The High Price of Pride

Read John 20:24-31  

‘Mixed emotions’ perfectly describes how I initially felt upon discovering the invitation to participate in the writing of this devotional. I enjoyed the honor of being selected, but dreaded the thought of taking on yet another task.

Between serving as the founder of the Christian Writers Collective, LLC, (CWC) and the live-in caregiver for my 88 year old Dad, I battled against feeling overwhelmed and sleep deprived for six consecutive weeks in order to edit, publish, print, and promote the first book of the CWC’s series, Jesus Can…Give You A New Life! How I was going to squeeze writing a devotional between the two time consuming responsibilities I already had  seemed unimaginable. Thankfully, when I put God’s will above my worries, He quickly guided me to select this passage (my spiritual birthday is April 10, 1983) and He reminded me that I write a Wisdom Study for the blog on the CWC’s website every Friday. I could write about John 20:24-31. Jesus made the unimaginable, easy.

It took prayer and perseverance to get me through six dense pages of text in the Matthew Henry Commentary (MHC) to study just eight verses. As always, prayer and perseverance paid off… 

John 20:24 opens this passage with a ‘tradition’ most of us are familiar with: we’re called one name by the general public and a different name by family and close friends. Sadly, Thomas earned a second nickname: Doubting Thomas. In my opinion, this nickname isn’t accurate. Thomas wasn’t guilty of doubting. His sin was choosing not to believe Jesus had risen until after He had passed several credibility tests of his choosing. Thomas’ sin was pride. 

The MHC illuminated another fact: Jesus was so gracious to Thomas, even though Thomas publicly shamed Him by his disbelief and could have spread his disbelief to the disciples and others by proclaiming it out loud. 

The snowball that started this avalanche of unfortunate events was that Thomas was absent when the other eleven disciples saw Jesus. Only Thomas had to endure the pain and sorrow of unbelief while the other eleven enjoyed the joy and comfort of knowing that Jesus, their Savior, was alive!

FOR REFLECTION:

• What was the hardest hurdle for you to overcome in believing Jesus is alive? How have other believers helped you overcome this? 

by Stephanie Reynolds