Dr. James Smith III brings the early church into the room, letting the first Christian voices interpret John 3 alongside modern readers, and reads the passage from the end of chapter two so the famous verse sits where it actually belongs.

Harry Wilson preaches the verse everyone can recite and the three that follow, which fewer can. The judgment John names is preference rather than ignorance, and belief, after C.S. Lewis, is less one item among others than the light by which the rest is seen.

A series on John 3 opens with the man rather than the verse. Elliott Stearns reads Nicodemus closely, down to a conjunction in verse one most readers miss, and traces an exchange that never returns to the terms Nicodemus arrived with.