Such an observer was Nicodemus (Naqdimon), [1829] one of the Pharisees and a member of the Jerusalem Sanhedrin. And, as we gather from his mode of expression, [1830] not he only, but others with him. From the Gospel-history we know him to have been cautious by nature and education, and timid of character; yet, as in other cases, it was the greatest offence to his Jewish thinking, the Cross, which at last brought him to the light of decision, and the vigour of bold confession. [1831] And this in itself would show the real character of his inquiry, and the effect of what Jesus had first taught him. It is, at any rate, althogether rash to speak of the manner of his first approach to Christ as most commentators have done. We can scarcely realise the difficulties which he had to overcome. It must have been a mighty power of conviction, to break down prejudice so far as to lead this old Sanhedrist to acknowledge a Galilean, untrained in the Schools, as a Teacher come from God, and to repair to Him for direction on, perhaps, the most delicate and important point in Jewish theology. But, even so, we cannot wonder that he should have wished to shroud his first visit in the utmost possible secrecy. It was a most compromising step for a Sanhedrist to take. With that first bold purgation of the Temple a deadly feud between Jesus and the Jewish authorities had begun, of which the sequel could not be doubtful. It was involved in that first encounter in the Temple, and it needed not the experience and wisdom of an aged Sanhedrist to forecast the end.
Nevertheless, Nicodemus came. If this is evidence of his intense earnestness, so is the bearing of Jesus of His Divine Character, and of the truth of the narrative. As he was not depressed by the resistance of the authorities, nor by the milk-faith' of the multitude, so He was not elated by the possibility of making such a convert as a member of the great Sanhedrin. There is no excitement, no undue deference, nor eager politeness; no compromise, nor attempted persuasiveness; not even accommodation. Nor, on the other hand, is there assumed superiority, irony, or dogmatism. There is not even a reference to the miracles, the evidential power of which had wrought in His visitor the initial conviction, that He was a Teacher come from God. All is calm, earnest, dignified - if we may reverently say it - as became the God-Man in the humiliation of His personal teaching. To say that it is all un-Jewish were a mere truism: it is Divine. No fabricated narrative would have invented such a scene, nor so represented the actors in it. [1832]
Dangerous as it may be to indulge the imagination, we can almost picture the scene. The report of what passed reads, more than almost any other in the Gospels, like notes taken at the time by one who was present. We can almost put it again into the form of brief notes, by heading what each said in this manner, Nicodemus: - or, Jesus:. They are only the outlines of the conversation, given, in each case, the really important gist, and leaving abrupt gaps between, as would be the manner in such notes. Yet quite sufficient to tell us all that is important for us to know. We can scarcely doubt that it was the narrator, John, who was the witness that took the notes. His own reflections upon it, or rather his afterlook upon it, in the light of later facts, and under the teaching of the Holy Ghost, is described in the verses with which the writer follows his account of what had passed between Jesus and Nicodemus (St. John iii. 16-21). In the same manner he winds up with similar reflections (ib. vv. 31-36) the reported conversation between the Baptist and his disciples. In neither case are the verses to which we refer, part of what either Jesus or John said at the time, but what, in view of it, John says in name of, and to the Church of the New Testament. [1833]