As we look at the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), there are parts of the Gospels that need some significant studying as to what has happened within the Gospel itself. One of the examples here is in the Gospel of John. I would like for you to consider reading the Gospel of John, chapter three, verses one through twenty-one. This is the story of Nicodemus. I think this story of Nicodemus has a really valuable insight that we can see in the text. This is a wonderful story, but we may need to understand more about it.
Now, if you are not familiar with the story, then perhaps you could read the story, which I have placed here. However, it is difficult to understand all the intricacies of what Jesus was doing during his ministry. And, although the Gospels (all of them) are a bit terse, you could read them as well. In order to help you read and understand these things, I have some papers that you might like. Allow me to give you some of them:
The Rules of Jesus – a real understanding of what
the issues of Jesus are, [1]
The Glory of God
– a real understanding of how
God’s glory is with you. [2]
For those of us who believe, there are always some questions in our hearts, and you might be able to find some of these in this section entitled Questions for Believers. Some of these articles are:
Does God Really love me, and why
– a real introduction of God’s love for each of us, [3]
Why do prayers go unanswered, sometimes
– how do we pray, and what does prayer mean to us, [4]
Is the Bible true, and how can we tell
– a simple narrative of how accurate the Bible is,
even after 2000 years. [5]
With all this said, let us read the story of Nicodemus and understand what this paper is trying to tell us.
1 Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2 He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.” 3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” (or, from above)
4 “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You (this ‘you’ can be plural) must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” (The Greek for Spirit is the same as that for wind.)
9 “How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.
10 “You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? 11 Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. 12 I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? 13 No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. 14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, (The Greek for lifted up also means exalted.) 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God. (Gospel of John 3:1-21) [6]
My goal in this paper is not to combine the gospels, but rather to understand each gospel as it is written, and to understand the aspects of the Gospel of John in light of the other written gospels. To consider how each gospel is written in comparison and contrast to the other gospels. As we read the gospels, we need to consider the consequences and the options for each of the characters, as they discuss their own “real world” with each other, and in doing so, within the text, we find questions that they didn’t anticipate.
Let us start by reading chapter three, verse one in our story, John talks about the Pharisee Nicodemus. John discusses who Nicodemus is in the first verse, and John talks about Nicodemus and the influence that he has.
“1Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2 He came to Jesus at night and said, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.’ ” (Gospel of John 3:1-2)
As we read verse two, John says that Nicodemus came to see Jesus, but he doesn’t say why Nicodemus came to see Him, or what his reasons were to see Him. If you consider who Nicodemus is, he is an important man, and Jesus is happy to see him.
When we are reading these verses, why does it matter that Nicodemus wanted to see Jesus? This is an excellent question. In John’s description in verse two of the chapter, we read: “He came to Jesus at night and said…” What reason could Nicodemus have to want to talk to Jesus? Was Jesus doing something that Nicodemus questioned? What is it that Jesus was doing that caused Nicodemus to want to have a real conversation with Him, so that Nicodemus could understand who He was and why Jesus was doing all of these things? But what was He, Jesus, doing?
If we read what Nicodemus says to Jesus, he says: “… Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.” In their conversation, this is Nicodemus talking to Jesus with their mutual understanding of the world around them, and why they are so different, but agreeing that they really do care about who each other are – Rabbi to Rabbi. But why would the Sanhedrin’s Teacher of Teachers, a master Rabbi, with a huge following, want to meet a small “rogue rabbi”, with a handful of followers, with no real following? Did Nicodemus see in Jesus a man who wanted to help the Jewish people? Maybe, but probably not. Remember that Nicodemus was the person who wanted to see Jesus. So, why?
If we look at this carefully, we see what Nicodemus is saying to Jesus. He starts off the discussion with the word “Rabbi”. Nicodemus is the Teacher of Teachers, a Pharisee of the highest order, who was literally in the Sanhedrin. Calling a man a “Rabbi” is most presumptuous. Why would he do this? There is no understanding of Christ’s past education or legitimacy at being a Rabbi. There’s no Rabbi that He followed, so how could he possibly be calling Jesus a Rabbi if He hasn’t followed anybody?
