gospel · 28 · Jerusalem
He was a Pharisee and a ruler of the Jews and he came at night, which the gospel says twice more when it mentions him, so the detail is doing work. Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs unless God is with him. What he gets back is not agreement but a demand he cannot follow: unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. How can a man be born when he is old? The conversation runs on into the wind that blows where it wills, and into the sentence the whole tradition afterwards quotes above all others — for God so loved the world. Only three people in the gospels get an extended private conversation of this kind; the other two are the Samaritan woman and Pilate.
The longest private conversation in John, and the verse the whole tradition quotes.