By Editor Bob Terry
He is called “Doubting Thomas” and so he was. This apostle refused to believe the announcement of his brethren about the resurrection of Jesus. Thomas declared that unless he could touch the wounds in Jesus’ hands and side, he would not believe.
When Jesus appeared to the apostles a week later, Thomas was there. Jesus invited him to touch the wounds. Only when Thomas could see for himself did he confess, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:24–29). Even though Thomas had proven to be seeking to understand Jesus (John 14:5) and to follow Him even it if meant death (John 11:16), history has judged Thomas’ failure to believe the resurrection story as the most important event of his life. That episode marks him even today.
In the personal stories of some of us are failures, too. Some of the stories are about failure to believe. Some are about moral failures, some are about relational failures and others are about service failures. Some of us may feel marked for life by our failures, just as Thomas was marked. We may feel ourselves useless to the Lord because of our failure. Thomas’ life seems to affirm this conclusion. After all, there is no mention of Thomas in Scripture after his doubting experience.
The Bible may be silent about Thomas but church history is not. History proves Thomas spread the gospel as far east of Jerusalem as India. Just as history tells of Peter and Paul taking the gospel message west to Greece, Rome and beyond, and how John took the gospel north to Syria and Turkey, it also describes the efforts of Thomas.
The trading routes of the Roman Empire stretched all the way to India in New Testament days. Along the southwestern coast of India, archeologists have found Roman coins dating back to Augustus.
Roman ruins can still be viewed along the trade routes. It was one of these routes, according to church history, that Thomas followed.
In the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Yemen, is the island of Socotra. It was on one of the Roman trading routes. History records a Christian community on this island that traces its origins to the evangelistic work of the apostle Thomas. Unfortunately Muslim conquest annihilated the community, but records of its existence span more than a thousand years.
But it was in India that Thomas is best known for spreading the gospel. According to the earliest sources, Thomas arrived in India in A.D. 52 and founded at least seven churches before he was martyred in A.D. 78. The community of Christians he founded remains to the present and its members are known as Thomas Christians. On the eastern coast of India, in the modern town of Chennai (formerly known as Madras), one can still visit the traditional place of Thomas’ martyrdom.
On a small hill, Thomas was reportedly kneeling in prayer before a stone cross he had carved in a rock when an assassin bribed by a local priest sneaked up behind him and pierced him with a lance.
When Portuguese traders arrived in India in the 1400s, they were startled to find a community of Christians. When the Portuguese later started to build a new church on the site of an existing one, they were equally startled to find the ruins of an even older church building dating back to the first century — the time when Thomas was there.
So highly regarded was Thomas by Christians in India that more than 100 years after his death, the bones of the apostle were sent by the local king back to Italy, which by that time had become the seat of the Christian church.
Thomas the missionary. Thomas the evangelist. Thomas the church planter. Thomas the leader of a Christian community. Thomas the martyr. These titles have little in common with the one we best know — Thomas the doubter. They sound much more like the Thomas wanting to know more about the ways of Jesus; the Thomas willing to follow Jesus till the death.
We do the apostle Thomas a great disservice when we judge him by only one incident in his life. We do a great disservice to ourselves and to others when we form an opinion of ourselves or others based on one isolated incident. All of us are more than one moment in time. And we are wrong when we conclude that a failure eliminates one from service in the Lord’s kingdom. Thomas found forgiveness on his knees before the One he called “my Lord and my God.” So can we.
Because of the forgiveness of God, there are opportunities for service in the kingdom of God, even after failure. The life of the apostle Thomas proves it. Our lives can prove it, too.
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