The Resurrection: My Lord and My God

John 20:19-31

Main Idea: John reveals that the most moral, religious, pious person is dead in sin, but the one who trusts Jesus and commits to following him has been given life.

1. How Do We Obtain Life?
   1. Confess Christ is Lord.
   2. Commit to following Christ as Lord.
2. Once We Obtain Life, How Will We Live?
   1. We will live in relationship with Jesus.
   2. We will live on mission for Jesus.
   3. We will live in the blessing of Jesus.

John writes this Gospel to every person who is spiritually dead, trapped in sins, and awaiting God’s judgment. In other words he writes it to every person, including you and me. By describing the condition of man as dead and offering man eternal life through faith in Jesus, John reveals a line that divides mankind into two categories, dead and alive. Then he extends the offer of life to each one of us. This issue is bigger than physical life and physical death; it extends beyond the seventy or eighty years you may have on this earth. The matter at stake is eternal life and eternal death.

How Do We Obtain Life?

Spiritual life comes through belief (v. 31). We must believe that Jesus is the promised Messiah, the Son of God, and upon believing we become recipients of eternal life. But what does it mean to believe? Genuine belief includes both confession and commitment.

Confess Christ Is Lord

“Confess” here does not mean an admittance of guilt but the declaration of certain propositional truths. There are certain statements we must testify to as being true. We must confess that Jesus is the Messiah; he is the promised Savior of the Old Testament. The promises of God to send salvation are kept in the person of Jesus. We must confess that Jesus is the Son of God. We can’t overlook, undermine, or deny his deity and still call ourselves Christians. We must confess that Jesus rose from the dead (v. 27). If we deny the resurrection, then we do not truly believe.

How do we know what we should believe? It is not through sight: Jesus tells Thomas the following generations would need to believe without seeing him (v. 29). We understand what to believe based on the truths revealed in God’s Word. Unlike Thomas we believe based on the testimony of the disciples. Through their divinely inspired words we understand who Jesus is, and we learn to confess the truths that bring salvation.

Commit to Following Christ as Lord

We must hold to certain truths, but belief is not a mere intellectual exercise. Belief involves a person’s committing himself to embrace these truths personally. Belief has a relational element: it is a commitment from one person to another person. Belief also has a volitional element: it is a decision to embrace truth. These two aspects of belief are perfectly demonstrated in Thomas’s response to the appearance of Jesus: he confesses Jesus is his Lord and his God (v. 28). His confession is clear: Jesus is God. This is the only time in the Gospel that someone speaking to Jesus addresses him as God, and it echoes the first verse: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (1:1).

His confession is interlaced with commitment. He calls Jesus “Lord.” The word can mean “sir” or simply be a synonym for God, but it can also be used for “Master.” That’s the way Thomas uses it here. He stands before the risen Christ and understands that this one who has power over life and death has the right to rule his life. Thomas willingly submits himself to the control of Jesus. This commitment is personal. Thomas doesn’t utter these words with cold detachment. He personalizes them. “Jesus is,” Thomas says, “my Lord and my God.”

Further, belief in Jesus can’t happen at the point of a sword because it is not about the words you say but a personal decision to commit yourself to Jesus as your Lord. Here lies one of the hidden dangers of something like the Sinner’s Prayer. Many well-intentioned believers have encouraged someone to repeat certain words after them in order to be saved. Those words may have a clear confession of faith, but there is no guarantee that the person making the confession is willing to make a commitment to Jesus. Confession without commitment only serves to soothe a person’s conscience on the way to hell. Churches are full of men and women who can draw a map of the Romans Road but have never turned from their sin to walk the way of Jesus Christ.

Many professing Christians view their commitment to Christ as more of an affiliation. When it’s beneficial to them, they’ll talk about personal commitment to following Christ, but the moment things change—life gets difficult, love grows a little cold, and faith seems harder—they will demonstrate that their confession was empty. They simply parroted the truths of Christianity without ever making a commitment to following Christ. Faith must include certain truths about Jesus—his deity, death, and resurrection—but the truths must travel along the road of commitment accompanied by a willingness to follow Christ and to persist in obedience. It’s not enough to say that Jesus is the great treasure buried in the field. We must sell all that we have to purchase the field. We must confess and commit.

Once We Obtain Life, How Will We Live?

Just as the disciples illustrate what it means to believe, they also give us an example of what it means to live as one who has been made alive in Jesus Christ.

