19 20:19On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 20 20:20When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. 21 20:21Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” 22 20:22And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 20:23If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”
24 20:24Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 20:25So 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.”
26 20:26Eight 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.” 27 20:27Then 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.” 28 20:28Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 20:29Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
30 20:30Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 20:31but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
Response
Believing that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, means embracing an understanding of the world in which it makes sense for God to promise a Messiah who would come because a Messiah was needed. This requires looking at the world and recognizing that it is broken because of human sin and recognizing that, because God is good and loving, he means to heal what is broken. The way that God chose to bind up the world’s wounds was by promising to send the seed of the woman, the seed of Abraham, the seed of Judah, the seed of David.
Jesus is the promised one, John contends, and because of his death and resurrection, those who believe this about Jesus have life in his name. John does not use the phrase “salvation by grace through faith,” but that is what he teaches. God graciously sent Jesus because he loved the world (John 3:16). Jesus has called people to believe in him as the one God sent (6:29), offering eternal life to those who do (5:24), stating that they would recognize who he is upon his being lifted up (8:28).
Do we realize how much God loves his people? God loves us so much that by his Spirit he inspired no less a person than the apostle John, beloved of Jesus himself, to serve us by writing this Gospel so that we would be persuaded to believe that Jesus is the Christ. This after the demonstration of the love of God in the sending of the Son! Do we believe? Make no mistake about it, if we believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, we must also believe that God made the world good, that sin and death are in the world because of man’s sin, that God’s answer to the demands of his own justice was the sending of Jesus to die on the cross, and that the resurrection of Jesus entails the resurrection of everyone—the righteous by faith and the wicked in unbelief—and the renewal of creation in the new heaven and new earth.
Recall how Jesus responded to the doubts of Thomas. Do we think our doubts trouble Jesus? Do we think skepticism is a surprise to him? Our honest thinking will not offend him. He can handle any question we have. We can bring him any challenge that wells up from our analysis of his claims. He will answer every inquiry.
Believing in Jesus is not acceptance of an isolated fact. No, believing in Jesus arises from believing the testimony of John (and Matthew, Mark, Luke, Paul, James, Peter, and Jude). Accepting such testimony means trusting that the Bible is telling us the true story of the world.
John then narrates in verse 19 that Jesus stood among them and spoke peace to them. How startling his appearance must have been! Not a corpse, but alive and standing, somehow, in their midst even though the doors were closed. John depicts the resurrected, glorified Christ as one who can be mistaken for a gardener (v. 15), which indicates that he appears human enough, and when he speaks, he is recognizably similar to his pre-resurrected form (v. 16; cf. vv. 19–20, 26–28). Remarkably, however, he also has this ability to enter locked rooms. Jesus has defied normality all through this Gospel: multiplying food and walking on water (ch. 6), giving sight to a man born blind (ch. 9), and raising Lazarus from the dead (ch. 11). Still, it was no doubt startling to the disciples for him to enter their locked room in his resurrected body.
Most of these disciples had last seen Jesus right before they fled as he was being arrested, and so they might have expected him to rebuke them upon his unexpected return to bodily life. Yet he bears no animosity, makes no accusations, and rehearses no failures. He loves these men, and he announces to them what his death on their behalf has accomplished for them: peace. Jesus has propitiated the wrath of the Father, crushed the head of the serpent, absorbed the sting of death, and opened the gates of life. Because of the death and resurrection of Jesus, the risen Lord can speak peace to those who know him.
Having spoken peace to their hearts (v. 19), Jesus makes an appeal to their heads (v. 20): he shows them his hands and side to verify that he indeed suffered in the body and has been raised in the body. In response, the disciples go from glum to glad. Their fears of the Jews are gone. Their anxiety about the corpse of Jesus is over. Jesus has spoken peace to their hearts and proven his resurrection to their heads. They rejoice.
Jesus renews the peace in verse 21, adding that the shalomic stability he speaks into their lives is for the benefit of others. Having again announced to them the peace he has made possible, Jesus asserts that he is sending his disciples in the same way in which the Father sent him. In view of what Jesus will say in verses 22–23, I would suggest that here he is referring most specifically to the way in which the Father sent Jesus as the bearer of his presence on earth and as the means by which forgiveness for sin would be made possible.
This means that when Jesus breathes on the disciples and mentions the reception of the Holy Spirit (v. 22), then tells them that anyone they forgive is forgiven, while anyone they do not forgive is not forgiven (v. 23), he is telling the disciples that they are his replacement as the place on earth where God is present and forgiveness is found.
