—Jesus, John 14.1-4 NLT
Right after Jesus told His students that He was leaving (and told an overeager Simon Peter that he would deny knowing Him), Jesus encouraged them by telling them this: He was going to get a place ready for them in His Father’s house.
In the King James Version the word “room” (Greek moní) gets translated “mansion,” and as a result some Christians teach that at the End, once we go to live with Jesus in New Jerusalem, each of us is getting a massive, expensive house. “Everybody gets a mansion,” as Ricky Gervais put it in The Invention of Lying—mocking the idea. Supposedly we’re to give up everything for Jesus, give up all our material possessions, so that in heaven we can be rewarded with… material possessions. I’m with Gervais; it’s an idea that should be mocked.
A big house is what “mansion” means nowadays. But 500 years ago, when the KJV was translated, it meant a noble’s private rooms within a castle; what nowadays we’d call an apartment or suite. It is hardly a heavenly reward for Jesus to isolate each of us by ourselves in large houses, especially after He’s tried so hard to get us to love each other. Now we get to live alone and not love each other? No. We’re going to live in the Father’s house, where it won’t be cramped, but where we will live together, and put into practice some of that love we’ve been practicing in this life.
But to some degree we live in the Father’s house now. It’s one of the aspects of the Kingdom that, paradoxically, has arrived, yet hasn’t yet arrived.
Keith Green once wrote a song, “I Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven,” where he speculated
that Jesus has spent the past 2,000 years preparing that place for us. He compared that to the story of God creating the heavens and earth in six days, (Ge 1) and pointed out that as impressive as our world is, imagine how impressive that place Jesus is preparing will be after two millennia. It’s a nice song, but its timeline is a little off. His assumption—and that of lots of other Christians—is that
The context of this verse—as part of the Passion Discourse—is where Jesus is talking about coming from the Father and returning to the Father. It is not about End Times events. It is about preparing His followers to become the church, and to live in the Kingdom despite the temporary physical absence of the King. To the people who were there listening to Jesus, it was about the present day and the near future. To us, it’s about the year 33… and today.
Jesus was about to go away. He was not talking about ascending to heaven; not yet. He was talking about descending to hell. This was the night He would get arrested; the night before He was executed. This going away was only going to last the weekend. It was going to be a traumatic separation for His followers, because—since it involved Jesus’s death—it was going to look permanent. And once Jesus came back, He didn’t expect to physically lead them as He had been. They were going to have to function without Him standing there, ready to bail them out or correct them. (Not that He isn’t still here, but following an invisible God isn’t as easy as following a visible one. Takes more faith.)
In His going away, He didn’t want them worried. The events of the next day would pay for their salvation. He was about to prepare a place for them and us—not through literally going to the under-construction New Jerusalem, putting on a hardhat and overalls, and tacking ten billion extra rooms onto God’s heavenly temple. He did this by dying, and taking down sin with Himself. The room Jesus said He was going to prepare is ready. He isn’t delaying His return to take possession of the earth because the contractors are taking too long on the last million mansions. He’s delaying because He wants everyone who can be saved, saved. (2Pe 3.9) He’s already made room for them.
When He was raised, He came to get them, so that they would always be where He was. And we, today, are likewise meant to be where He is: Following Him, and building the Kingdom. (I’ll get to the way to where He went next week.)