Now, you might put this down as John (the author) assuming that Nicodemus is kind and considerate of Jesus’ plight, but why? Nicodemus is not a Christian; he is a Jew, and he is a real (very big/large) Jew in the Sanhedrin. Why would Nicodemus again be polite to a nobody, who has no following, and who doesn’t understand what He is doing? He wouldn’t! Nicodemus would look at Jesus as an interesting “rogue rabbi” who doesn’t care about the Sanhedrin at all, or the customs that the Sanhedrin is teaching. And, it would be a farce to think that he would consider this “rogue rabbi” legitimate. But he did! He uses the word “Rabbi” first, rather than any other greeting. And, this is an understanding (this word “Rabbi”) that makes this work very interesting. Here, we have a real understanding that these two people know who the other is and what they are doing.
In the Greek Interlinear Bible [7], “Rabbi” (ῥαββί, transliterated as “rhabbi” or “rabbi”) [8] means “my master,” or “my great one.” It’s a title of respect used by Jews to address their teachers, or to honor them when not directly addressing them. The word “Rabbi” is of Hebrew origin, with “rab,” meaning “great” or “master,” and “bi,” meaning “my”. So, Nicodemus is using a very formal title to address Jesus and to say the following statement (read above). Or, Nicodemus is just calling Him what others are calling Him, and there is no real understanding of what Jesus has done. We need to understand this.
If you look at the next part of the sentence, Nicodemus is saying that “we” know this. What do ‘we’ know? In his text, Nicodemus is saying: “… we know that you are a teacher who has come from God.” Who is ‘we’? Is this Nicodemus, using the Royal ‘we’, as him only, or is Nicodemus saying something else? I believe that the word he uses, ‘we’, stands for what Nicodemus was thinking and then saying. Nicodemus was saying that he, and his followers, now understand that Jesus is something different than a “rogue rabbi”. In their eyes, Jesus is doing something particularly interesting, and it is not offensive to the Jewish people, because He is not preaching negativity. With this in mind, Nicodemus sees that Jesus is not focusing on what people should act on, but rather what they shouldn’t make their own, and in addition, he is trying to help people and doing things that nobody else has done before.
One of the things we can look at is the miracles that Jesus has performed. What miracles was Jesus producing at this time? In the Gospel of John, there was one miracle that was provided so far. This is the changing of water into wine. However, this was a miracle that was provided in a small town in Cana in Galilee. Here, only the servants understood what happened at the wedding when the water to wine. Yes, I am sure this was told to the people at the wedding, but this is something that would not get to Nicodemus at this time. So, if we look only at the Gospel of John, how could Nicodemus know that Jesus was doing miracles?
Jesus is providing miracles, and for all to see, but although they are big, they are also small. The wedding miracle, provided in the second chapter of the Gospel of John, we can see that the miracle changed water to wine, but this was a “private” miracle that many people didn’t understand, and, this was done “privately”, so no one at the wedding knew it was done. I don’t think that Nicodemus would have seen this as a miracle, because no one saw the change being done. And, because no one saw it done, it may have been dismissed as ‘hearsay,’ or ‘rumor.’ I don’t think that Nicodemus saw any miracles that Jesus was providing within the text of the Gospel of John.
So, now that we have several questions about the Gospel of John, let us list our questions that we have now:
- Why is Nicodemus at the beginning of the third chapter of the Gospel of John?
- The story of Nicodemus is in the first part (at the beginning of chapter three) of the Gospel of John. We have John “calling” a few of the disciples in the text, then the wedding miracle, Jesus clears the Temple Courts, and then we see the story of Nicodemus.
why is it starting so early, before all the miracles? - What reason could Nicodemus have to want to talk to Jesus?
