When Thomas saw the risen Jesus, he said, “My Lord and my God.” Many take this to mean that Jesus is God Himself. But John lets us watch the disciples learn, one step at a time. When we walk those steps with them, we see what Thomas saw.

John 6:69

“And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.”

John 6:69

Peter speaks for all of them. Jesus is the Christ, the one God promised and anointed. He is the Son of the living God. This is where it starts.

John 14:1-10

“Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.”

John 14:1

Before anything else is said, Jesus names two: God, and Himself. He speaks of God as someone other than Himself. Everything in this chapter is said inside those words.

Thomas is in the room. He asks, “Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?” (John 14:5). Then Philip asks to see the Father, and Jesus answers him:

“Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.”

John 14:9-10

Jesus gives the reason Himself. The Father dwells in Him. The words are not His own; the works are the Father’s. To see Jesus is to see the Father, not because they are the same one, but because the Father lives and works in the Son. Jesus says it another way too: “he that seeth me seeth him that sent me” (John 12:45). The one who sends is not the one who is sent.

Philip did not understand. Thomas heard it all, and he did not understand yet either. John tells us why: “These things understood not his disciples at the first: but when Jesus was glorified, then remembered they” (John 12:16). It was not that they were slow. Understanding had to wait until Jesus was raised and glorified.

John 20:17

“Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.”

John 20:17

Now Jesus is risen. And the first time He speaks of God after rising, He calls the Father “my God.” The risen Christ has a God. This is in the same chapter, only eleven verses before Thomas speaks.

John 20:28

“And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.”

John 20:28

Now Thomas understands what he heard in John 14. He sees the wounds. He sees the Son, and in the Son he sees the Father.

“My Lord” is Jesus, the Christ, his King. “My God” is the Father, who dwells in Christ. Eleven verses earlier Jesus called the Father “my God, and your God.” When Thomas says “my God,” he means the same God. Nothing in the text tells us that the word has changed its meaning between Jesus’ mouth and Thomas’s.

Later Jesus prays for us in the same words: “as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us” (John 17:21). If being “in” the Father made Jesus God Himself, then this prayer would make us God too. It does not. It means one Spirit, one will, God living in His people. And Jesus says plainly what eternal life is: “that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3). One God, the Father. One Christ, whom He sent.

What this means

Thomas was not saying that Jesus is the only true God. He was saying that in Jesus he met both his Lord and his God. Jesus is the temple, the place where God and man meet.

The apostles really did see God in Jesus. That was not a dream. They saw Him because God was in Christ, living in Him and showing Himself through Him.

I am like Thomas. I can sit in the room and hear the words and not understand. I can want proof with my own hands. And Jesus still comes and shows me His wounds. Then I can say it too: my Lord, and my God.

Connected chains

• Deity Is Qualitative
• Before Abraham Was, I Am
• Christ Carries the Father’s Name