John 3:2, commentary and pictures

Nicodemus, a Pharisee and ruler of the Jews and a teacher of Israel, came to Jesus by night for a secret private interview after seeing His teaching, healing, and cleansing of the temple. He came by night because he feared criticism, opposition, and loss of place and influence with the priests, scribes, and Sanhedrin if he openly associated with Jesus. He greeted Jesus as Rabbi and acknowledged Him as a teacher come from God, reasoning that no one could do such miracles unless God was with Him. That confession was true as far as it went, yet calling Him only a teacher stopped short of acknowledging Him as the Messiah and left Nicodemus still needing a changed heart and new birth. Jesus therefore did not debate evidence but directed him from proofs of divine mission to his own need to be born again in order to see the kingdom of God.

Visit by Night

The night visitor was Nicodemus, a Pharisee and ruler of the Jews, a member of the Sanhedrin and an appointed teacher of Israel. He was highly educated, honored, rich and influential, learned in the law, looked up to as one educated in Jewish customs with a mind stored with wisdom and talents of no ordinary character, and of morally respectable character. He sought a secret, private interview with Jesus by night. He came after seeing His healing and hearing His teaching, and after witnessing His actions in the temple, including the cleansing of the temple.

He would not come by day because he feared the jealousy, criticism, remark, sarcasm, opposition and disapproval of the scribes, priests, Pharisees and Sanhedrin. As a ruler he found it humiliating to acknowledge sympathy with and be associated with the despised Nazarene, and he feared others would know his heart was troubled. He also feared losing his place on the Sanhedrin and the influence he could use to help or protect Jesus. He lacked the courage to approach openly amid that criticism, so he came secretly at night to avoid humiliation and disapproval.

He came to learn for himself who Jesus was and whether His mission and claims were true. He wanted to discuss evidence for His divine mission, to understand His mission, and to find evidence whether He was the promised Messiah, the promised One. Having searched the prophecies about the Messiah, he wanted to ascertain whether Jesus is indeed the light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of Israel.

He addressed Jesus with a respectful, conciliatory greeting, acknowledging Him as a teacher sent from God. That praise of Jesus' insight, speaking gifts and dignity masked inquiry, concealing beneath an appearance of composure and dignity his unease, agitation, curiosity and pride. He tried to appear as a learned ruler granting an audience to a young stranger rather than openly revealing his questions, beginning by praising Jesus rather than stating what he sought.

Confession of Divine Mission

He addressed Jesus as Rabbi to honor Him, acknowledging Him as a teacher come from God, and what he said was true as far as it went. For Nicodemus to make that acknowledgment was a significant step. He offered it as a respectful, conciliating greeting while seeking a private interview.

He reasoned that no one could do the miracles Jesus did unless God was with Him. He had been drawn by seeing Jesus' healing and hearing His teaching, and Jesus' teaching had impressed him with a desire to learn more of its truths. He had witnessed Jesus heal the sick, relieve the afflicted, and teach with wisdom and authority.

He had searched the prophecies about the Messiah and therefore could not disbelieve that Jesus was sent by God. He had studied those prophecies and was increasingly convinced that Jesus was God's Sent One.

Those miraculous works confirmed the doctrines Jesus taught and proved He was commissioned by God. His miracles testified that God was with Him, and His works showed that God was with Him. His authority did not come from attending the rabbis' schools, but His words and actions revealed His knowledge of His mission and character and His intimacy and oneness with the Father. His words contained no error or anything nonessential, His authority came from God the source of unerring wisdom, and He came in person to reveal the knowledge of God as the perfect ideal and source of divine light and goodness. His teaching and miracles identified Him as sent from God, as when His healing of the man with dropsy on the Sabbath gave evidence of life-giving power and showed that relieving suffering is lawful on the Sabbath.

Yet calling Him only a teacher from God stopped short of acknowledging Him as the Messiah and therefore expressed unbelief. He spoke in a conciliatory way and did not yet grasp Jesus' teaching about the new birth. His recognition of Jesus' divine commission did not mean he yet understood the spiritual kingdom or his own need for spiritual change.

His conviction also led him to urge caution in opposing Jesus, since rejecting a messenger from God could bring danger and calamity.

Answer of New Birth

Nicodemus came wanting to discuss evidence for a divine mission, but instead of answering with controversy or argument or offering greater evidence, Jesus turned him from evidence to his own need for a changed heart, new purposes, new springs of action and a new beginning. What was said about a teacher come from God was true as far as it went, yet recognizing that evidence was not enough to discern God's kingdom, for the want was in the heart itself. Until everything is changed and all things are made new the strongest evidences are useless, and without reconversion and the new birth no one can see the kingdom of heaven. He must be born again or he cannot discern or see that kingdom.

