John 14:2

John 14:2. In my Father's house are many places of abode: if it were not so, I would have told you; because I go to prepare a place for you. All the substantives here used ‘house,' ‘places of abode,' ‘place' are full of meaning. The first is not the material building, but the building as occupied by its inmates (comp. chaps, John 2:16; John 11:20, with John 4:53; John 8:35; John 11:31); the second, used in the New Testament only in this verse and in John 14:23, is connected with the characteristic ‘abide' of our Gospel; and the third embodies the idea of something fixed and definite something that we may call our own (comp. chap. John 11:48). But the full force and beauty of the words are only understood by us when we look at them in a light different from that in which they are generally regarded. For ‘my Father's house' does not mean heaven as distinguished from earth, nor are the ‘abiding places' confined to the world to come. Earth as well as heaven is to the eye of faith a part of that ‘house:' abiding places are here as well as there. The universe, in short, is presented to us by our Lord as one ‘house' over which the Father rules, having ‘many' apartments, some on this side, others on the other side, the grave. In one of these the believer dwells now, and the Father and the Son come unto him, and make their abode with him (John 14:23): in another of them he will dwell hereafter. When, therefore, Jesus ‘goes away,' it is not to a strange land, it is only to another chamber of the one house of the Father: and thus ‘many' is not to be understood in the sense of variety, of different degrees of happiness and glory provided for different persons. The main thought is that wherever Jesus is, wherever we are, we are all in the Father's house: surely such separation is no real separation. Had not this been the true nature of the case, had it not been essentially involved in the mission of Jesus that His disciples, once united to Him, could never be separated from Him, He would ‘have told' them, His teaching would have been entirely different from what it had been; but, because wherever He was there He would prepare a place for them also, He had not thought it necessary till now to speak either of being separated or of being united again. It will thus be seen that the words beginning with ‘because' are to be connected with those going immediately before, and not with the earlier part of the verse.