John 3:21

Ver. 21. “ But he that doeth the truth cometh to the light, that his works may be made manifest because they are wrought in God. ”

Sincere love of moral good predisposes to faith; for Jesus is the good personified. There are in humanity, even before the appearance of Christ, men who, although like others affected by inborn evil, react against their evil inclinations, and pursue with a noble ardor the realization of the moral ideal which shines before them. Jesus here calls them those who do the truth. St. Paul, also in accord with St. John on this point, describes them as those who by persevering in well-doing seek for glory, honor and incorruption (Romans 2:7). This earnest aspiration after the good, which the theocratic discipline stimulates and protects in Israel, forms a contrast to the mummeries of the Pharisaic righteousness. It can be present in a penitent publican, no less than in an irreproachable Pharisee.

The same idea is found again in the expressions to be of God, to be of the truth (John 8:47, John 18:37). This disposition is the condition of all real faith in the Gospel. The adherence of the will to the preparatory revelation of God, whether in the law of conscience or in that of Moses, is the first condition of the adherence to the higher revelation of divine holiness in Jesus Christ. The expression to do the truth denotes the persevering effort to raise one's conduct to the height of one's moral consciousness, to realize the ideal of the good perceived by the conscience; comp. Romans 7. The soul which, it may be, in consequence of the bitter experience of sin, longs after holiness, recognizes in Jesus its realized ideal and that by which it will itself attain to the realization of it. The figurative expression to come to the light signifies to draw near to Jesus, to listen to Him with docility, to surrender oneself to Him; comp. Luke 15:1-2. Is there not, in the choice of this figure, a delicate allusion to the present course of Nicodemus? As truly as this night which reigns without is the figure of the unbelief in which the lovers of sin envelop themselves, so really is this light around which these few interlocutors meet, the emblem of the divine brightness which Nicodemus came to seek for. And so it will come to pass. It is the farewell of Jesus: Thou desirest the good; it is this which brings thee here. Take courage! Thou shalt find it!

If the upright hearts come to the light, it is because they do not, like those spoken of before, dread the manifestation of the true character of their conduct; on the contrary, they desire it: To the end, says Jesus, “ that their works may be manifested because they are done in God. ” I return thus to the ordinary translation of the close of this verse. I had previously preferred the following: That they may be manifested as being done in God; comp. for this Greek construction, John 4:35. But the first construction is more natural here. The truly righteous man seeks, as Nicodemus did, to come into contact with Christ, the living holiness, because he has within him nothing which impels him to withdraw himself from the light of God; on the contrary, the nature of his works is the cause of his being happy to find himself fully in that light.

The expression wrought in God seems very strong to characterize the works of the sincere man before he has found Christ. But let us not forget that, both in Israel and even beyond the theocratic sphere, it is from a divine impulse that everything good in human life proceeds. It is the Father who draws souls to the Son, and who gives them to Him (John 6:37; John 6:44). It is God who causes to resound in the sincere soul the signal for the strife, ineffectual though it be, against inborn evil (Romans 7). Wherever there is docility on the part of man towards this divine initiative, this expression works wrought in God is applicable, which comprehends as well the sighs of the humbled publican and the repentant believer as the noble aspirations of a John or a Nathanael. Such a man, conscious of his sincere desire for the good, does not fear to expose himself to the light and consequently to come to Christ. The more he acts in God, the more he desires to see clearly within himself, to the end of attaining a still more perfect obedience. In the previous editions, I had referred the in order that to the need of a holy approbation. Weiss sees in it the desire to show that the good works accomplished are those of God and not those of the man. I think that the question is rather of a need of progress. Luthardt seems to me to have completely perverted the meaning of this verse and to have lost the very profound teaching which it contains, by explaining: “He who practices the moral truth manifested in Christ soon attaches himself to Christ by the religious bond of faith.” But does not the practice of the holiness revealed in Christ necessarily imply faith in Him? The saying of Jesus in John 7:17 has a striking analogy to this.