In that night interview was unfolded the plan of salvation and Christ's mission, pointing out definitely the way to heaven, what conversion is, and what must be done to be saved. Though a learned teacher holding an honorable position in Israel, Nicodemus had no true conception of what such a teacher should be and did not know these things. Jesus laid before him the first principles of conversion and of the divine life, even the alphabet of true Christian experience, explaining the work needed in the heart to inherit heaven's kingdom. The talk strikes directly at surface religion and the idea of becoming a child of God without any particular change. When the truth of God finds a place in the heart it works a decided change with sanctifying power upon life and character, bringing forth fruits of righteousness that testify of having learned of Christ. Character cannot be repaired by keeping some good traits and discarding others; the whole life must be made new through Christ.

In that same talk Christ told him that He as the hope of Israel would be lifted up on the cross. After the resurrection His disciples learned the lesson of the living connection of the soul with God, the living faith essential for salvation, and laying hold upon the merits of the blood of the crucified and risen Saviour as Christ our righteousness, speaking with great boldness in words of life as one who had been with Jesus and learned of Him. The visit lays out the terms of salvation in distinct lines and is of the greatest importance to every soul that lives, so that if a person had no other text in the Bible this interview alone would be a guide to the soul. Its truths remain vital for all people, and its grand, beautiful truth is to be a bright and shining light especially to every man who accepts responsibilities as a counselor and to everyone dealing with human minds. Having the word of God leaves no excuse for saying there is no experience or understanding of these things, for wisdom comes only by becoming of much less consequence in one's own estimation and by diligently searching the Word to obtain knowledge.

Nicodemus's respectable moral character did not exempt him from humbling himself before God and entering into life through the same dependence on grace required of the greatest sinner. Though flattering himself that his life was upright and his moral character correct and thinking he did not need to humble himself like an ordinary sinner, he had to renounce self-righteousness and rely wholly on Christ's righteousness and strength, acknowledging that every blessing comes from divine grace. Christ's light reveals the impurity, selfish motives, and enmity against God that defile every act, showing that human righteousness cannot cleanse sin and that only Christ's blood can cleanse and renew the heart.

Growth into Open Faith

The secret night meeting planted words that stayed with Nicodemus and became the foundation of his faith, for he kept the truth in his heart for a time instead of openly identifying with Christ. He listened with penetrating, enlightening effect, though fear that others would know his heart was troubled kept him from open acknowledgment at first. When he saw Jesus lifted up on the cross he remembered what had been spoken to him in that interview, including the lesson of the serpent and of the Son of man being lifted up. The events surrounding the crucifixion made those words clear, settled his faith, and replaced doubt with faith, so that he recognized Jesus as the world's Redeemer.

What began in caution and questioning later made him firm and bold in danger. Having been taught concerning the new birth, he openly defended Jesus in the council, insisting that the law does not judge a man before hearing him, even when met with astonishment, sarcasm and opposition. He opposed the grounds for condemnation and protested the arrest with Joseph, but the leaders secured their aim by holding a secret council without them. His later defense of hearing Jesus before judgment showed the change by which the night conference had made him a true believer.

He then openly helped prepare and bury the body, showing the words spoken to him had not been lost. That private beginning led him to publicly honor Jesus, to support the young church and Christ's followers with his wealth when they were discouraged and in danger, and to encourage their faith. He remained faithful despite poverty, persecution and disgrace. He realized he had lost much by not openly joining himself to Jesus during His life.

He afterward searched the Scriptures not to debate a theory but to receive life for his soul, and as he submitted to the Holy Spirit's leading he began to see heaven's kingdom. Jesus had given him precious instruction in personal contact in that private night conference with the honored rabbi, discerning in him a receptive mind and heart.

Christ the Divine Teacher

Nicodemus rightly called Jesus the Teacher sent from God, for He is heaven's greatest gift to humanity, who had stood in the councils of the Most High and dwelt in the innermost sanctuary of the Eternal and came in person to reveal the knowledge of God. His works showed that God was with Him, and He came as the perfect ideal, the source of the divine light and goodness reflected in humanity.

Such a Teacher was urgently needed at His first advent, when darkness had covered the earth and gross darkness the people and spiritual darkness had settled almost universally and completely over the religious world. The scribes and Pharisees professed to explain the Scriptures but explained them according to their own ideas and traditions, with customs and maxims becoming more and more exacting, so that in its spiritual sense the sacred Word became to the people as a sealed book closed to comprehension. The urgent necessity of such a Teacher was proclaimed in the heavenly courts, a Teacher in whom divinity and humanity would be united. It was essential that Christ should appear in human form and stand at the head of the human race, His divinity and humanity working unitedly to uplift fallen human beings, for thus only could God be revealed to the world, since all the books written cannot serve the purpose of a holy life.

He brings the pure truth of heaven into a world darkened by superstition and human traditions, opening minds to understand essential truths about salvation and the depth of God's law. That office He fulfilled by explaining God's law and correcting the false interpretations that had obscured it, not abolishing the law but living it in its purity and revealing through His life the character of God that the law expresses.

His words contained no error or anything nonessential, and His authority came from God, the source of unerring wisdom, so that human teachers and authors cannot offer the same reliable foundation for salvation. He is the perfect ideal, the source of the divine light and goodness reflected in humanity.

