NOTES for Joh 14:27-15:7
In describing the Kingdom, Jesus uses the image of a vineyard, of a vine, traditional for Yahwism and Judaism. But He invests this traditional image with 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 the 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. The Kingdom He brought into the world does not exist by this world’s laws, so “the prince of this world” can have no power over it, even though the Kingdom, while dwelling in our untransformed world, constantly comes into contact with it. But the image of the vine also becomes an image of the relationships of the Kingdom, where everyone is connected with one another and with Christ as branches are connected on a vine. This bond is absolute, direct, and organic: each branch is a continuation of the vine; if it is torn off, it withers. All the branches share one life with the vine and draw the same sap from the same source. Evidently, the inhabitants of the Kingdom are connected in the same way with one another and with Christ. From this point of view, the Kingdom can be defined as a single space of relationships connecting all its inhabitants, at whose center stands Christ. It is precisely Christ’s presence that makes the Kingdom the Kingdom. For it to remain itself, its relationships must possess a constancy and stability inconceivable in the fallen world for a human will damaged by the Fall. Only the will of the One who, though human, remained beyond the power of sin can become the foundation of the stable unity indispensable as a condition for the Kingdom’s existence in our world, which is being transformed but is not yet transformed. This, evidently, is what the Savior means when He says, “apart from Me you can do nothing.” Of course, even in a fallen state a person can sometimes do something good with God’s help. But one can do anything for the Kingdom only by being part of the Kingdom. And one cannot be part of it without spiritual unity with the One who constitutes its spiritual foundation, the spiritual axis on which the Kingdom rests. God, who raised His Son from the dead, holds one end of this axis. At the other are we, who call ourselves Christians and try, as best we can, to be Christians. And between us is the Kingdom, entering the world through us.