John 20:19-31 "The Central Question of the New Testament"

John 20:25   “ . . . I will never believe.” (ESV)

One of my professors of theology served one morning as the visiting teacher in an adult Sunday school class in which I was a member. He was a good professor from whom I learned much in my seminary studies, but oddly enough, the one quote of his that I remember all these years later came from that Sunday school class. He said, “The central question of the New Testament is belief.”

John’s Gospel was certainly written with the purpose of bringing people to belief. (v. 31), and Jesus made clear as recorded in this Gospel that belief in him was the “work of God” (6:29) and it is the labor we should perform above all else. (6:27) Before one loves God one first, necessarily, believes in God.

So, how shocking to read the words of Jesus’ apostle Thomas who declared that he would not believe in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead unless he had physical proof that satisfied his rudimentary experiential standards of sight and touch. Actually, such evidence does not always serve as a convincing proof since people do, at times, see and hear things that are not present. Hallucinations happen. When Thomas refused to believe he rejected the witness of his fellow apostles. What’s more Thomas resisted the Holy Spirit. The apostles had been empowered with the Spirit for the very purpose of proclaiming the Gospel. (v. 22-23) which would bring forgiveness of sins to those who believed. 

Jesus accommodated the lack of belief in Thomas. A week after Easter Thomas encountered Jesus. He saw him and touched him. Thomas made a powerful, clear, direct confession of faith when he yielded to Jesus and proclaimed, “My Lord and my God!”

Even so, there is a gentle rebuke of Thomas in the passage because Thomas missed the blessing that could have been his. He could have been the first of the Apostles to have believed without seeing or touching. He could have been the first of all those who would come later and give themselves to Jesus in response to the witness of the Apostles recorded in the Bible and empowered by the presence of the Holy Spirit. Jesus could have said to Thomas personally--had Thomas taken his opportunity--”Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (v.29)

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Killing Jesus, the Movie. One way to understand this movie is to see it as the popularization of what Albert Schweitzer called “The Quest of the Historical Jesus.”  Bill O’Reilly, co-author of the book, Killing Jesus, has repeatedly said on his TV program that this movie is an historical approach to Jesus. John Meier, Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, described what an historical approach means. “Suppose that a Catholic, a Protestant, a Jew, and an agnostic. . .were locked up in the bowels of the Harvard Divinity School library . . .and not allowed to emerge until they had hammered out a consensus document on who Jesus of Nazareth was and what he intended in his own time and place.” (A Marginal Jew, Rethinking the Historical Jesus, by John P. Meier, Doubleday, 1991, v. 1. p. 1)

Of course, not one of them, except perhaps the agnostic, would be happy with the resulting historical document. In this imaginative conclave Meier described the work of many New Testament academics for the last 240 years (since the writings of H. S. Reimarus). The remarkable Albert Schweitzer wrote a review of this research, often called, “The Lives of Jesus.” Although the research continues into the 21st century, Schweitzer’s conclusions about it seem just as accurate today as when written in 1913. “No personality of the past can be transported alive into the present by means of historical observation or by discursive thought about his authoritative significance. . . " (The Quest of the Historical Jesus, by Albert Schweitzer, Fortress edition 2001, p. 486)

Schweitzer concluded his book by saying how people can find Jesus. He wrote, ".  . . as of old, by the lakeside, he came to those men who did not know who he was. He says the same words,  ‘Follow me!’ . . . And to those who hearken to him, whether wise or unwise, he will reveal himself . . .” (p. 487)

Historical research will provide a place for scholars to meet and discuss, but for an encounter with the living Christ the only means is the Gospel, true to the canonical scriptures and proclaimed by the power of the Holy Spirit. Killing Jesus, the Movie is a disappointment to believers because it uses the New Testament selectively, on the basis of one or another scholar’s idea--think of the conclave described by Meier. Like all the “Lives of Jesus” books and articles and movies from earlier times, this one gives us more information about the movie makers than it does about Jesus. Therefore, the movie cannot and does not give witness to the faith passed on by the church from one generation to the next.