Nicodemus Comes to Christ
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rebuff from the chief priest, “Art thou also of Galilee? Search and
look, for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet.” Yet the council dispersed,
for they could not obtain a unanimous assent to the condemnation of
Jesus.
The Jews suspected both Joseph and Nicodemus of being in sym-
pathy with the Teacher of Galilee, and these men were not summoned
when the council met that decided the fate of Jesus. The words spo-
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ken at night to a single man in the lonely mountain were not lost.
When Nicodemus saw Jesus upon the cross, hanging like a malefactor
between heaven and earth, yet praying for his murderers; when he
witnessed the commotion of nature, in that awful hour when the sun
was hidden and the earth reeled in space, when the rocks were split in
sunder and the vail of the temple rent in twain; then he remembered
the solemn teaching in the mountain: “As Moses lifted up the serpent
in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up.”
The scales fell from his eyes, and faith took the place of doubt
and uncertainty. Beams of light streamed from the secret interview
in the mountain and illuminated the cross of the Saviour. In that time
of discouragement and danger, when the hearts of the disciples were
failing them through doubt and fear, Joseph of Arimathea, a secret
disciple of Jesus, came forward and obtained the Lord’s body from
Pilate, and Nicodemus, who at the first came to Jesus by night, brought
a hundred pounds’ weight of myrrh and aloes. These two men with
their own hands performed the last sacred rites, and laid the body of
the Saviour in a new sepulchre where never man lay before. These
lofty rulers of the Jews mingled their tears together over the sacred
form of the dead.
Now, when the disciples were scattered and discouraged, Nicode-
mus came boldly to the front. He was rich, and he employed his wealth
to sustain the infant church of Christ, that the Jews thought would be
blotted out with the death of Jesus. He who had been so cautious
and questioning, now, in the time of peril, was firm as the granite
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rock, encouraging the flagging faith of the followers of Christ, and
furnishing means to carry on the cause. He was defrauded, persecuted,
and stigmatized by those who had paid him reverence in other days.
He became poor in this world’s goods, yet he faltered not in the faith
that had its beginning in that secret night conference with the young
Galilean.