John 3:3 ESV, John 3:10-12 ESV and John 3:19-21 ESV

Nicodemus is usually celebrated for his intellectual honesty. After all, of all the Pharisees, it is only he who comes to Christ in order to investigate His claims further. And he even apparently believes - to some degree - that Christ is truly from God ("Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher from God...").

But Jesus doesn't seem to celebrate his bravery for risking possible expulsion from the Sanhedrin. "Are you a teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?...If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?" Remember, Nicodemus earlier said that he had belief already ("Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher from God...").

And I can't help but wonder if Jesus is critical of Nicodemus because he came to him under cover of night. "And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed."

Wasn't exposure the very thing that Nicodemus feared the most? And Jesus presses a little further: "Everyone who does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God." This is a powerful contrast between Jesus' courageous leadership and Nicodemus, as representing the cowardly Sanhedrin, which obviously had some who believed in their midst, but didn't have the bravery to investigate Christ more fully.

What a picture of the religious system. Kept from enlightenment by the very system that was meant to prepare people for the Messiah's coming. And this leaven is fully functional in so many ways in our churches and programs and minds today.

We come to Christ, but only under cover of night. We have years of "training" under our belts, but the simple truth of the kingdom evades us. What a picture of the western church!