Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place” (John 18:36).

It started when I started to question the limited gospel I’d heard for the beginning twenty years of my Jesus-following life. I remember driving home from church back then, intent on digging into the New Testament to discover why my spirit was so unsettled about this.

And there—after years of church, Bible study, the works—what I finally had eyes to see was the Gospel of the Kingdom. The gospel Jesus embodied and proclaimed.

In John 18 we see and hear the Kingdom of God embodied as Jesus approaches the apex of His mission to, in, and for the kingdom of the world. 

The kingdom of the world—complete with its political and religious systems—was in full operation here. To its citizens Jesus’ identity was “common criminal” (v.30). They all had Him all wrong. The Kingdom of God was way beyond their comprehension.

It is still a big stretch for people to recognize the existence of a kingdom other than the one we experience with our five senses and our own reasoning. Yet the way we recognize it today is the way they could recognize it then: by watching and listening to Jesus. 

There He is in John 18, showing up to be crucified. Who does that?! Someone whose identity is rooted in a Kingdom dramatically different from the one we’re used to, that’s for sure.

Someone who operates in a totally self-sacrificing other-centered way. (Contrasted with the kingdom of the world’s self-protecting, self-centered way.) Someone who is willing to love the whole world. (Contrasted with those who defend and advance their own tribe/race/country to the exclusion of others.) Someone who knows evil is overcome by good. (Contrasted with trying to overcome evil by evil.)

This is why Jesus said that were His Kingdom not from another place His servants would have fought to prevent His arrest. That would have been the logical way to proceed from a kingdom of the world mindset. A way that remains the world’s knee-jerk reaction.

The Gospel of the Kingdom—on full display in the stories of Jesus in the four gospels—is that Right Side Up Kingdom we pondered earlier this year. Since then we have experienced things that have further exposed the fragility of the upside-down kingdom of the world. Yet the Kingdom of God remains firm, a rock upon which to build our Real ID.

We simultaneously live in two kingdoms: God’s and the world’s. How does watching and listening to Jesus influence where—and how—we build our identity?