Christ's Doctrine of Faith: A Study of "Believing" in John's Gospel (John 20:29)

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We have reached the penultimate post in our series in the Gospel of John! In the two second-to-last usages of “belief” in John’s Gospel, which are the ninety-seventh and ninety-eighth occurrences of the language of “believing” in the Gospel, the text says this: “Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed” (KJV). Now, as we have done throughout this series, let’s examine the immediate context and the facts about faith that we can draw from this passage!

First, what is the immediate context? Back in verse 27, when the resurrected Christ appears to His disciples, including Thomas, and tells His doubting disciple to put forward his finger, behold His hands, put forward his hand, and thrust it into His side, telling Him to not be faithless (i.e., unbelieving), but believing. Thomas answers by addressing Jesus as His Lord and His God. Jesus then says to Thomas that he has believed because he has seen, before He declares that those are blessed who have not seen and yet have believed. This is the immediate context of John 20:29!

Second, what are some facts about faith we can draw from this passage? First, those who have not seen Christ and yet have believed the Holy Spirit’s testimony of Him in Scripture have a blessing from the lips of the God-Man Himself. We know this because of His pronouncement of this blessing in the presence of Thomas and the other disciples in this passage. The second fact is that God can grant us the grace to believe in Jesus even though we can’t see Him currently. We know this because Jesus outright says here that those who haven’t seen Him can still believe in Him. This may sound like a repetition of the first fact, but it’s different in that the first fact is Jesus’s pronouncement of blessing upon those who haven’t seen but yet have believed, while this second fact is the God-given capacity to trust in Christ despite not seeing Him. A third similar, but different, fact is that we need to be content with trusting the Word of God, not going beyond it for some supposedly superior proof of the truth of God and what He says. The Lord here is plainly indicating that those who enjoy the blessing of believing in Him while not seeing Him should be content with their situation. And, since the Bible is the only way we know of Christ, and since it is a means of knowing and trusting in Him despite not physically seeing Him, we can reasonably conclude that the Lord is teaching us that Scripture is sufficient proof for Him being the Truth (remember Luke 16:31). These are some facts about faith from John 20:29!