Commentary on John 20:19-31

These two interconnected scenes are escalating episodes of recognition that John has crafted to lead his audience down a path of trust in Jesus. We’ve already experienced moments of recognition in John’s post-resurrection scenes—Peter and the “other disciple” stumbling onto a quasi-recognition at the tomb (John 20:3–10), and Mary moving from misidentifying Jesus as the gardener to recognizing him when he calls her name (20:11–18). 

In the transition between the garden scene and Jesus’ appearance to the other disciples, we learn that Mary Magdalene has become what Thomas Aquinas will later call the apostolorum apostola, or “the apostle to the apostles.” After she tells the disciples about her encounter with the risen Jesus, Jesus himself appears to the disciples in a locked room and shows them his hands and side. They move from a state of fear to joy as they recognize Jesus and accept his resurrection. 

Jesus’ response to their joy is threefold. First, he wishes them peace. His words recall the earlier Paraclete discourses, when Jesus promised to leave the disciples the Spirit, reassuring them with these words: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid” (14:27). 

Next, Jesus announces to the disciples that he is sending them out, and this finalizes a “sent out” theme that winds its way through the Gospel. God sends John the Baptist in the Prologue and early scenes of the Gospel (see 1:6, 33; 3:28), but the dominant theme is that the Father sends Jesus. We learn that Jesus is sent to complete God’s work (4:34), deserves honor for being sent (5:23), is sent to do God’s will and lose nothing that God has given him (6:39), is going back to the one who sent him (7:33), and that whoever sees Jesus sees the one who sent him (12:44–45). Now, after his death and resurrection, Jesus is sending the disciples out.

Jesus’ last response is to breathe the Spirit onto the disciples. This part of the scene seems to be in conflict with Luke’s account in Acts 2 of the Holy Spirit coming on the disciples at Pentecost. But that need not be the case. It could be that John is emphasizing a specific function of the Spirit here, the forgiveness and peace that the Spirit brings to a community of faith. It could also be a literary device that John employs in order to ensure that Jesus’ promise to leave the Spirit is fulfilled within the pages of the Gospel. The main idea is that the Spirit has a role in the sending out that Jesus is doing, however loose the details are on that role.  

So, the disciples have come to recognize the resurrected Jesus and are sent out with the breath of the Spirit. But not every disciple is there. The transition verses here tell us that Thomas was not present with the disciples and that he wants proof that Jesus is back from the dead before he can trust that it is so. 

A week later, Thomas gets his proof in a dramatic post-resurrection scene. Jesus appears to the disciples again and wishes them peace, but then he addresses Thomas specifically. It is interesting that Thomas had wanted to see Jesus and touch his wounds, but when Jesus invites him to touch, he doesn’t need to. Nowhere does John say that Thomas actually touches the wounds. Instead, Jesus shows up and speaks to him, and then without accepting Jesus’ invitation to touch, Thomas has an epiphany, uttering the central and climactic statement in the Gospel of John, “My Lord and my God!” (verse 28).

Up to this point in the story, John has been loudly hinting at a key point he is trying to communicate about Jesus—that Jesus is one with the Father. Jesus himself says it in different ways throughout John, but it isn’t until now that someone says out loud that Jesus is Lord and God. And who says it? The guy we disparage as “doubting Thomas.”

Interpreters sometimes make Thomas into a second-class believer because of one of the lines Jesus says in this scene: “Do you believe because you see me? Happy are those who don’t see and yet believe” (verse 29). They assume that John is holding up those who don’t see and yet believe as greater followers of Jesus. That’s likely because most Bible translations render the word makarios as “blessed”—blessed are those who don’t see and yet believe. 

But that Greek word is best translated as “happy,” “content,” or “at peace”—it does not imply that God blesses those people. It’s a simple adjective—happy. And isn’t that a true statement? People who have that simple kind of faith, the kind that doesn’t ask questions or have doubts or require evidence, are pretty undisturbed, blissfully happy, even. But is that the goal? 

Is John trying to tell us that we should all believe without seeing, without reasoning or questioning? I don’t think so. No one in this story believes like that. It takes Jesus’ voice to bring Mary around to recognition. Peter and the other disciple require a glimpse into the tomb, and even then they don’t understand. The other disciples need Jesus to show up miraculously in their midst. So, Thomas’s delayed recognition of the resurrected Jesus is not an inferior form of faith but just another way that people might move from doubt to belief in order to follow Jesus.