- What is it that Jesus was doing that caused Nicodemus to want to have a real conversation with Him, so that Nicodemus could understand who He was and why Jesus was doing all of these things? But you must ask, “What things was Jesus doing?”
- What miracles was Jesus producing at this time?
- We see the wedding miracle of changing water to wine, but this was a “private” miracle that many people really didn’t understand. But we don’t see any other miracles in the Gospel of John at this time.
know that Jesus was doing miracles that we don’t see?
There are two questions that we need to answer at this point: what reason could Nicodemus have to want to talk to Jesus, and how could Nicodemus know that Jesus was doing miracles that we don’t see in the text of the Gospel of John?
This is an excellent question. If Jesus was doing miracles that are not in the text (the Gospel of John), then this could be the reason for Nicodemus wanting to talk to Jesus. We know that Nicodemus is trying to understand what Jesus is doing, and for that reason, we see the Nicodemus story. But what is Jesus doing at this time?
If we look at the start of the other gospels, we see Jesus healing an Impure Spirit, then Jesus heals Mary (Mary is Simon-Peter’s mother-in-law), then Jesus healed several people, including “many people” who had demons, then Jesus heals a man with Leprosy, and there are others as well. There are several that we can choose from. However, these miracles did not have the Pharisees as an audience. One of them could have been the paralyzed man (Luke 5:17-26). We chose this one because there were Pharisees who came to the healing, and Jesus talked to them, as well.
Let us review this, Gospel of Luke 5:17-26:
17 One day Jesus was teaching, and Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there. They had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal the sick. 18 Some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. 19 When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus.
20 When Jesus saw their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.”
21 The Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, “Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone?”
22 Jesus knew what they were thinking and asked, “Why are you thinking these things in your hearts? 23 Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? 24 But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the paralyzed man, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” 25 Immediately he stood up in front of them, took what he had been lying on and went home praising God. 26 Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, “We have seen remarkable things today.”
If this were in the Gospel of John, and it is not, then we may have seen it before the story of Nicodemus. If this is the case, then we need to ask, ‘Why is Nicodemus in the third chapter of John?’ And why is Nicodemus saying: “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.” Nicodemus knows that something has happened, and he knows that others are talking about it. So, why don’t we have it in our Gospel of John?
Now we know that John does not account for time correctly in the life of Christ. Reviewing what Jesus did in the Temple, we see: Matthew 21:12, Mark 11:11, Luke 19:45. The “whip” is one of the items in all four of the gospels. However, when Jesus does enter the temple courts and uses the “whip”, this incident is in the last part of His life, not in the second chapter of the Gospel of John. Oddly, John puts the story of the Temple in the first part of the story of Jesus. We can see from Luke (Luke 19:45) and Matthew (Matthew 21:12) that the Temple story is at the end of the life of Jesus, and that makes sense to us, as we read them. These two gentlemen, Luke and Matthew, are notable in their understanding of keeping the story of the gospels “accurate” (yes, there are some differences between the two gospels, but the timing of the story is about right). Here, John has the Temple story in the first part of Jesus’ life, and that causes us a problem because it doesn’t fit with the other gospels. So, we know that John does not account for time correctly in the life of Jesus.
Looking back at our questions, how could Nicodemus know that Jesus was doing miracles that we don’t see within the text? We can see that Nicodemus uses the words saying that “… we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.” We can assume that he has discussed this with a few people; however, as an author, I do not know this, because it is not written. We know that in Luke (see above) that Jesus forgives and heals a paralyzed man, and this story is at the beginning of the gospel story.