We Will Live in Relationship with Jesus

It is no accident that John declares his purpose for this book—that his readers might have life—immediately after he records the resurrection. Jesus’s victory over the grave is our confidence in eternal life. The promised life comes only through connection with him. When we placed our faith in Jesus Christ, we were placed in Christ. Eternal life became ours because the life of Christ now courses through our spiritual veins. Like the adopted child welcomed into a new family, we have been welcomed into an intimate, eternal relationship with the triune God. Just as that child’s existence is now completely swallowed up in the experiences of life in this new family, our existence is to be completely swallowed up in our relationship with Christ. We are to move, laugh, serve, love—everything—in him.

We Will Live on Mission for Jesus

The new life Jesus gives begins in this life and extends eternally. Only a small portion of it is lived in our current earthly existence. Jesus calls us to use this brief time for a grand and glorious purpose. He commissions us to take the message of the gospel to those who have not heard it so they can believe, receive forgiveness of sin, and find life in him. He sends his disciples in the same way in which he was sent (vv. 21-23): in obedience to the Father, empowered by the Spirit, to proclaim the message of salvation. That is our pattern for ministry. The significance of this work demands a supernatural commission and supernatural empowerment.

There is no greater joy than to serve the Father. And to think that he placed us in a body of like-minded believers so that we could band together in our service for him! Each church is uniquely commissioned by God to take his message to the world. We have the privilege of proclaiming the wonders of God’s salvation to those who are desperately in need of it. Don’t miss out on the great honor God has given you as his ambassador, and don’t minimize the role of the church in God’s great plan. We were saved into the greatest institution the world has ever known so that we could declare the greatest message the world has ever heard.

We are sent by Jesus in the same way that he was sent by the Father. Don’t forget that Jesus came to us. He didn’t wait for us to come to him. He descended from heaven, took on the form of a man, and ministered in the villages and towns where men lived. Jesus took the initiative. He sacrificed comfort. He went out to us where we were. Too many Christians shout advice to drowning men from the safety of the shore, but that’s not what Jesus did. He dove in and swam out to rescue us. It’s easy to view evangelism the same way a doctor might view a deadly outbreak. We make sure we’ve got our hazmat suits on, and then we’ll stand outside the quarantined area and offer suggestions to anyone who comes to ask. Maybe we’ll even train the workers who go in to help. But we don’t learn that model from Jesus. He sprinted into the middle of the outbreak and rescued those who had been infected. He willingly sacrificed his life so they might be saved.

We Will Live in the Blessing of Jesus

When Jesus miraculously enters the room where the disciples are hiding, he discovers a group of men trembling in fear, but once they see him, the fear melts and “the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord” (v. 20). Their fear turned to gladness, and their sorrow turned to joy, exactly as Jesus had told them (16:20). The presence of Jesus transformed their attitude from sadness to gladness.

In this text Jesus repeats the greeting, “Peace be with you,” three different times (vv. 19, 21, 26). It’s been suggested that this is nothing more than a standard greeting, the Hebrew equivalent of “hello.” If so, then why does John record it three times in seven verses? It’s because Jesus is reminding them of an earlier promise: “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Don’t let your heart be troubled or fearful” (14:27). The presence of Jesus transformed their attitude from anxiety to peace. Then Jesus promises that everyone who trusts him will be blessed (20:29). Blessed doesn’t simply mean happy. It means a person is accepted by God. They have, through faith, become recipients of all God’s blessings. God’s favor is permanently placed on them through the person of Jesus Christ.

Jesus repeatedly told the disciples, “Come to me and you will receive eternal life, real peace, lasting joy, and divine acceptance.” God wants us to be happy. He wants to bless us. He created us to pursue joy in him through Jesus. But we don’t take his offer seriously. Instead of pursuing these blessings he promises, we settle for empty substitutes around us. Few people have taught this as clearly as C. S. Lewis:

If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. (“The Weight of Glory,” 26)

The Gospel of John was written to help us understand that there is a greater pleasure than the mud pies of this world. Jesus offers us the ultimate treasure: eternity with him. Here is where all of these truths merge. Eternal life—ours through faith in Jesus Christ—brings us into relationship with God. In relationship with God we discover immeasurable blessings. These blessings that flow to us from the person of God motivate our mission. We want to bring others into the infinite joy of relationship with God.

Reflect and Discuss

1. What does John want us to believe from this passage?
2. How does someone obtain eternal life through Jesus?
3. What two things does genuine belief include?
4. How does a person confess Christ as Lord?
5. How does the relational element of belief alter how you think about obedience?
6. Once someone obtains eternal life through Jesus, how will they live in the present?
7. Describe the difference between those committed to following Jesus and those who want simply to affiliate themselves with Jesus.
8. How does the way Jesus was sent provide us with our own pattern for ministry?
9. Do you spend time pursuing those who don’t know Jesus? What might look different if you modeled your evangelism after Jesus?
10. Do you believe God wants to bless your life through Jesus? In what areas is this hardest to believe?