John has noted that the Spirit would not be given until Jesus was glorified (7:39), and Jesus told his disciples that if he did not go away, the Spirit would not come to them (16:7). Jesus was glorified at the cross, and because of the atonement Jesus made at the cross, the Spirit will take up residence in his temple—believers—where no sacrifices for sin are offered because the sacrifice of Jesus has already been made (cf. 7:39; 14:15–17).
Jesus had previously spoken of the reception of the Holy Spirit, who would remain with them forever (14:16–17). As he breathes on his disciples, he tells them to receive this Holy Spirit (20:22). Under the old covenant, the Holy Spirit indwelt the temple. At Jesus’ baptism the Spirit came down on him to remain on him, and now Jesus imparts the indwelling Spirit to his disciples. At Pentecost the Spirit’s arrival will publicly announce the followers of Jesus as the people of God.
Jesus has spoken peace to his disciples. They are the men through whom those who do not know him will encounter God. They are the men who, by welcoming others into their midst, confer forgiveness of sins because of what Christ accomplished for all who would repent and believe. They are also the men who, by preserving a firm dividing line between themselves and the world, make known that anyone outside the church is outside of Christ and will therefore stand before God without Christ, unforgiven.
20:24–29 The Risen Christ Convinces Thomas. John has structured his narrative such that his evangelistic purpose is obvious. He has just presented the empty tomb, the risen Christ, the giving of the Spirit, and the power to forgive. Next he seeks to counter the objection that dead men do not rise by presenting one of the disciples of Jesus who was not there on the evening of his resurrection in verses 19–23.
Any member of John’s audience who doubts the resurrection is represented by Thomas in this episode, and John presents those doubts as being overcome by the reality of the risen Christ. Thomas was not present when Jesus spoke peace to the disciples on the day of the resurrection (v. 24), so he is understandably skeptical about their claims to have seen him (v. 25). In verse 25 Thomas insists on being convinced the same way the disciples were in verse 20: by experiencing the reality of the risen body of Jesus through contact with his wounds.
John relates the repeat performance of Jesus in verse 26. Once again the disciples are together—this time with Thomas—once again the doors are locked, once again Jesus enters the room somehow, and once again he announces the peace he has made possible for them. Behold the kindness of Christ (v. 27): he does not rebuke Thomas; he does not chide or chasten him; instead, he invites Thomas to feel his wounds, commanding him to believe.
John does not record that Thomas actually touched Jesus, leaving us instead with Thomas’s awed response (v. 28). John had opened with the declaration that the Word was God (1:1), and now, near the end of the Gospel, Thomas names Jesus as his Lord and his God (20:28).
Jesus neither corrects nor repudiates the way Thomas has addressed him. Instead he pronounces a blessing on those who do not share the experience granted to Thomas, of seeing so that they might believe (v. 29). Jesus here states that the willingness to take the report of him by faith is a blessed condition. This does not denigrate the way Thomas sought evidence, but it does commend a certain posture to the audience of this Gospel: John’s audience hears from the lips of Jesus that they are blessed if they hear and believe, though they have not seen (cf. 1 Pet. 1:8; Rev. 1:3).
20:30–31 Written That You Might Believe. John’s purpose in this Gospel has been clear, from his extravagant claims about Jesus in the prologue (1:1–18) and others’ asserting the unique identity of Jesus, to his identification of him as Messiah at the beginning of the Gospel (1:41) and Thomas’s addressing him as God (20:28) near the end. John has also portrayed Jesus as doing signs and asserting that life comes only from believing in him. What John writes in verses 30–31, then, neatly summarizes what he has been seeking to do in this entire Gospel.
In verse 30, John declares that Jesus did many other signs. The mighty deeds John has narrated are loaded with fulfillment of Scriptural themes. Thus it seems that John has selected those mighty works of Jesus that best sign-ify that Jesus is the one for whom the OT looked. John’s statement that “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book” commends not only the other Gospel accounts but also other verbal testimony from the disciples.
No one should think that John makes claim to an exclusive account of what Jesus did. No one should press differences between John’s account and those of the other disciples. John has been selective for a purpose; he has an agenda, stated in verse 31: he selected and arranged the signs in his book to provoke people to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the anointed king from the line of David, and therefore the Son of God promised in 2 Samuel 7:14.
1 Greek Ioudaioi probably refers here to Jewish religious leaders, and others under their influence, in that time
2 Greek Didymus
1 Besides
John 7:39, the only two places in John where we find the concept of
receiving the Holy Spirit are
14:16–17 and
20:22. Because of the stress in
14:16–17 on the Spirit being with the disciples forever, the reuse of the terminology of receiving the Spirit in
20:22 indicates that the disciples here receive the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. For further discussion of these issues, see Hamilton,
God’s Indwelling Presence.