John 3:1-4
The same came to Jesus by night
He opens with what we know and is answered with what he cannot see. His question about entering a second time into the womb is not mockery, it is a man taking the words seriously.
People of the Bible
Nicodemus
Came at night with a compliment, and came back in daylight with a hundred pounds of burial spices.
He is a Pharisee and a ruler of the Jews, which puts him on the council that will eventually vote. He arrives after dark, which John notes three separate times, and opens with courtesy: we know that you are a teacher come from God. The answer cuts across the compliment entirely. Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God, and the conversation that follows is a learned man asking how a grown person gets back inside his mother.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Nicodemus
- 01
- 02
John 3:9-16
How can these things be
He is told that the wind blows where it lists, reminded that he is a master of Israel, and handed the sentence about the serpent in the wilderness and the Son given.
- 03
John 7:50-52
Does our law judge any man before it hear him
He says the careful, procedural thing in a hostile room. The reply is not an argument but a sneer about geography.
- 04
John 19:39-40
About a hundred pound weight
He brings a quantity fit for a king and helps wind the body in linen with the spices. The man who came at night is now working in the afternoon with witnesses.
Why it matters
John gives him three appearances and each one is a step taken in the open air a little further than the last. The night visit produces the most quoted verse in the New Testament. Years later, when the council wants an arrest, he asks whether their own law judges a man before hearing him and is asked in return whether he is from Galilee. Then at the end, with nothing left to gain, he brings myrrh and aloes about a hundred pound weight and helps bury a condemned man in public.
6 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
