asked him, “If you aren’t the Messiah or Elijah or the Prophet, what right do you have to baptize?”

John told them, “I baptize with water, but right here in the crowd is someone you do not recognize.

This encounter took place in Bethany, an area east of the Jordan River, where John was baptizing.

I did not recognize him as the Messiah, but I have been baptizing with water so that he might be revealed to Israel.”

I didn’t know he was the one, but when God sent me to baptize with water, he told me, ‘The one on whom you see the Spirit descend and rest is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’

John the Baptist Exalts Jesus

Then Jesus and his disciples left Jerusalem and went into the Judean countryside. Jesus spent some time with them there, baptizing people.

At this time John the Baptist was baptizing at Aenon, near Salim, because there was plenty of water there; and people kept coming to him for baptism.

So John’s disciples came to him and said, “Rabbi, the man you met on the other side of the Jordan River, the one you identified as the Messiah, is also baptizing people. And everybody is going to him instead of coming to us.”

Jesus and the Samaritan Woman

Jesus knew the Pharisees had heard that he was baptizing and making more disciples than John

(though Jesus himself didn’t baptize them—his disciples did).

He went beyond the Jordan River near the place where John was first baptizing and stayed there awhile.