Christ's exhaustion shows His astonishing love in assuming the limitations of human nature for salvation. His encounter with a brazenly reluctant hearer, unable to grasp spiritual wonders until He revealed His identity, reflects all experience of conversion. Here also are the golden rules of worship.

Conversion to Christ may take place in a moment, but more often we discover what it means to find Him by stages. Here is the experience of Simon Peter, tracing his phases of reluctance up to the great moment of genuine faith. 

Love for Christ is constantly eroded by other concerns, and by salvation and blessing being taken for granted. Here scriptures show how admiration is maintained together with indebtedness, Christ-likeness and trust in Him. These deepen love. Here also is discerning love - the vital kind.

Christ's miniature parable of the 'evil eye' uses seeing disorders to illustrate our inability to see the spiritual purpose of life, our predicament before God, and our need of forgiveness and reconciliation. Here is God's provision for us, and the way to know Him.

A ruling pharisee, possibly exploring cooperation between Christ and the Temple order, comes by night, but the Lord teaches that only a new birth purchased by Himself, wrought directly by God, and revealed throughout Scripture, can save people, whether pharisees or ordinary Jews and Gentiles.