The Pulpit Commentary — John — Volume 1 — Section 293

ho camo by night. Time we have illUBtration how Jesue does not break the bruise,! reed or quench the smoking flax. If weak ones are to make headway in the path of faith and righteousness, they must not be dealt with hardly in the beginning. III. JESUS HAS THE BAME MESSAGE WHENEVER WE MA.Y COME. Whatever hour Nicodemus may choose, it is the same truth he will have to hear, the same process he will have to go through. Come at midnight or come at noonday, the announcement is the same," Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." IV. CoNTRAST THE COMING OF NICODEMUS WITH nrs DEPARTURE. Not that we arc told how he departed. He may have succeeded in his immediate desire. His visit to Jesus may have remaineil unknown to everybody but Jesus and himself. He came in the darkness of physical night, and in the darkness of physical night be probably went away. But nevertheless, uncomfortable consequences must have come to him in ways he did not at all expect. He came in the gross darkness of spiritual ignorance, but he can hardly have gone away without some dim rays of spiritual light upon his path. '!'here must, at all events, have been a disturbing sense of a larger world than he had been heretofore accustomed to. He had been brought face to face with more searching views of life. You may, perhaps, choose what you will begin and how, but how you will end is beyond your choice. The one thing that everybody now knows about Nico- demus is that he is the man who came to Jesus by night. What a commentary on the vain wisdom and expectations of men! 'l'he very means NicodP.mus takes to ensure secrecy end in the widest publicity. And yet it is a publicity that does not hurt Nico- demus, and it is for the world's good. It is long, long ago since it could matter in the least to Nicodemus who knew the way of his coming to Jesus.-Y. Vers. 2, 3.-Jesus humbling vaunted knowledge. I. Tn:E VAUNTED KNOWLEDGE OF NrcoDEMUB. Nicodemus wants to come to Jesus with safety to his own position., and he gets over the dlfficulty, as he thinks, by coming at night. But such a proceeding may produce greater difficulties than it removes. Now he has come, what shall he say? His aim is to sound Jesus a little, and find out if it will be politic to encourage him. We may be tolerably sure that, with such aims, Jesus would not make his task the easier. Imagine Nicodemus, after going through the usual salutations and beginnings of con- versation, making his way to the business that has brought him. How, then, ought he to have begun? Surely something after this fashion: "You will think it a strange thing for me to come under covel' of the dark, but you must know that I am a Pharisee and a ruler of the Jews, and so I cannot come just at any hour I please. Coming in the daylight, my coming would get known, aud all the good things I have worked so hard to gain would speedily vnnish. So, before I risk them, I want to know a little more about you." But instead of beginning with simple truth, he says the very thing he ought not to have said-the very thing which was in plain contradiction to the way of his coming. Ho says he knows Jesus has come from God, and these Pharisees, one and all of them, were professed servants of God, ostentatious even in their service. If, then, Nicodemus had really believed Jesus to have come from God, would he have sought conference with him in this ignominious fashion? Nicodemus feared men moro than he feared God. He really knows nothing at all about God. As yet he is a mere player with words instead of an earnest dealer in deep realities. Talking about words and names must not be confounded with real searching into things. Nicodemus should have gone to Jesus, saying," Thou doer of marvels, whence hast thou come? what hast thou brought? what dost thou ask for?" II. Tm: WAY TO TROE KNOWLEDGE. Nicodemus must have his mind cleared. of cant and illusion and empty tradition. Jesus does this at once by one of those fundament3l declarations going down to the heart of human need. "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Thus an indication is given as to the sort of people who profit by the teaching of Jesus. Nicodemus is right in calling Jesus a Teacher; but, then, he can. only teach certain people. Jesus, who came to establish a spiritual kingdom of God, can as yet do nothing for Nicodemus, whose notions of a kingdom are of something havincr a power and splendour to be perceived by the bodily eye. Both Jesus and Nicodemus"' can talk about the kingdom of God, but they mean very different things. Jesus knows well what the P~arisee has come ~or. He susp_ects that Jesus, unlikely as he looks, may be a great one 1n the expected kru.gdom, and 1f ~u  156 THE GOSPEL ACOORDING TO BT. JOHN, [oH. m. 1-86.