True education is bringing the student into close relation with Him, and all true educational work finds its center in Him. That close relation puts the converted student in right relation to God, with the chain binding him to the service of sin broken, under the jurisdiction of God, under solemn obligation to renounce evil and through earnest prayer to cleave to Christ, by which heaven by the infinite sacrifice of Christ brings men and women into favor again with God.

His educational work today is the same as the work He established eighteen hundred years ago, when He declares Himself the first and the last and the Living One, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. With such a Teacher and such opportunity for divine education, to seek education apart from Him is worse than folly — to seek to be wise apart from Wisdom, to be true while rejecting Truth, to seek illumination apart from Light and existence without the Life, to turn from the Fountain of living waters and hew out broken cisterns that can hold no water.

No one is fitted to educate the youth who presents truth in an uncertain light, and no one is qualified for that work unless he is daily learning to speak the words of this Teacher. The work of schools is to become more and more in character like the work of Christ, sowing clean and pure gospel seed that will produce the choicest fruit. He instructed people with authority, and His method of labor is an example to follow.

He deliberately worked to reach the rich as well as the poor and people of all classes, seeking the acquaintance of the wealthy and cultured Pharisee. He accepted the invitations of such men, attended their feasts, and made Himself familiar with their interests and occupations, in order to gain access to their hearts and reveal to them the imperishable riches. His work thus included Nicodemus, a cultivated Pharisee and Jewish nobleman, as well as people from other social classes.

Call to Humble Belief

John 3:1-16 teaches about the quality of faith, for recognizing evidence of divine mission is not enough to discern God's kingdom. Nicodemus was a man in high position of trust, looked up to as one educated in Jewish customs, with mind stored with wisdom and talents of no ordinary character, who sought an interview with Jesus at night and confessed He is a teacher come from God because no man can do these miracles except God be with Him. What he said was true as far as it went, yet true but incomplete, for he would not come by day because it would make him the subject of remark, as too humiliating for a ruler of the Jews to acknowledge sympathy with the despised Nazarene. He wanted to ascertain for himself the mission and claims of Jesus, whether He is indeed the light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of Israel. Jesus answered not with controversy or arguments or greater evidence, but that Nicodemus must have a new heart, new purposes and new springs of action and a new beginning and be born again or he cannot discern the kingdom of heaven, for the want is in his own heart and until everything is changed and all things made new the strongest evidences would be useless.

Christ's light reveals the impurity, selfish motives, and enmity against God that defile every act, though the sinner flatters himself that his life is upright and his moral character correct and thinks he does not need to humble himself before God like an ordinary sinner. Human righteousness cannot cleanse sin, and only Christ's blood can cleanse and renew the heart. The visit lays out the terms of salvation in distinct lines and is of the greatest importance to every soul that lives, so that if a person had no other text in the Bible this interview alone would be a guide to the soul. Its grand, beautiful truth is to be a bright and shining light especially to every man who accepts responsibilities as a counselor and to everyone dealing with human minds. Having the word of God leaves no excuse to say there is no experience or understanding of these things, for wisdom comes only by becoming of much less consequence in one's own estimation and by diligently searching the Word to obtain knowledge.

The truth that Christ was a Teacher sent from God is proved by the lives of those who labor for God. The life of Christ is the pattern for every worker, whether a minister or engaged in another branch of the Lord's work. Those who handle sacred truths and imitate the self-denial of Jesus, exemplifying His spirit of kindness, forbearance, and love, prove by their lives that Christ was sent from God. Though only human beings, they reflect light and power from Him, and the lives of those bearing responsibilities are a continual sermon of consecration, producing as well as consuming. So also a person's godly conduct can lead others to recognize that God is with him, for serious, heavenly conversation marked by love of truth and holiness convicts people and can lead them to the truth, so that they are compelled to acknowledge God's presence.

The testimony given to Nicodemus is needed for men who calculate how religious exercises should be conducted and are precise and methodical in diffusing light and grace, and who meddle with the experiences of those who have received the Holy Spirit in large abundance. Such controlling conduct proves they themselves have little of the Holy Spirit. True disciples come to Jesus as pupils in a school to a teacher they love and know loves them, eager and anxious to learn, looking to Him with love in words, deportment, and actions and wondering at His gracious words. Though not perfect in character but holding prejudice, selfishness, and wrong traits, called from various occupations with much to unlearn and much that is new to learn, they desire to be taught by Him, needing His lessons repeated again and again and illustrated by familiar symbols.

John the Baptist's testimony about Christ is almost a counterpart to Jesus' words in that secret interview with Nicodemus. It echoes that testimony in declaring that Jesus comes from heaven, is sent by God, and speaks God's words. Jesus' teaching and miracles identified Him as sent from God, and His miracles testified that God was with Him. His healing of the man with dropsy on the Sabbath gave evidence of His life-giving power and showed that relieving human suffering was lawful on the Sabbath, and He instructed people with the authority of a teacher sent from God. Yet the priests and teachers who should have recognized Him as their Saviour failed to discern Him because they read Scripture through human traditions instead of allowing it to interpret itself.