better. Love tested by trial. Suffering and death reveal the soul. Perhaps we never see so clearly the greatness of our friend as when he is taken from us. So it seems to have been with the disciples. It was only after the Resurrection that they beheld the fulness of His glory. What a testimony to the Divine greatness of Jesus in this confession How horrified was Paul Acts 14:15); Peter (Acts 10:25); the angel (Revelation 22:9) at the thought of being worshipped; but Jesus receives it as His right.

III. APPROPRIATING FAITH, “My,” a little word, but of deep significance. Faith is a personal thing. Mark the difference between Thomas’s faith and

1. The faith of devils (James 2:19; 1 John 5:10).

2. The faith of mere believers in historical Christianity. It is one thing to say, “The Lord He is God,” and another to say, “My Lord and my God.” Luther says that the marrow of the gospel is in the possessive pronouns.

IV. SELF-SURRENDERING LOVE. Paul says, “Yield yourselves to God.” This is the difficulty; but never till it is done are we truly converted. But once done it is done for ever. The sight of Jesus wins the heart. Conclusion: Happy are those who can say, “My Lord and my God.” Here is

1. The true bond of union (1 Corinthians 1:2; 2 Corinthians 10:1).

2. The noblest inspiration of life (2 Corinthians 5:14).

3. Strength for work.

4. Comfort in trouble.

5. Hope in death (2 Corinthians 4:6). (W. Forsyth, M. A.)

Christ satisfying the instinct of reverence

I. THE INSTINCT.

1. Reverence is a word by itself, and has no synomym. It is not respect, regard, fear, honour, nor even awe. It would be inaccurate to apply it to wealth, rank or power. If we reverence their possessor it must be for something over and above them. Even if we give it to age, royalty, or genius, it is only because there is in these a touch of sacredness. For reverence is the sense of something essentially and not accidently above us. Old age is above in the incommunicable sanctity of an ampler experience, and a nearer heaven; royalty is the theory of a Divine commission and a theocratic representation; genius is the possession of an original intuition which is to be a voice for mankind.

2. This reverence is an instinct; but there is much to support the theory of an instinct of irreverence. The insolence of lusty youth, clever shallowness which denies admiration, and can see in religion only a sentiment, or a thing for ridicule, such a spirit may be common in literature and society, but it is no instinct; it is a degeneracy. Man worthy of the name has always something above him; and even where self presides at the worship, it is rather as priest than idol

3. It is easy to misdirect this instinct. Man feels himself very little, an atom in a mighty system. There must be something above him. What? The celestial bodies? This instinct enforces a worship. What object so worthy as they? There are those now who reverence nature, and law to them is but a name for deity, and they worship this unknown god. Others a beautiful friend, till they find some day the idol broken in pieces or vanished. Nor do these misdirections cease when at last God becomes the object, inasmuch as reverence for church architecture, decoration, and music may be giving His glory to another.

II. CHRIST SATISFYING THIS INSTINCT.

1. The instinct is abroad seeking its object. It finds it not in an abstraction. Nature cannot satisfy it. It may be a grand thought that I am part of a system which is the universe and whose breath is deity. Yet I, insignificant I, find no rest in this vastness. I go forth among my fellows, and cannot help loving and reverencing: yet the bright illusion vanishes.

2. Shall it always be thus? I see an end of all perfection, and yet there is in me an idea of perfection, might I but attain unto it. Is there none such? Yes, there is God--the Infinite, Eternal, Self-existent. Yet I feel myself in the land of things too high for me and too vast. Cannot I get nearer, until I touch? To answer this Christ comes forth, takes our nature, obeys, loves, suffers, dies, and bids us follow Him with a love as devoted as it is unidolatrous, being very man and very God.

3. Can this one heart contain all the devotions of all men? Can I be assured of attention in the adored of the nations? Yes. “If any man thirst,” &c. (Dean Vaughan)

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