Nicodemus

(the people is victor) (John 3:1-21)—a renowned Pharisee, a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin. Brief information about him may be read in the Gospel of John. The first occasion on which his name is mentioned was soon after the first expulsion of the merchants from the temple. He visited Jesus by night, evidently with the purpose of learning the light of Christ’s teaching more fully and freely, and during this nighttime conversation the Lord revealed to him with full clarity the chief foundations of the teaching of the Gospel: the necessity of a new birth from the Holy Spirit, and the mystery of redemption through the cross-sufferings of the God-man for the attainment of eternal life and salvation.

Afterward his name occurs in the seventh chapter of the Gospel of John (50-52). The chief priests and Pharisees had ordered their officers to seize Jesus Christ and bring Him to them. The officers were unable to carry out the order given them because, as they said, “never man spake like this man” (v. 46). To this explanation of the officers Nicodemus added his own voice. He said, “Doth our law judge any man, before it hear him, and know what he doeth?” (v. 51). Finally, after the sufferings and death of the Savior, Nicodemus openly paid his last respects to His body together with Joseph of Arimathea, namely bringing a hundred pounds’ weight of a mixture of myrrh and aloes to anoint His body (John 19:38-42).

According to tradition, he afterward received baptism from the apostles, and lived and died in the country house of Gamaliel, his kinsman. His memory is kept on August 28.