How the Resurrection Story in John 20 Reveals the Spectrum of Belief

What John, Mary, and Thomas Teach Us About the Way We Come to Believe

I've been pastoring for six years now, which means this was my sixth Easter message. And every year I run into the same honest problem: how do you encapsulate in one Sunday morning what happened 2,000 years ago when Jesus rose from the dead? The power that was released in that moment from heaven through Jesus into human history and into our actual lives right now; there's no tidy way to wrap that up. So I stopped trying to. Instead, I want to tell you what I found this year in John 20.

John 20 shows us a spectrum. It shows a progression of people who see the same evidence and land in completely different places. I think that's worth paying attention to, wherever you find yourself on that spectrum today.

The Spectrum of seeing or belief in John 20.

First, the word "gospel" — and why blood sounds weird

The word gospel gets thrown around in church circles like everyone already knows what it means. In Greek, it's actually a combination of two words: one meaning prosperity or goodness, and one meaning messenger. That's it. Somebody coming to tell you about something good. A messenger of goodness and prosperity.

That framing matters, because the rest of it — the blood, the sacrifices, the lamb imagery — genuinely does sound strange to modern ears. And I actually think that's okay. When I went to Nepal in 2024 on a mission trip, I watched people carry animals through the streets for sacrifice during a festival week. A water buffalo with no head being dragged across the road. That's a real thing that still happens (and it was pretty gross).

The ancient world ran on sacrifice. Every culture in the ancient Near East believed you had to offer the best of what you had to move the gods on your behalf. The Hebrew people were part of that world. And then Jesus came and said: I'm the only sacrifice you'll ever need again. Two thousand years later, blood sounds foreign to us. That's actually a sign that something worked. The reason we're still singing about it is so we don't forget why it mattered.

John 20: Three different kinds of seeing

When I started digging into John 20 this year, I noticed something the English translation flattens completely. The word "saw" appears over and over — but in the Greek, it's three different words. And the distinction is everything.

The first word is blepō. It's basic visual perception. You look at something with your eyes and register that it's there. Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb early in the morning, sees the stone has been rolled away, and blepō-sees it. Her response is immediate: she goes to get Peter and John. She's processing with what her eyes can see.

John runs ahead, gets to the tomb first, and stoops down to look in. He blepō-sees the linen wrappings lying there. But he doesn't go in.

The second word is theōreō. Peter goes straight in. He theōreō-sees the linen wrappings and the face cloth all rolled up, set aside by itself. This word carries a higher level of perception. The commentaries describe it as a kind of spiritual discernment that begins to move beyond just what your physical eyes can clock. Something shifts for Peter in that moment as he starts to sense there's more going on here than a missing body.

The third word is horaō. This is the one that changes everything. John follows Peter into the tomb, and he horaō-sees. This word spans a huge range — from ordinary sight all the way up to the highest reaches of prophetic revelation. It's the word used in scripture when people see the face of God. Jesus told his disciples, "If you have horaō-seen me, you have horaō-seen the Father." It's a seeing that involves the whole person — spiritual perception fully engaged.

John's response to this kind of seeing? He believed.

Mary stayed, and moved up the spectrum of belief.

The disciples went home, but Mary stayed. Her persistence caused her to move along the spectrum of belief.

I love this detail so much. She didn't understand what had happened yet — the text even tells us the disciples "had not yet understood from scripture that he must rise from the dead." She had no theological framework that made sense of an empty tomb. She just stayed, weeping, outside the entrance.

When she looked again, she theōreō-saw two angels sitting inside, one at the head and one at the feet of where Jesus had been. They asked her why she was crying. She answered them. She was having a conversation with angels without fainting or running — which, if you've read the rest of scripture, is not the typical response. Usually people fall on their faces or think they're seeing something that's going to kill them. Mary just talked to them.

Then she turned and saw Jesus standing there. At first she thought he was the gardener. She theōreō-saw him — recognized his presence but hadn't connected all the dots yet.

And then he said her name. Mary.

