From the TeachingtheWord Bible Knowledgebase

Part three of a series. Read part two.

After Jesus' death on the cross, Nicodemus was willing to openly identify himself with the Savior, and was used of God to demonstrate that Jesus had indeed risen from the dead.

Thus far in the series we have seen that Nicodemus' conversion is typical of many. When first confronted with the truth of the Gospel, the message of the new birth was foreign to his thinking, even though he was a well-educated religious leader and teacher. But as time went on, Nicodemus' confused and hardened heart became more open to the truth through the Holy Spirit's convicting work. Scripture does not record exactly when he was saved, but in John 19 we find that Nicodemus had now passed from confusion to conviction to conversion. Soon after, God used Nicodemus in a most remarkable way - to provide physical evidence that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead.

When we come to the events immediately after Jesus' death on the cross, we find Nicodemus now willing to openly identify himself with the Savior:

After this, Joseph of Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly, for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus; and Pilate gave him permission. So he came and took the body of Jesus.

And Nicodemus, who at first came to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds. Then they took the body of Jesus, and bound it in strips of linen with the spices, as the custom of the Jews is to bury. Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. So there they laid Jesus, because of the Jews' Preparation Day, for the tomb was nearby. (John 19:38-42)

No man would have taken the risk of doing this apart from the continued work of the Holy Spirit within him. Furthermore, in God's plan, Nicodemus now helped provide the physical means by which the physical evidence of Jesus' resurrection from the dead came about. The mixture that Nicodemus brought, along with the strips of linen and spices, was used by the Jews to wrap a corpse for burial. This enclosure of cloths and spices soon hardened into a shell that was the shape of the body within.

On the first day of the week following Jesus' crucifixion and burial, when Peter and John heard from Mary Magdalene that Jesus' body was no longer in the tomb, they

both ran together, and the other disciple outran Peter and came to the tomb first. And he, stooping down and looking in, saw the linen cloths lying there; yet he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb; and he saw the linen cloths lying there, and the handkerchief that had been around His head, not lying with the linen cloths, but folded together in a place by itself. (John 20:4-7)

The word translated "lying" is the Greek keimena, which here is best translated "standing as they had been placed." In other words, the strips of linen containing the hundred pounds of burial spices that Joseph and Nicodemus had used to wrap Jesus' body were not disturbed in any way. They were now an empty shell, but they were still in the form of the body that was no longer within. The body had not been moved or stolen, it was no longer within the still-intact grave clothes.

Then the other disciple, who came to the tomb first, went in also; and he saw and believed [that is, believed Mary's testimony that Jesus' body was no longer in the tomb]. For as yet they did not know [Greek hedeisan, understand] the Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead. (John 20:8-9)

That understanding would soon come, as the risen Lord would appear to them repeatedly during the following forty days before His ascension into Heaven. But that knowledge began to dawn on the disciples because two Jewish religious leaders who had become believers - Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus - had, in the sovereign plan of God, provided what had now become clear physical evidence that Jesus was indeed risen from the dead, as He said He would be.

Next - Nicodemus: Lessons for Today

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