When the Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead and appeared to His disciples in the room where they usually met, one of His disciples called Thomas was not present. Soon afterwards the others told him, “We have seen the Lord,” but Thomas would not believe. He said, “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails...I will not believe.” The report of his friends was not enough for him – he wanted first-hand evidence, and very graciously the Lord gave it to him. A little later He invited Thomas to reach out his finger towards those nail prints in His hands, and said, “Do not be unbelieving but believing” (John 20:24-27).
If we have doubts about Christ, what can we do? We cannot do what Thomas did; we cannot see the risen Christ, for He is now in heaven. But believing in Him is not a blind faith. Blind faith is belief with no firm basis or evidence. Christian faith is firmly based upon the evidence documented in the Bible, which contains first-hand accounts written down and miraculously preserved through the centuries for us today.
We can examine the evidence ourselves in a rational manner and make up our minds using common sense and logic. But human logic takes you only part of the way; it cannot work everything out. When logic has done what it can, faith takes over, enabling you to discover how you can believe without seeing. Faith does not contradict reason; rather, it takes you beyond it.
There is a common saying that “seeing is believing”, which means that something you have accepted in good faith is then verified when you see it. But if you do see something, faith is no longer required. Faith is required when you cannot access all the evidence. It is believing without requesting extra evidence. The Lord Jesus said to Thomas that this faith was better and more blessed, because it consisted in trusting Him.
