THE exclamation of grateful worship: “My Lord and my God!” only went out from human lips to the Christ, after His resurrection. He was “the Son of the living God, and as such, He had been confessed more than once by the demon in the possessed, and at length by Peter, in the name of the disciples; but to fulness of conviction, so as to honor in God’s Son God Himself, even up to Golgotha the best; the most intimate of His disciples had not yet come.
Under the moving power of His word, at the sight of His majestic deeds, or under the impression of His perplexing and yet so strongly attractive personality, undoubtedly more than once a feeling that they had to do with the Divine Being must have passed through their soul; but the disciples had not yet known, confessed, and with clear consciousness expressed in worship, the Deity of their Savior.
That acknowledgement hid under much that came across their lips, but that hiding acknowledgement had not yet become self-conscious confession, and above all from confession had not yet passed into the act of worship.
This is most clearly evident from the last conversations, that Jesus held with His eleven, in the upper room, before going to Gethsemane.
To the eleven God and Jesus ever yet were two. They still ask: Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us! And gently and reproachfully Jesus must answer: “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father? (John 14: 9).
More painfully it could not have been told, what veil still hung between them and their Master.
But Jesus did not say: Worship me, for I myself am God. That worship had to rise spontaneously, in holy ecstacy, from the soul of His disciples.
It could not be learned from without, but from within.
And therefore it had to tarry until after Jesus’ resurrection, when the sight of His glory added the last touch. And then it was not Peter, and not John, as we would have expected, but Thomas, whom the world calls a doubter, who first of all the children of men, confessed His Savior in His Deity, and worshiped Him as God.
In that kneeling down and in that worship by Thomas there lies an unusually strong witness for Christ’s church; not for what Thomas did, but because Jesus did not rebuke nor refuse that worship of Thomas, but accepted it.
Of course, if our Lord were not to be worshiped as God, Thomas should have been rebuked.
He Who without being truly God, allows himself to be worshiped as God, is either demented and makes you tremble, or a crafty deceiver, who pretends to be God, and as God takes his seat in His temple.
The mark of the Antichrist.
Here is no midway.
Jesus, not refusing the worship of Thomas, but accepting it, wills likewise to be worshiped as God by you. If you withhold this, see to what a despicable personage you debase and degrade your Savior.
It is so absurd, with the Scripture in hand, to be willing to pay Jesus high honor, but to dispute His right to the honor of being God.
For that which Thomas did, was nothing but express in words what is the life-breath of all Scripture.
Always the Eternal Word become flesh.
Immanuel, God with us.
God Who has dwelt among us men.
That His disciples came to this clarity of faith only after Jesus’ resurrection, was truly owing to the hardness of their heart, provided that you do not deem herewith, that your heart would be less hard, because from childhood days you have confessed the Deity of your Savior.
Back of you there lie ages of worship. You found that worship ready, incorporated in the life of Christ’s church. Not to worship Jesus as God you have been taught is a denial of His majesty.
But such was not the case with the disciples. They had to make their way through the thick mists of the dispensation of shadows, and this was well-nigh impossible before the resurrection.
Worship demands certain distance, and Jesus’ association, those three long years with His disciples, had been so humanly common, so intimately personal, so free from social convention.
They had daily eaten and drunk with Him, often had they slept where He slept, on one purse had they lived with Him, every minor necessity of life they had spoken to Him about and shared.
And, of course, amid such circumstances the impulse to worship acts slowly.
But since then the breach was come.
They had fled, and Jesus had gone to Golgotha.
Between Him and them now lay the broad stream of the waters of death, and from the shore of death He came back to them. Now at once the distance became evident. Now He had become new to them. Now He suddenly appeared to them in the glow of higher origin.
Now they saw it. Now they handled as with hands the Word of life.
So was He declared to be the Son of God with power by His resurrection from the dead (Rom. 1:4).
Hence that when they see Him again, as of itself they kneel down before Him, and that with Thomas, who was longest reluctant, it came at length to the blessed exclamation: “My Lord and my God!”
Before death at length all flesh succumbs. Patriarchs of old lived many centuries, yet in the end they descended into the grave. The strongest hero, who on the field of battle had defied death again and again, has yet at last become his prey. The drawing of the dance of Death sketches the highest reality of life. Whatever scoffers have scoffed, or have mocked the living God, not one of them, but at length has paid the to him so dreadful toll to death.
Death no man can overcome. Death he alone can overcome Who is Himself God.
Truly both Old and New Testaments make mention of quickenings of the dead. But, note, all those who have thus been quickened have again died. And also, they did not rise of themselves, there was always an Elijah or Jesus or Peter or Paul, who for a little while called them back to this fleeting life.
But here it is not so.
Jesus lives … and dies no more. All power of death over Jesus is forever broken.
And again, at Jesus’ grave there is no Elijah who bends himself over the dead body, and no Savior stands by, who calls: “Jesus, come forth!”
They are angels of God that descend, not to raise up Jesus, but as at His entrance at Bethlehem, so here to celebrate His return to life.
Jesus Himself stands up.
His is not the Passover of quickening, but the Passover of resurrection.
Immanuel rises.
And no one did this before Him, nor anyone after Him.
For we too shall once rise again, yes, if we are children of the Kingdom, in blessedness, but not as He, but through Him, in His power.
Thomas realized this, he saw it, and he believed and worshiped. Yea, truly, the marks of death were still in those hands, the spearwound in the side was still visible. It was no new, but the selfsame Jesus. The same Jesus Who had been tortured unto death on the accursed wood, and now in glory stood before him. The same Jesus Who was dead, and now lived.
And then Thomas succumbed, and of himself bent his knee, and his lips stammered the: “My Lord and my God!”
That sight is not our privilege, all those who come after the apostles, must rest in their witness.
This is and remains the fundamental difference between them and us.
They have seen with their eyes, and with their ears have heard, and with their hands have handled the Word of life, and our eyes see nothing, our ears can not overhear Jesus’ voice, Him Who is exalted, our hands do not handle.
Ours remained only this witness of those who saw and heard.
And on this witness can you yourself believe, kneel down and worship?
Without this witness surely not, but also on this witness without more no one has ever confessed the Deity of his Savior.
If you personally have felt the “My Lord and my God” rise from your own soul, then it came truly, from the apostolic witness, but only through the Comforter.
Through that Holy Spirit, Who inwardly made you feel death, death in your sins, death in your misdeeds, and Who after that drew you out from that death and granted you the blessed apperception of life.
And he who, on this ground was permitted to confess: “I know that I have passed from death unto life,” who does not repeat this after others, but declares this from his own soul, yea, he knows, he realizes what resurrection is. He acknowledges in his own resurrection unto life a fruit of Jesus’ resurrection. He has the seal of the Spirit upon the apostolic witness. To him Immanuel is alive from the Word. And he sees, and hears and handles, not with the sensual organ, but with the organ of the spirit, a blessed reality, which at last brings him to his knees, makes him kindle into worship, and compels him to exclaim: My Goel, my Savior, my Lord and my God!
← Easter VI. Not Possible That He Should Be Holden of Death · Contents · Easter VIII. Blessed Are They That Have Not Seen and Yet Have Believed →