The Passover at Jerusalem

142:6.1One evening at the home of Flav­ius there came to see Je­sus one Nicode­mus, a wealthy and el­derly mem­ber of the Jew­ish San­hedrin. He had heard much about the teach­ings of this Galilean, and so he went one af­ter­noon to hear him as he taught in the tem­ple courts. He would have gone of­ten to hear Je­sus teach, but he feared to be seen by the peo­ple in at­ten­dance upon his teach­ing, for al­ready were the rulers of the Jews so at vari­ance with Je­sus that no mem­ber of the San­hedrin would want to be iden­ti­fied in any open man­ner with him. Ac­cord­ingly, Nicode­mus had ar­ranged with An­drew to see Je­sus pri­vately and af­ter night­fall on this par­tic­u­lar evening. Pe­ter, James, and John were in Flav­ius’s gar­den when the in­ter­view be­gan, but later they all went into the house where the dis­course con­tin­ued.

142:6.2In re­ceiv­ing Nicode­mus, Je­sus showed no par­tic­u­lar def­er­ence; in talk­ing with him, there was no com­pro­mise or un­due per­sua­sive­ness. The Mas­ter made no at­tempt to re­pulse his se­cre­tive caller, nor did he em­ploy sar­casm. In all his deal­ings with the dis­tin­guished vis­i­tor, Je­sus was calm, earnest, and dig­ni­fied. Nicode­mus was not an of­fi­cial del­e­gate of the San­hedrin; he came to see Je­sus wholly be­cause of his per­sonal and sin­cere in­ter­est in the Mas­ter’s teach­ings.

142:6.3Upon be­ing pre­sented by Flav­ius, Nicode­mus said: “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher sent by God, for no mere man could so teach un­less God were with him. And I am de­sirous of know­ing more about your teach­ings re­gard­ing the com­ing king­dom.”

142:6.4Je­sus an­swered Nicode­mus: “Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, Nicode­mus, ex­cept a man be born from above, he can­not see the king­dom of God.” Then replied Nicode­mus: “But how can a man be born again when he is old? He can­not en­ter a sec­ond time into his mother’s womb to be born.”

142:6.5Je­sus said: “Nev­er­the­less, I de­clare to you, ex­cept a man be born of the spirit, he can­not en­ter into the king­dom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. But you should not mar­vel that I said you must be born from above. When the wind blows, you hear the rus­tle of the leaves, but you do not see the wind—whence it comes or whither it goes—and so it is with ev­ery­one born of the spirit. With the eyes of the flesh you can be­hold the man­i­fes­ta­tions of the spirit, but you can­not ac­tu­ally dis­cern the spirit.”

142:6.6Nicode­mus replied: “But I do not under­stand—how can that be?” Said Je­sus: “Can it be that you are a teacher in Is­rael and yet ig­no­rant of all this? It be­comes, then, the duty of those who know about the re­al­i­ties of the spirit to re­veal these things to those who dis­cern only the man­i­fes­ta­tions of the ma­te­rial world. But will you be­lieve us if we tell you of the heav­enly truths? Do you have the cour­age, Nicode­mus, to be­lieve in one who has de­scended from heaven, even the Son of Man?”

142:6.7And Nicode­mus said: “But how can I be­gin to lay hold upon this spirit which is to re­make me in prepa­ra­tion for en­ter­ing into the king­dom?” Je­sus an­swered: “Al­ready does the spirit of the Fa­ther in heaven in­dwell you. If you would be led by this spirit from above, very soon would you be­gin to see with the eyes of the spirit, and then by the whole­hearted choice of spirit guid­ance would you be born of the spirit since your only pur­pose in liv­ing would be to do the will of your Fa­ther who is in heaven. And so find­ing your­self born of the spirit and hap­pily in the king­dom of God, you would be­gin to bear in your daily life the abun­dant fruits of the spirit.”

142:6.8Nicode­mus was thor­oughly sin­cere. He was deeply im­pressed but went away be­wil­dered. Nicode­mus was ac­com­plished in self-de­vel­op­ment, in self-re­straint, and even in high moral qual­i­ties. He was re­fined, ego­is­tic, and al­tru­is­tic; but he did not know how to sub­mit his will to the will of the di­vine Fa­ther as a lit­tle child is will­ing to sub­mit to the guid­ance and lead­ing of a wise and lov­ing earthly fa­ther, thereby be­com­ing in re­al­ity a son of God, a pro­gres­sive heir of the eter­nal king­dom.

142:6.9But Nicode­mus did sum­mon faith enough to lay hold of the king­dom. He faintly protested when his col­leagues of the San­hedrin sought to con­demn Je­sus with­out a hear­ing; and with Joseph of Ari­mathea, he later boldly ac­knowl­edged his faith and claimed the body of Je­sus, even when most of the dis­ci­ples had fled in fear from the scenes of their Mas­ter’s fi­nal suf­fer­ing and death.