That's when she horaō-saw him. Full recognition. Full spiritual perception. She knew.

She called him Raboni — Teacher — and he sent her back to the disciples as a witness. A witness testifies to what they've actually seen. And even then, in a first-century legal context, an eyewitness account was significant evidence. Jesus sent a woman — the one who stayed, the one who kept looking — as the first witness to the resurrection.

Thomas, and the eight days in between

I have a lot of compassion for Thomas. He wasn't there when Jesus appeared to the other disciples that evening. They told him what they'd seen. He said he wouldn't believe until he could put his fingers in the nail holes himself.

People give Thomas a hard time for this, but I think he was being honest. And Jesus didn't condemn him for it. Jesus let him sit with it for eight days. Then he showed up again, walked through a barred door, stood in the room, and went straight to Thomas.

"Reach here with your finger. Put your hand in my side. Stop doubting and believe."

Thomas looked — horaō — and said, "My Lord and my God."

Jesus then said something for the rest of us: "Because you have seen me, you believe. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe."

That's everyone who has followed Jesus since the first century. Every person who has ever come to faith without personally touching the scars. Jesus called us blessed. Not second-tier, not spiritually deficient — blessed.

What this progression actually means for us

I've been a Christian since I was 19. I didn't start genuinely letting Jesus be in charge of my life until I was around 34. For fifteen years I called myself a Christian and mostly meant it, but I was running things. Some of you probably know exactly what that feels like.

What I've come to understand is that belief isn't a light switch. The story in John 20 shows us that. Mary goes from not recognizing him at all to full spiritual revelation in the span of one conversation. John goes from seeing with his physical eyes to a prophetic level of understanding in the time it takes to walk into a tomb. Thomas needed eight days and a personal encounter. None of these are the wrong way to get there.

Your spiritual sight can be developed. All through scripture — both testaments — there's this language about having "ears to hear and eyes to see," and it's never talking about your physical senses. We are built to perceive both the natural world and the spiritual one. Some people in my church have had that kind of perception since childhood and were told by their families it meant something was wrong with them, that they were dangerous. When they finally got around a community that understood spiritual gifts, they discovered what they'd been carrying all along was from God.

The enemy loves to keep that perception dulled. And there are choices we make — habits, patterns, things we keep engaging with — that work against it. But the invitation is always open. The sight can be sharpened.

A word about witnessing — without the pressure

After Thomas, Jesus breathed on the disciples and told them to receive the Holy Spirit. He said, "As the Father sent me, I send you." Fifty days after that first Sunday morning, the church exploded at Pentecost, and here we are two thousand years later, still the fruit of what started in that room.

I'm not going to tell you to stand on a street corner with a microphone. That's not what most of us are called to. But if someone in your life is struggling with depression, and you went through a season of depression yourself, you can throw them a life line. If someone is drowning in addiction and you know what it's like to feel that pull, you can give hope. That's a testimony. And a testimony from someone who's actually lived it carries real weight.

Loving the people in front of you, seeing when they're hurting, and letting them know they don't have to stay stuck — that's the gospel. Somebody coming with a message of goodness and prosperity, in whatever form that needs to take on a Tuesday afternoon.

Where are you on the spectrum?

The only thing I asked of my congregation this Resurrection Sunday was movement. Just a little. Whatever your starting point — skeptic, longtime church member, someone who says yes to Jesus but keeps the keys to most of their life — the invitation is the same.

Keep looking. Stay, like Mary stayed. Don't stop gazing at the thing in front of you just because you don't have full understanding yet. John walked into the tomb not knowing what he'd find, and he came out believing.

The spiritual sight that wakes up in us as we keep turning toward Jesus — that's a gift. And it tends to grow the more we actually use it.

If today is a day of movement for you, even a small one, that matters. He's reaching toward you with a smile on his face. He's not keeping score of the mess. He's looking at who you are, who he made you to be, and he's got something for you that you probably haven't even started to imagine yet.

If you want to watch the message, you can find it here.

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