Why do we care that the paralyzed man is in the first part of the story of Christ? As we look at all of the gospels, we see that we are looking for a story that fits into the “idea” of what the story of Christ should be. John does take “liberties” with the text, so maybe this is a bit far-fetched, but John is trying to ‘symbolize’ a specific idea that we need for his gospel. And then, once he is done with the symbolization, he returns to the story of Christ again. If this is true, that we need a ‘healing’ story, where there are Pharisees in the audience, and we also need something amazing to happen, then the paralyzed man could be our story. As we consider that Nicodemus is in the third chapter, we understand the story of Nicodemus is also early in Christ’s work. So, because the story of Nicodemus and the story of the paralyzed man are both early within the story of Christ, and the paralyzed man also has the Pharisees within it, we need to look at this story more carefully.
In Luke, we see that “One day Jesus was teaching, and Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there.” (Luke 5:17) If (big IF) we assume that the “teachers of the law” were perhaps Nicodemus, as one of the people sitting there. Here, in this text, we have “Pharisees and teachers of the law” in this place when Jesus was teaching. If this were true, then we may have the miracles that Nicodemus saw.
In the biblical story of Nicodemus, he was a member of the Sanhedrin, in the ruling Jewish council, and was also described as a “ruler of the Jews”. He is also a Pharisee. In Hebrew, “Pharisee” is derived from the word pārūš (פָּרוּשׁ), which means “separated” or “set apart”. The name likely refers to their emphasis on strict adherence to Jewish law and their separation from what they considered impure or unholy. As a Pharisee, he believed in what the Jewish faith was telling the people of Israel, or I might say, telling the people who believe in God and who had a somewhat spiritual formation of what they are.
Nicodemus was a “teacher of Israel”. This title, the “teacher of Israel”, suggests he was an influential teacher within the Jewish community, and potentially even within the Sanhedrin itself. Being a “teacher of Israel”, Nicodemus could have been the “teachers of the law” in Luke. If we look at the Jewish Law, the Jewish Law has 613 separate discussions of what a Jew must do within the context of the Law. Each item within the Law is separate from the others; however, they conflict. For example, if a man dies and his wife is with him, and it is only her that sees it, there is no one else to see it, “who saw the depth” (you must always have two other men at the event to witness an event), then to wife is a “widow” (almanah), but there are issues.
According to Jewish Law (at Jesus’ time), women were generally not considered valid witnesses in court proceedings. This perspective is reflected in the Mishnah (Shevuot 4:1, the “oath of testimony”), which states that “The oath of testimony is conducted with men and not women”. Here, this concept is further supported by the Talmud’s (Moses’ testimony and description in the first five books of the Old Testament) interpretation of Deuteronomy 19:17, which mentions “Two men shall stand”, implying that male witnesses are required. Therefore, if a man died and only his wife sees it, or witnessed it, her testimony, while accepted in some cases, might not have been sufficient in a formal court setting according to strict Jewish legal interpretations of the time. However, a woman’s testimony could be accepted in some cases to establish her husband’s death for remarrying, particularly if there was only one witness available, and the goal was to avoid leaving her in an indeterminate marital state.
Here, Nicodemus was one of the people who really understood all of these issues. If we look at this, what this title is, the “teacher of Israel”, it is a legal precedent for the Jewish Law, and what people needed to do with the Law. So, the “teacher of Israel” is the “teachers of the law” in Luke (at least I think so). If this is true (big IF), then we have Nicodemus, a trusted Pharisee and a “teacher of Israel” at one of the healings and miracles of Jesus. This is what we see when we read what Nicodemus is saying: “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
Reading Luke 5:25, it says: “Immediately he stood up in front of them, took what he had been lying on and went home praising God.” And if Nicodemus saw this miracle, then it would fit what Nicodemus had seen and heard of what Jesus is doing. This would fit into what Nicodemus is saying to Jesus. If this were true (big Truth), that all of our questions would be answered, except one, why is Nicodemus in the third chapter of the Gospel of John? This is a very key question. Why doesn’t John tell us this? And, why is the Temple story at the start of John’s gospel, and not at the end?
