Our Lord’s Gospel of the Kingdom pressed on to the foundation of a visible Church. The more definitely He opposed the ruling religious authority, and the clearer it became that He was dethroning the Law and setting His own word in its place, that the new Kingdom was bound up with His Person and with faith in Him, that it was His Kingdom (cf. Lk. xxii, 29, 30; xxiii, 42; Mt. xiii, 41), and that it was the New Covenant in His Blood, so much the more inevitable was the gradual detachment of His disciples from their previous religious fellowship. “No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment.” And naturally the fellowship which held His disciples together was bound to become all the more intimate and conscious. How often had He not told them: “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one to another.” They shall call one another brethren, they shall be His family (cf. Mt. x, 25), His marriage guests, who cannot be sorrowful so long as the Bridegroom is with them (Mt. ix, 15), who drink together out of the same cup of the New Covenant. And one day they are to be His elect, and at His table and in His Kingdom to eat of the glad messianic feast (Lk. xxii, 29 f.; Mt. xiii, 41)

The messianic consciousness of Jesus necessarily led to the formation of a community. In His Person the Judgment was already begun, the contrast of faith and unbelief, the separation of spirits. He told them quite plainly: “Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth; I came not to send peace, but the sword” (Mt. x, 34; cf. Luke xii, 51). In Him the City of God invaded the earthly city, and at once there began the process of discrimination, the formation of the new out of the old.