In speaking to His disciples about His path and His ministry, Jesus could not avoid telling them the meaning of the death that awaited Him. He tells the apostles: My earthly journey is complete; the time has come to part (vv. 5-6). But this is not simply a parting—Jesus leaves so that the Kingdom may be revealed to the world in all its fullness. He says: if I do not complete My earthly, human journey, then My divine fullness will also remain hidden from the world. The apostles themselves will not feel God's breath or come to know the Spirit-Comforter of whom Jesus spoke to them (vv. 6-7).

Meanwhile, the Savior tells His disciples about the coming of the Kingdom. He says that when God's Spirit comes into the world, He will become the chief witness to everything that many people did not want to hear from Jesus and His disciples: the witness to His mission, the defeat of the dark powers, and the sin of rejecting the Messiah sent by God (vv. 8-11). The meaning of this testimony is clear: it is testimony to the Kingdom and to Jesus as the Messiah who brought the Kingdom into the world. No testimony in itself deprives anyone of freedom of choice, of course, and those who reject the testimony of God's Spirit will become persecutors of the witnesses to the Kingdom (vv. 1-4). This is the chief thing; the disciples will learn and understand the rest when they enter the Kingdom and receive the revelation of God's Spirit (vv. 12-15).

Yet the disciples still do not seem fully to believe that Jesus is speaking to them about His death. They are bewildered: what does He mean? Where is He going, and why does He want to hide from them (vv. 16-18)? Jesus then speaks to the apostles with the greatest possible clarity about His death and resurrection. He warns His disciples that they are to experience great sorrow, which will soon give way to even greater joy (vv. 21-22). He promises them that the day will come when they meet again, the day when everything becomes clear to them and they have no questions left (vv. 22-23). Finally, Jesus tells His disciples directly: I came into the world from the Father, and now I am leaving the world again and going to the Father (v. 28).

After these words from their Teacher, the apostles think that at last they understand everything, but Jesus apparently thinks otherwise. He tells the disciples plainly that soon they will all scatter and leave Him alone (vv. 29-32). Yet even the flight of the bewildered disciples is of no consequence: victory over the powers of evil that hold the world captive has been won, and no suffering of the Kingdom's witnesses can now undo it (v. 33).

When speaking to His disciples about the Kingdom, Jesus constantly calls them to love one another (vv. 9-12, 17). This is unsurprising if we recall that Christianity is nothing other than life in the Kingdom, and therefore life in love. Love, of course, is not the Kingdom's only characteristic. The life of the Kingdom is also the breath of God that permeates it and those manifestations of God's power that accompany Jesus everywhere during His earthly ministry. Yet in our still not fully transformed world, the love characteristic of those who bear the Kingdom seems to be its clearest testimony.

Power, for example, is well known to the untransformed world. Indeed, in a world lying in evil there is sometimes even too much of it. Power can sometimes make people submit, but it cannot make them love. Relationships imposed by force, and therefore involuntary, are unsuitable for the Kingdom. Power in the fallen world will hardly be perceived as an alternative to the existing order. The same could be said of spiritual phenomena in themselves, for the fallen world too knows a peculiar kind of spirituality. The spiritual phenomena characteristic of fallen nature differ qualitatively in essence from the spiritual influences that proceed from the Kingdom, of course, but outwardly they can sometimes look alike, and to someone who sees only the outward appearance the difference may be imperceptible. Thus spirituality in itself does not necessarily mean that an alternative to the laws of this world has appeared.

For such an alternative to appear, everyone must be able not only to see clearly that Christ's disciples and followers possess a certain spirituality, but also to discern what it is. In this respect the witness of the love permeating every relationship in the Kingdom is the best, because mutual love visibly demonstrates to the world precisely what it does not have and what it lacks so greatly. Unlike power and spirituality as such, love can therefore become the alternative to the existing world order that the world both longs for and fears. It fears this alternative because, from the standpoint of the laws of our still untransformed world, relationships of love really are contrary to nature. Both nature and society, which has not moved so very far beyond it, follow different principles, relying on power, advantage, and efficiency.

It is no surprise that those who want to live differently in this world become a foreign body within it (vv. 18-19). But some are prepared at least to try to find an alternative, and so those who live by the laws of the Kingdom will face not only persecution. There will also be people ready to listen to their testimony and follow their path (v. 20). Nevertheless, Christ's disciples and followers should apparently neither try to escape persecution nor hope for their preaching to achieve mass success, for, in Jesus' words, “the servant is not greater than his lord.” Only the testimony is fundamentally important. Everyone decides for himself how to respond to it.

When telling His disciples about the Kingdom, Jesus more than once mentioned its organic incompatibility with the untransfigured world. This, and nothing else, is how He explains the persecutions that will become the inevitable companion of Christians throughout the Church's historical path. What, then, proves to be such an unbearable rebuke to the world, provoking such a violent reaction in response?

First of all, of course, the witness that the "prince of this world" has already been judged. Perhaps if the point were precisely the devil, dark powers, or the forces of evil, there would not be such a sharp reaction to this witness. But the point is the "prince of this world," and therefore the entire order of things existing in the world. Even the righteous who follow the Torah are justified in it not because they are part of this world, but because, and only insofar as, being righteous and following the Torah, they already do not belong to it. The world would like to appropriate to itself everything good that sometimes happens in it contrary to its own nature, and to wash its hands of all the evil that it itself produces by virtue of that nature. But the Kingdom, entering the world, bears witness to the world's true nature, corrupted by sin, thereby provoking the fury of the forces of this world: the fury of a villain whose mask has been publicly torn off.

An additional irritant is the reminder of the One whom the world would like to forget, but of whom it is constantly reminded. No, of course, if the world were reminded of Jesus as, for example, some great theologian, religious reformer, or, at worst, a teacher of morality, this would still be bearable: after all, He is not the first and not the last. But He is pointed to as Someone unique and unrepeatable, who in addition has no desire at all to take account of the world or of its weaknesses and sins.

As we see, the conflict is caused by the very essence of the differences that separate the Kingdom from the world mired in evil. No wonder it will last until the end of time, only becoming sharper with the years.