This revelation was of supreme importance, and is the climax of the entire Gospel. It is peculiar to John's narrative, and throws light upon the very construction of the Gospel. It reveals the characteristics of honest doubt, and indicates the abundance of the evidence which was offered to specific classes and conditions of mind to help them believe that the Lord had risen.
The confession drawn from the heart of this apostle is not only valuable in itself, but it reflects a new luster on the previous manifestation. Moreover, it is cumulative in its argumentative force. The most skeptical is the most enthusiastic of the twelve.
But Thomas, one of the twelve (a term of designation for the first group of the apostles, and one which was not renounced, although two of them were absent. The number "twelve" had a symbolic and historic value from its relation to the twelve tribes, and we find (Acts 1:1-26.
) that the eleven were anxious to fill up the vacant place left by Judas), called Didymus (Greek for "twin," repeated here from John 11:16, not simply to imply that Thomas was best known by his Greek name, but that there was a blending in him of intense love and a fear which had torment, a great ambition and yet exposure to moods of despondency, a desire to treat the whole manifestation of Christ as complete, to believe that the words of the Lord were all sublimely true,—coupled with a ghastly doubt that all was a delusion, a faculty of constructive faith and speculation, of transcendental intuition side by side with an intense desire for sensible manifestation, a greater belief in the Master than in the disciples, but no unwillingness to accept that which was sufficiently established).
Thomas was not with them when Jesus came. We can never know why he was absent. He was given to moody fear, and shrank into solitude; and doubtless in many ways and words, as well as those recorded, had implied the wreck of his hopes.
Separated from the fellowship of kindred spirits, he augmented his gloom; he was fast tending to unbelief. The state of his mind throughout the Passover week may have been one reason why the apostles delayed their return to Galilee.
They may have come frequently to him with their sublime announcement, not once nor twice only.