For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
This was the mystery hidden before times eternal, that God would enter the lists of humanity as a man, paying the penalty of human transgression himself in the person of his Son and discharging the debt due to the fall in Eden.  It was primarily for the purpose of delivering the flesh of the Messiah to humanity that the device of a chosen people had been provided by God in the days of Abraham; and, despite the will of the chosen people to reject him, Christ here unfolded the full mystery to one of the noblest and best men in the very council of the Sanhedrin itself.