About this time every year, various media outlets publish articles bringing the resurrection of Christ into question. The headline often says something like, “Did Jesus really rise from the dead?” And then the writer attempts to de-bunk the central teaching of Christianity—the resurrection of Christ.

Perhaps such reporting causes doubts to arise in the minds of some. If only there were empirical, physical, undeniable evidence that Jesus rose from the dead, people would believe. We live in a world that demands indisputable proof and scientific evidence. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” is what many say.

The Bible contains the story of someone who doubted the resurrection of Jesus. Even though many of his colleagues claimed that they had seen Jesus alive after the crucifixion, this man did not believe. He said he would not believe until he saw Jesus for himself. He needed empirical, physical, undeniable proof. He needed to test the claim for himself.

And of course I’m speaking about the disciple named Thomas, often called Doubting Thomas because he doubted the resurrection. But Doubting Thomas became believing Thomas after Jesus appeared to him.

We might wish that Jesus would appear to everyone who doubts his claims. That would certainly result in more believers. But Jesus told Thomas that it was not necessary to see him in order to believe in him. Jesus confers a blessing on those who believe without seeing. Thomas found out that there was no reason to doubt the resurrection of Jesus, and there is no reason for us to doubt it today.

The account we’re looking at shows us several things about Jesus’ resurrection. We can and must believe these things even though we did not experience them for ourselves. In fact, our eternal destiny depends on believing what the Bible reveals about the resurrection of Christ.

This text tells us a good deal about Thomas, and it also tells us several things about Jesus’ resurrection.