The work shows that Bach had mastered the composition of a dramatic scene, an expressive aria with obbligato oboe, a recitative with strings, an exuberant dance, and a chorale in the style of his predecessor in the position as Thomaskantor, Johann Kuhnau.

Bach directed the first performance of the cantata during a church service, together with another audition piece, Du wahrer Gott und Davids Sohn, BWV 23.

He later parodied some of them as church cantatas without major changes, for example Ein Herz, das seinen Jesum lebend weiß, BWV 134.

Bach was interested, mentioning as one reason that he saw more possibilities for future academic studies of his sons in Leipzig: "... but this post was described to me in such favorable terms that finally (particularly since my sons seemed inclined to [university] studies) I cast my lot, in the name of the Lord, and made my journey to Leipzig, took my examination, and then made the change of position.

[20] Christoph Wolff assumes that Bach received an invitation for the audition together with the texts, probably prescribed to the candidates and drawn from a printed collection, only weeks before the date.

[21] In Köthen Bach composed two cantatas on two different themes from the prescribed Gospel for the Sunday, Du wahrer Gott und Davids Sohn, BWV 23, on the topic of healing the blind near Jericho,[16] and Jesus nahm zu sich die Zwölfe, about Jesus announcing his suffering which his disciples do not understand.

Wolff assumes that Bach was in Leipzig already on 2 February for the Marian feast of Purification when candidate Georg Balthasar Schott presented his audition piece at the Nikolaikirche.

[23] After a meeting on 9 April 1723, with incomplete documentation containing "... since the best could not be obtained, a mediocre one would have to be accepted ..." Bach received an offer to sign a preliminary contract.

He performed Jesus nahm zu sich die Zwölfe again on 20 February 1724, as a printed libretto shows, and probably did so again in later years.

The cantata text is the usual combination of Bible quotation, free contemporary poetry and as closing chorale a stanza from a hymn as an affirmation.

The closing chorale is stanza 5 of Elisabeth Cruciger's "Herr Christ, der einig Gotts Sohn",[28] intensifying the prayer,[29] on a melody from the Lochamer-Liederbuch.

[31] The poetry for the second aria has an unusually long first section, which Bach handled elegantly by repeating only part of it in the da capo.

[32] Bach structured the cantata in five movements, and scored it for three vocal soloists (an alto (A), tenor (T) and bass (B)), a four-part choir (SATB), and for a Baroque orchestra of an oboe (Ob), two violins (Vl), viola (Va) and basso continuo.

The movement is a scene with different actors, narrated by the Evangelist (tenor), in which Jesus (bass, as the vox Christi or voice of Christ) and his disciples (the chorus) interact.

[16] After another repeat of the ritornello as an interlude, a choral fugue illustrates the reaction of the disciples, following verse 34 from the Gospel (Luke 18:34): "Sie aber vernahmen der keines" ("However they understood nothing").

"[3] In the first aria, "Mein Jesu, ziehe mich nach dir" ("My Jesus, draw me after You"),[1] the alto voice is accompanied by an obbligato oboe, which expressively intensifies the text.

Mincham observes a mood or affekt of "deep involvement and pensive commitment", with the oboe creating "an aura of suffering and a sense of struggling and reaching upwards in search of something indefinable in a way that only music can suggest.

[32] In this modified repeat, the voice holds a long note on the word Friede ("peace"), after which the same theme appears in the orchestra and again in the continuo.

[22] Mincham describes: "Bach's expression of the joy of union with Christ can often seem quite worldly and uninhibited", and summarises: "The 3/8 time signature, symmetrical phrasing and rapid string skirls combine to create a sense of a dance of abandonment.

"[34] The closing chorale is "Ertöt uns durch dein Güte" ("Kill us through your goodness"[1] or "Us mortify through kindness"[36]), the fifth stanza of Elisabeth Cruciger's "Herr Christ, der einig Gotts Sohn".

[34] Isoyama thinks that Bach may have intentionally imitated the style of his predecessor Johann Kuhnau in the "elegantly flowing obbligato for oboe and first violin".

[34] Jones summarises: "The audition cantatas ... show Bach feeling his way towards a compromise between the progressive, opera-influenced and the conservative, ecclesiastical styles.

[34] Gardiner, who conducted the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage with the Monteverdi Choir and wrote a diary on the project, comments on the disciples' reaction ("and they understood none of these things, neither knew they the things which were spoken"): "One could read into this an ironic prophecy of the way Bach's new Leipzig audience would react to his creative outpourings over the next twenty-six years – in the absence, that is, of any tangible or proven signs of appreciation: neither wild enthusiasm, deep understanding nor overt dissatisfaction".

In the 1930s Harriet Cohen's piano arrangement of the cantata's closing chorale was published by Oxford University Press under the title "Sanctify us by the goodness".