This is the golden text of St. John's Gospel, and of the whole Bible. Through all the ages it has sounded, and will sound to the end of time, as the gospel itself.
John must have been a most attentive listener to all that Jesus said. This was at the beginning of His Lord's ministry. Fresh truths easily impressed him. They were the buddings of which he was to see the bloom, of whose fruitage he would partake most abundantly, and which he would give to others long after the echo of the Great Teacher's words had died in the chamber where he and Nicodemus heard them.
It was long after that nightly visit that John wrote his account of it, including the golden text whose keyword was Love. It is supposed that he wrote his Epistle about the same time. That text was so present in his thought that he repeated it in almost the same words: "Herein was the Love of God manifested in us, that God hath sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him."
At the close of his long life, in which he had learned much of the power and justice and holiness and goodness of God, it seemed to him that all these were summed up in the one simple saying, "God is love."
The First Disciples—Ittenbach
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When John bade Nicodemus good-night, he could not look forward to the time, nor to the place where we see them together again. John the lone apostle with Nicodemus and his Lord at the beginning of His ministry, is the lone apostle at the cross. Then and there, he recalls the first meeting of the three as he beholds the Rabbi approaching. This is his record; "Then came also Nicodemus, who at the first came to Jesus by night."
There is a tradition concerning Nicodemus that after the Resurrection of Jesus, his faith in Him was strengthened. The "teacher come from God" he now believed to be the Son of God. The timid Rabbi became a bold follower of the Lord whom he once secretly sought. For this he was no longer permitted to be a ruler of the Jews. He was hated, beaten, and driven from Jerusalem. At last he was buried by the side of the first martyr Stephen, who had baptized and welcomed him into the fellowship of the Christian Band.