³⁶ What does he mean when he says, ‘You will search for me but not find me,’ and ‘You cannot go where I am going’?”

³⁴ You will search for me but not find me. And you cannot go where I am going.”

⁹ “How are these things possible?” Nicodemus asked.

¹⁴ But people who aren’t spiritual^[a] can’t receive these truths from God’s Spirit. It all sounds foolish to them and they can’t understand it, for only those who are spiritual can understand what the Spirit means.

¹⁷ Some of the disciples asked each other, “What does he mean when he says, ‘In a little while you won’t see me, but then you will see me,’ and ‘I am going to the Father’? ¹⁸ And what does he mean by ‘a little while’? We don’t understand.”

³⁴ The crowd responded, “We understood from Scripture^[a] that the Messiah would live forever. How can you say the Son of Man will die? Just who is this Son of Man, anyway?”

Many Disciples Desert Jesus

⁶⁰ Many of his disciples said, “This is very hard to understand. How can anyone accept it?”

⁵² Then the people began arguing with each other about what he meant. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” they asked.

⁴¹ Then the people^[a] began to murmur in disagreement because he had said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.”

⁴ “What do you mean?” exclaimed Nicodemus. “How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?”