“In humanity anterior to Christ,” says Lucke rightly, “two kinds of men are mingled together. With the appearance of Jesus, the separating begins;” αὕτη ἡ κρίσις. “Under the trees of the same forest,” observes Lange, “all sorts of birds find shelter together during the night. But in the morning, as soon as the sun sheds forth his rays, some close their eyes and seek the darkest retreat, while others clap their wings and salute the sun with their songs. Thus the appearing of Christ separates the lovers of the day from those of the night, mingled together until then in the mass of mankind.” We must not, however, understand this idea in the sense which the Tubingen school ascribes to the evangelist: That there are two kinds of men opposite in their nature. All the expressions used by John: “They loved rather,” “ to practise evil things,” “ to do the truth,” are, much rather, borrowed from the domain of free choice and deliberate action. (Comp. Introd., pp. 132f.).

It is with this word of hope that Jesus takes leave of Nicodemus. And we can easily understand why, in contrast with John the Baptist's course (John 3:36), Jesus spoke, in the first place, of those who reject the light (John 3:19-20), and, in the second place, of those who seek it (John 3:21). He wished to terminate the conversation with a word of encouragement addressed to His interlocutor. He had recognized in him one of those righteous souls who will one day believe and whom faith will lead to the baptism of water, and thereby to the baptism of the Spirit. Henceforth Jesus waits for him. Reuss deems the silence of John respecting his departure surprising. “We have, indeed, seen him come; but we do not see him go away. We are wholly ignorant of the result of this interview.” Then this scholar boldly draws therefrom a proof against the historical reality of the personage of Nicodemus and his conversation with Jesus. Is this objection serious? The evangelist should then have told us expressly, that Nicodemus, on leaving Jesus, returned to his own home and went to bed! Does not the effect produced upon him by the conversation appear plainly from the later history? Comp. John 7:50-51; John 19:39. John respects the mystery of the inner working which had just begun, and leaves the facts to speak. It is the revelation of Jesus to Nicodemus which is the subject of this narrative, and not the biography of this Pharisee. No more does Matthew mention the return of the Twelve after their first mission (chap. 10); does it follow from this that their mission is not historical? The narrative of our Gospels is wholly devoted to the religious end and does not entertain itself with empty details.

We are now in a condition to give a judgment respecting this interview. It seems to me that its historical character follows from the perfect appositeness, which we have established, in all the words of Jesus and in their exact appropriateness to the given situation. The statement of John 3:1, “A man of the Pharisees ” is found to be the key of the whole passage. Every word of Jesus is like a shot fired at close quarters with such an interlocutor. He begins by bringing home to this man who approaches Him, as well assured of his participation in the divine kingdom as of his very existence, a sense of all that which he lacks, and by saying, although in other terms:

“ Unless thy righteousness surpasses that of the Scribes and Pharisees, thou shalt not enter the kingdom of heaven. ” After having thus made a void in this heart full of itself and its own righteousness, he endeavors to fill this void in the positive part of the conversation, in which He answers the questions which Nicodemus had proposed to present to Him. In this answer, He opposes, from the beginning to the end, programme to programme: first, Messiah to Messiah, then, salvation to salvation, finally, judgment to judgment, substituting with regard to each of these points the divine thought for the Pharisaic expectation. There is enough, as it seems to me, in this direct application, this constant fitness, and this unshaken steadiness of course in the conversation to guarantee its reality. An artificial composition of the second century would not have succeeded in adapting itself so perfectly to the given situation. In any case, the cohesion of all the parts of the conversation is too evident to allow of the distinction between the part belonging to Jesus and that belonging to the evangelist. Either the whole is a free composition of the latter, or the whole also must be regarded as the summary of a real conversation of Jesus. We say: the summary; for we certainly do not possess a complete report. The visit of Nicodemus, of course, continued longer than the few minutes necessary for reading the account of it. John has transmitted to us in a few salient words the quintessence of the communications of Jesus at this juncture. This is what the quite vague transitions by means of a simple and, καί, indicate. We have before us the principal mountain peaks, but not the whole of the chain (comp. Introd., p. 99).