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.

We are called to abide in the vine because, when separated from it, the branches are cut off from the source of life and quickly wither. The branches are free to break away, but they themselves will gain nothing from it. None of the branches grafted into this vine can remain fruitless. The Gardener calls us to bear fruit precisely because He constantly prunes the branches and enables them to do so—each branch according to its own measure, and there is no need to be troubled that each has a different measure. But if we refuse to bear fruit and intend to settle comfortably on the vine without making any effort, we will fall away from it. We are warned that in that case we will be cast out and wither. In fact, we will begin withering even before visibly separating from the vine, for a branch that has not completely broken off but is separating inwardly already deprives itself of life-giving sap.

It is no accident that fallen vine branches are used as a symbol of spiritual barrenness. Once cut off, their weakness when dry makes them unsuitable for use in objects such as baskets or fences. Even as fuel they are inferior to other branches: they burn quickly and give little heat...

Describing the Kingdom, Jesus turns to the image of a vineyard, a vine, traditional for Yahwism and Judaism. But into this traditional image He places a new meaning connected with the essence of the Kingdom that He brought into the world. Of course, there is also room here for the traditional understanding of the Kingdom as a place where only one will acts: the will of God, who created the world. It is no accident that Jesus says that the "prince of this world" "has nothing in Him": for the Kingdom He brought into the world does not exist according to the laws of this world, so that the "prince of this world" can have no power over it, even though the Kingdom, while abiding in our untransfigured world, constantly touches it.

But the image of the vine also becomes an image of relations within the Kingdom, where all are connected with one another and with Christ just as branches are on a vine. This bond is absolute, immediate, and organic: every branch is a continuation of the vine; if it is torn off, it dries up. All the branches live one life with the vine, fed with it by the same sap from one source. Evidently this is exactly how the inhabitants of the Kingdom are connected with one another and with Christ.

From this point of view, the Kingdom can be defined as a single space of relations linking all its inhabitants with one another, with Christ at the center. And it is precisely the fact of Christ's presence that makes the Kingdom the Kingdom. For in order for it to remain itself, such constancy of relations, such stability, is necessary as is unthinkable in the fallen world for the human will damaged by the fall. Only the will of the One who, being Man, remained untouched by sin can become the basis of the stable unity necessary as an indispensable condition for the existence of the Kingdom in our transfiguring, but not yet transfigured, world. This is what the Savior evidently has in mind when He says, "Without Me you can do nothing."

Of course, even in a fallen state a person can sometimes, with God's help, do something good. But to do anything at all for the Kingdom is possible only by being part of the Kingdom. And it is impossible to be part of it without spiritual unity with the One who constitutes its spiritual foundation, who is the spiritual core on which the Kingdom rests.

One end of this core is held by God, who raised His Son from the dead. At the other end are we, who consider ourselves Christians and try, as far as we can, to be Christians. And between us is the Kingdom, entering the world through us.