9. Nicodemus replied, “How can these things be?”
10. Jesus answered, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you don’t understand these things?
11. I tell you the solemn truth, we speak about what we know and testify about what we have seen, but you people do not accept our testimony.
12. If I have told you people about earthly things and you don’t believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?
13. No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven – the Son of Man.
14. Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
15. so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”
16. For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
17. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through him.
18. The one who believes in him is not condemned. The one who does not believe has been condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.
19. Now this is the basis for judging: that the light has come into the world and people loved the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil.
20. For everyone who does evil deeds hates the light and does not come to the light, so that their deeds will not be exposed.
21. But the one who practices the truth comes to the light, so that it may be plainly evident that his deeds have been done in God.
22. After this, Jesus and his disciples came into Judean territory, and there he spent time with them and was baptizing.
23. John was also baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because water was plentiful there, and people were coming to him and being baptized.
24. (For John had not yet been thrown into prison.)
25. Now a dispute came about between some of John’s disciples and a certain Jew concerning ceremonial washing.
26. So they came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, the one who was with you on the other side of the Jordan River, about whom you testified – see, he is baptizing, and everyone is flocking to him!”
27. John replied, “No one can receive anything unless it has been given to him from heaven.