Doubting Thomas

The other day at camp, the story of Doubting Thomas came up.  As the discussion went on, my perspective on Thomas began to change.  Something about what he said when the disciples told him that Jesus had risen from the tomb just didn't seem to match the common interpretation of his attitude.  What if the "doubt" that Thomas was accused of consisted less of skepticism and more of a sense of caution?

Now Thomas, one of the Twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.”

Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although 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, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” ~ (John 20:24-29, ESV)

What if Thomas, of all the disciples, actually loved Jesus more than any other?  And what if His crucifixion brought such great pain and sorrow to Thomas, that the grief of the others could not compare?  Perhaps that was why Thomas was not with them when Jesus appeared to them the first time: he may have been grieving alone.  What if his pain was so great that he would reject any glimmer of hope in fear that that hope would be dashed to pieces?  Maybe Thomas desperately wanted to believe that Jesus had risen to life, but unless he saw Him with his own eyes, he would not dare to risk giving himself to a false hope.  Only the testimony of the risen Savior Himself would be sufficient to convince Thomas, because any other witness could be flawed.  What if his heart echoed the deeply pained caution of Psalm 116:11, deeming any proclamation of resurrection to be a lie until the Resurrected One appeared personally?  Then when Jesus finally appeared to Thomas, what if his exclamation, "My Lord and my God!" was not one of disbelief proven wrong, but rather one of a cautiously repressed hope joyously fulfilled?

And what about the other account of Thomas, when Jesus headed straight into hostile Judea to raise Lazarus, though the Jews there sought to put Him to death?  Could Thomas' comment, “Let us also go, that we may die with him" also be misinterpreted?  Maybe the sarcasm we infer from the statement is actually real concern and a carrying out of Peter's later vow to lay down his life for his Savior (John 13:37).  Maybe Thomas' mentality in his statement was not, "I can't believe we're walking straight into our death sentence," but rather, "Why would Jesus dare to risk His own death?  If He is killed, I will not be able to live with myself without Him.  If He is to die now, I will die with Him."

One of the counselors at camp asked another counselor a question, which he then asked me: What does "hope in Christ" mean to you?  I think hope in Christ looks like John 20:29.  We become so deeply attached to the Lord that any assault on Him or His glory is taken as a personal attack, and to be given any false hope concerning Him would be treachery of the worst sort.  We desperately long to hope for His resurrection, but we must be cautious and count all men liars (Psalm 116:11) if they would have us trust in anything other than Christ and His truth spoken directly from His own mouth.  And yet, just as Abraham hoped against hope that what God had promised would come to pass (Romans 4:18), we put the fullness of our hope in the promise that the Lord is faithful to keep every promise.  So despite the risk of pain if we are to find our hope to be false, our hope in Christ is firm and secure (Hebrews 6:19) because we know that "hope does not disappoint" (Romans 5:5).  Whereas Thomas fought the hope that he longed to cling to because of the potential pain it could bring, we eagerly hold firm to our hope because God has proven Himself faithful before, and He will do it again.  As Jesus said, blessed are those who love Me so much that they fear disappointment at finding the testimonies about Me to be false, and yet who put their trust in My testimony anyway because they know My character of faithfulness (John 20:29).

In a way, that is what I think of when I think of hope in Christ.  But that is also what I think it looks like when we hope for Christ.  To hope in Christ can also be to hope for things from the perspective of God's will.  Hope in Christ stems from abiding in Christ (John 15:5).  When we remain in Him, we begin to see things through His eyes, and thus we begin to hope based on His desires because "we have the mind of Christ" (1 Corinthians 2:16) given by the Spirit.  "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart." ~ Psalm 37:4

To go even further, when I think of "hope in Christ" I think of Colossians 1:27, "Christ in you, the hope of glory."  When we hope for glory, we hope only for God's glory because there is no other glory worth speaking of.  Our hope of glory, then, or our hope to see God glorified, is Christ in us—the character of Christ growing in us, His word dwelling in us richly (Colossians 3:16), being built up into a dwelling place for the Spirit (1 Peter 2:5), Him increasing as I decrease (John 3:30).  God receives glory when His Son is seen in us and through us.  Thus, to hope in Christ is to trust Him to make us more like Himself, that our heavenly Father may be glorified.  And we can be confident that He will do so, because He "must be about [His] Father's business" (Luke 2:49 KJV), and so must we.

So let us joyfully take hold of the hope that Thomas so cautiously repressed, because we know that "great is His steadfast love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.  Praise the Lord!" (Psalm 117:2).