Third chapter. Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus about rebirth, and John’s conversation with his disciples about Christ.
John 3:1. There was a man among the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler among the Jews.
That after cleansing the temple I stayed in a small inn outside the city with all those who had followed Me has already been shown in the preceding chapter. But anyone might surely now ask:
‘What did You do there, Lord? For You surely did not spend this period of at least eight days idle?’
To this I say: certainly not! For, so to speak, crowds of people of every class came to Me from the city by day and by night. The poor generally came by day, but the great, the distinguished and the rich generally came at night, for they did not wish to appear weak or compromised before their peers.
They were driven partly by curiosity and partly by a kind of believing presentiment of the possibility that I might after all be the Messiah to become more closely acquainted with Me. So they came out at night and paid Me visits, which generally ended in considerable sulking. For these distinguished, great and rich people were deeply irritated that I did not treat them at least as kindly and courteously as the many poor people, who could not praise My goodness and friendliness enough.
I also worked miracles as a physician among the poor: I freed the possessed from their tormenting spirits, made the lame walk, straightened those crippled with palsy, cleansed the lepers, made the mute hear and speak and the blind see, all this mostly through the word.
Those who came to Me at night knew this well and also demanded similar signs from Me. But I always replied to them, ‘The day has twelve hours, and the night likewise twelve. The day is appointed for work, but the night for rest. Whoever works by day stumbles nowhere, but whoever works at night easily stumbles, for he does not see where he sets his foot.’
Some asked Me by what might and power I performed such miracles. The answer was very brief: ‘By My very own, and I need no human being’s help for this!’
Again they asked Me why I did not prefer to lodge in the city. For such great deeds, they said, called for a great place, surely not a little village that lay near the great city of the world yet remained completely unnoticed by it.
I again replied, ‘I do not remain in a place where spearmen stand guard before the gates of residents who consider themselves great, admitting only the splendidly arrayed and turning away the poor without mercy; and where, if one has an unfamiliar face and is not magnificently enough dressed, one is stopped at least seven times in every street and asked who one is, where one comes from and what one is doing there. Moreover, I love only what is small before the world and despised by it, for it is written: “What is great before the world is an abomination before God!”’
And they asked, ‘Is not the temple in which Jehovah dwells great and glorious?’ I said, ‘He ought to dwell in it. But because you have desecrated the temple, He has left it and no longer dwells in it, and the ark of Moses is empty and dead!’
The nighttime visitors say, ‘What impious nonsense are You talking here? Do You not know what God said to Solomon and David? Can what God has spoken ever become untrue? Who are You, then, that You dare say such things before us?’
I say, ‘Just as I have in and from Myself the might and power to heal, solely through My will and My word, all the sick who come to Me, so I also have the might and power and the full right to speak in this way about the temple before you. And I tell you again that your temple too is now an abomination before God!’
At this some began to grumble, but others said, ‘This is clearly a prophet.’ And these had always spoken unfavorably of the temple, and therefore still saying, ‘Let’s let him go!’ And so these nighttime visitors went away again.