Jesus responds, "You're a teacher, and you don't get it? You've studied the Scriptures. You've heard what I've been saying, but you don't accept it. If I were to tell you more, would you believe me then?"
Sandra Schneiders, in Written that You Might Believe, points out:
But, if the reader perseveres through the text, it becomes clear that Jesus' irony is not so much a condemnation as a challenge. Jesus goes on speaking to Nicodemus, and through him to the reader, about his own identity and mission. And Nicodemus, who seems to vanish from the stage at this point will reappear twice more in the course of the Gospel. In 7:50-52 Nicodemus appeals to the law of Moses to defend Jesus to his fellow Pharisees in the sandhedrin who declare Jesus guilty and dangerous.... Finally, in 19:32-42, Nicodemus aligns himself publicly with Jesus in his "lifting up: by joining Joseph of Arimathea in removing Jesus' body from the cross and burying him with an enormous outlay of spices that reminds the reader of Mary of Bethany's action in 12:3....
Nicodemus is the very type of the truly religious person, who is, on the one hand, utterly sincere and, on the other, complacent about his or hew knowledge of God and God's will. Such people are basically closed to divine revelation, Like Nicodemus, they "know" who Jesus is, what his message means (see 3:2). And like Nicodemus, it is only after they have been reduced to the futility of their own ignorance that they can begin the process of coming to the Light not by argument or reasoning but by doing the truth, a process that gradually opens the to the meaning of the scriptures.
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