John’s Gospel highlights Jesus’ godlike characteristics and authority over all of us. Placing the temple “cleansing” (the “whip”) early in the story accentuates Jesus’ power and his claim to be the “true temple”, fulfilling the prophecy that He would be raised in three days. This is what John wants us to see. John wants us to see Jesus as the Messiah, and this, his gospel, is his method. If we placed the Temple story at the beginning, then we know that Christ will ‘fix’ what the Temple wasn’t. Although this differs from our understanding of what Christ’s life was like, it does place the meaning of the new “true temple” at the beginning of the text.
If we think as John does, we see that Jesus is telling Nicodemus about the spiritual rebirth that must take place within a person. This is key for the nature of the Kingdom of God. In the story of Nicodemus, we see,
3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
4 “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” (Gospel of John 3:3-8)
This is what John wants us to hear. Here, Jesus is telling Nicodemus about the formation of the Spirit and how it differs from our “physical” being. This difference is what we call our Spirit, and it is what God uses to talk and work with us. Jesus wants us to have this Spirit in us, as we read through the gospel.
Again, we see Nicodemus starting to become a Christian in the Gospel of John 7:45-52 and the Gospel of John 19:38-40. In chapter 7, we see that Nicodemus was providing a stalling campaign, and it’s interesting to see this as he is helping the disciples. In chapter 7, it says:
45 Finally the temple guards went back to the chief priests and the Pharisees, who asked them, “Why didn’t you bring him in?” 46 “No one ever spoke the way this man does,” the guards replied. 47 “You mean he has deceived you also?” the Pharisees retorted. 48 “Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed in him? 49 No! But this mob that knows nothing of the law—there is a curse on them.” 50 Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and who was one of their own number, asked, 51 “Does our law condemn a man without first hearing him to find out what he has been doing?” 52 They replied, “Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee.” (Gospel of John 7:45-52)
In the Gospel of John 19:38-40, we see that Nicodemus brought myrrh and aloes with him. Let us read it:
38 Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away. 39 He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. 40 Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs. (Gospel of John 19:38-40)
Here, Nicodemus is willing to prepare Jesus for burial. This is very hard for him. Nicodemus is the Sanhedrin’s Teacher of Teachers, a master Rabbi, and here, in this, he is preparing Jesus for burial, which means that he can’t take part in Passover. This is a huge part of being a disciple of Jesus. But he did this, and he was happy to do it.
This shows that Nicodemus did become a Christian and understood what Jesus was helping him with. With Nicodemus becoming a Christian, we need to understand that if the story of Nicodemus were not in the beginning of the gospel, then we could not understand what Jesus had to say about the spirit and what the spirit means to us.
As we finish our text, we understand that Nicodemus did see the paralyzed man in Luke (Luke 5:17-26) and therefore, Nicodemus understood that Jesus was different from other “rogue rabbis”. He also understands that Jesus was helping the people of Israel. If we read the gospel with this in mind, we can understand why Nicodemus became a Christian, and we can truly understand the causality of it, and why he really wanted to meet Jesus. Although this was a “chance” encounter, this is the way God has us meet people, and to be influenced by what they do. Never be surprised by the impact of what God has in mind for all of us as we learn.
[1] The Rules of Jesus, Mall Mininster.com, Other Papers, written by Peter Hoernes
[2] The Glory of God, Mall Mininster.com, Other Papers, written by Peter Hoernes
[3] Does God Really love me and why?, Mall Mininster.com, Questions for Believers, written by Peter Hoernes
[4] Why do prayers go unanswered, sometimes?, Mall Mininster.com, Questions for Believers, written by Peter Hoernes
[5] Is the Bible true and how can we tell?, Mall Mininster.com, Questions for Believers, written by Peter Hoernes
[6] This is text; the Bible being used is the New International Version (NIV). All of the Biblical text is taken from the NIV.
Biblical text, within this paper, is in Italics.
[7] The Greek Interlinear Bible (NT) is referenced as www.scripture4all.org/OnlineInterlinear/Greek_Index.htm
[8] “What does ‘Rabbi’ mean?” – A Google search using Gemini, Google.com