REFLECTIONS ON FAITH

Bible references are to the Anglicised New International Version (NIV-UK), unless indicated otherwise.

Those not explained in the text are hyperlinked.

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for

and certain of what we do not see.

And without faith it is impossible to please God,

because anyone who comes to

him must believe that he exists and that

he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

Hebrews 11: 1, 6

SEEING IS BELIEVING – so the saying goes, and Thomas certainly needed the evidence of his own eyes before he could believe that his Lord had risen from the dead. The expression supports the false assumption that visual evidence can be easily and accurately interpreted, while experience proves that our eyes do not always provide us with an infallible record of events. Does Thomas’s demanding disposition betray a serious character fault? Chapter 20 of John’s Gospel records the event that forever labelled the exacting Apostle as ‘Doubting Thomas’:

24 Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.”

Having perhaps a more enquiring mind than his companions, Thomas needed direct personal assurance of such an amazing event. He was more than willing, even eager, to believe but needed the personal satisfaction of seeing for himself. His faith would be founded on fact, not on fancy.

Approval to some degree of caution was later given by Paul, who exhorted the brethren to test all things and hold on to what was good (1 Thessalonians 5: 21), and he commended the noble Bereans for examining the Scriptures to prove to themselves that what he taught them was true (Acts 17: 11).

My Lord And My God!

Thomas agonised in mind and heart for a week after Jesus had appeared to the other apostles. He was with them behind locked doors when the Lord appeared again, and spoke directly to him:

27 ‘. . . Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.’ 28 Thomas said to him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ 29 Then Jesus told him, ‘Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.’

Misgivings resolved to his utter joy, Thomas’s exclamation of worship set a seal forever on his own faith. His confession was unique, as no other disciple in the Gospel account is credited with so positive and startling an affirmation of faith in Christ as to address Him directly as Lord and God, though the Apostle Paul some decades later penned his sublime eulogy of the Christ, exhorting ‘all the angels of God’ to worship Him (Hebrews 1: 1-6).

There is no hint of rebuke toward Thomas on account of his exacting demands. The ten disciples present at Jesus’ earlier appearance had seen the physical marks of His crucifixion, shown to them apparently without request, which indicates that He was not otherwise recognisable. He had already appeared outside the tomb to Mary Magdalene, who had mistaken Him for a gardener, but hearing the special tone of His voice when He called her by name, she knew Him as Rabboni – Teacher, and she ran to tell the apostles that she had seen the Lord (John 20: 10-18).

Jesus did not reject or modify Thomas’s confession, and in choosing one whose natural inclination was toward caution, to be critical rather than credulous, He encouraged many of a similar disposition to feel that their inability to exercise faith easily need not impede their hopes of being accounted worthy of divine approval. But then the Lord pronounced a beatitude which highlighted a different kind of faith not dependent on visual experiences: ‘blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.’ [For more information on John 20: 28, see our Question Box on the subject[ here.]

Who are the recipients of such a blessing? Who were those ready believers? The earliest would be among the larger circle of disciples who did not see the risen Lord but trusted in the eyewitness of those who did see Him. Then the Christians for whom John wrote his Gospel toward the end of the first century, and countless numbers throughout the passing centuries, have been accounted as blessed, because they have believed in the risen Lord without the benefit of personal ocular experience.

The Resurrection

Yet it may be argued that the original visual manifestation of Christ’s having risen from the death state was in truth essential as a way leading to faith. In the first instance, therefore, seeing was believing. John himself in recording the events of the resurrection morning states that the disciples did not yet understand that Jesus would rise from the dead (20: 9). Apparently they had not assimilated the serious import of His words as recorded in Matthew 16: 21:

From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.

Of course the Lord could see their difficulty. They would need incontrovertible evidence to convince them that He was alive again. Actually seeing the risen Jesus was the obvious way of leading them to belief. And when the promised ‘Counsellor’ later brought to their minds all that Jesus had taught them, they would have an increasing understanding of truths hitherto beyond their grasp (John 14: 26). They would know that the risen Lord had relinquished a humanity He would never take back. He had paid the price of sin, had given His human life for the life of the world, and was raised a divine being, soon to ascend to the right hand of God, His Father, in heaven. But through the precious fleeting days until His ascension, Jesus’ appearances in various human forms comforted and reassured those who had learned to love Him as the man Christ Jesus.

Paul some years later presented the same assurance of Christ’s bodily resurrection, based on a large number of eyewitnesses to the fact more than 500 brethren having seen Him at the same time, most of whom were still living. Then intriguingly Paul asserts his own experience of seeing the risen Lord, no longer presented in human form, but in the divine nature, as the glorified Messiah. It was only a glimpse, but its brilliance blinded Paul, and he understood the appearance as unique to himself, as to one born prematurely into the heavenly condition. It was an affirmation of his destined apostleship. For Paul, seeing was believing, and he regarded the visible evidence of Jesus’ resurrection as an indispensable aspect of Christian faith (1 Corinthians 15: 6-8).

Faith’s Survival in Today’s World

Countless Christians have faced rejection and ridicule from the ungodly as generations have passed, perhaps never more mockingly than at the present time. Unbelievers are not necessarily to be blamed. It is excusable that many cannot reconcile Bible teachings with the ever-increasing scientific knowledge of our day. Their time will come, ‘For God has bound all [unbelieving] men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all’ (Romans 11: 32; emphasis added).

But what of Christian believers whose faith is severely challenged by the current persuasiveness of evolutionary teachings which exclude the existence of a Creator, or even the possibility of some form of intelligent design? In the last 100 years, the explosion of scientific knowledge has presented mankind with a bewildering complexity of facts that appear to undermine traditional biblical teaching. Yet the increase of knowledge sudden in evolutionary time scales cannot be attributed to an advancement in human intelligence alone. On the contrary, such phenomenal progress in the grasp of the sciences was prophesied in Old Testament times (Daniel 12: 4, Authorised Version). For the believer this adds to faith in a God who knows the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46: 10).

Paul’s definition of faith as rendered in the Authorised Version may appear somewhat difficult to grasp (Hebrews 11: 1): ‘Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’ What is that substance? Put simply, in this context it may be defined as the essence or meaning of a written or spoken thought, the solid quality of a concept. And things not seen? Here, arguably, is a reference to that conviction many possess, independent of visual proof, which Jesus commended with a special blessing.

The persistence of religious faith is a vexation to many hard-headed evolutionists, but among them are some who conclude that religious belief is here to stay, as the vast majority of mankind, of various faiths, are apparently born with an innate capacity the so-called ‘God gene’ to believe in a higher order, and to expect a future conscious existence after the present life is over.

As In A Mirror

The Apostle Paul, with the greatest insight into things beyond the grasp of most earthbound minds, even those with a share of the Pentecostal blessing, confesses that his own understanding of heavenly things is imperfect. He does not claim to have all the answers. He reflects in 1 Corinthians 13 that:

9. [W]e know in part and we prophesy in part, 10. but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. . . . 12. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

Seeing ‘as in a mirror’ is not a viewing of the actual, but rather a persuasive impression of the reality. In viewing our own reflection we do not see ourselves quite as others see us, yet the image is unmistakeable. Paul is not saying that the mirror gives a dim or distorted image, but rather an indirect presentation of a reality. Similarly, as Jesus declared to Philip: ‘Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father’ (John 14: 8-10).

God knows us now more perfectly than we know Him. But the time will come, in the general resurrection, when all shall understand Him more clearly than through the indirect mirror of His Word. The prospect of Revelation 21: 3 is for all who love life: ‘And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.”’

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