The Way to the Father's House

The theme of the fourth Sunday of Advent is love. Love explains why Jesus came. But love also explains why Jesus left.

“Lord, where are you going?” (Jn 13:36).

That’s what Simon Peter asked Jesus at the end of the previous chapter. Jesus had said that he would be with them for just a little while longer and then we would leave them. And where he was going, they wouldn’t be able to go (Jn 13:33). Not yet at least.

How could this be? Just as Jesus appears to have reached the climactic moment of his life, he tells his disciples that he is going to leave. Where could he possibly be going at such a crucial moment? There was work to be done, the very work for which Jesus, as Israel’s Messiah, was here to do. For Jesus to leave now would be like the star quarterback leaving the stadium with the score tied in the fourth quarter. It would be like the lead actor leaving the theater just moments before the curtain is raised.

“Jesus, where are you going? It’s game time. It’s show time. Why would you leave now? We need an explanation!”

What Jesus says next, in our passage today, are some of his most famous words as he explains to the disciples where he is going and why he is going there. He explains to the disciples that he is going to the Father’s house, that he is going to prepare a place for them, and that he is going to come again for them.

Going to the Father’s House

First, Jesus says the place he is going, the place he is going where they cannot go with him, is the Father’s house. That’s what he says in verse 2. In verse 12 he says he is “going to the Father,” and he says that again down in verse 28. So, Jesus says quite plainly where he is going, but that doesn’t mean his disciples understand what he means. Do you and I know what he means? We hear what he says, but does this make sense?

To say that he is going to “the Father’s house” is to use temple language, isn’t it? Consider that the only other time in John’s Gospel where we find that expression is when Jesus entered the temple and drove out the money-changers saying, “Do not make my Father’s house a house of trade” (Jn 2:16). And when Jesus says here in verse 2 that there are many rooms in his Father’s house, that is not new information. The temple in Jerusalem had more rooms than any other structure known to most first-century Jews. [1]

So, Jesus is saying that he is going to the temple. That makes sense. Given what we know about the importance of the temple, that would be the one place for Israel’s Messiah to go to establish his kingdom.

But what makes things tricky here is that Jesus is not talking about the temple in Jerusalem, because that was not the real temple. It was just a copy or shadow of the real temple that Christ was intending to go to. Listen to how Hebrews 9:24 puts it.

For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.

Now this takes some adjustments in our thinking to comprehend. “The literal sanctuary is the heavenly one and the figurative sanctuary is the earthly.”[2]

But don’t make the mistake of thinking that Jesus is not a real Messiah, a real king. Don’t assume now that he is giving up on the plan to establish God’s eternal kingdom on earth in exchange for some kind of spiritual kingdom in heaven. Jesus is going to the true temple precisely so that his kingdom will advance on earth. It will be to the disciples’ advantage that he will go away. It is because he is going to the Father, he tells the disciples in verse 12, that those who believe in me will do “greater works” than Jesus himself had done.

How can this be?

Going to Prepare a Place

Because, you see, Jesus is not just going to the Father’s house. He’s going to his Father’s house with a purpose. He is going there to prepare a place for his disciples.

Now what does that mean?

William Tyndale’s translation of the word “rooms” in verse 2 was “mansions,” and the King James Bible kept that rendering and led to all sorts of speculations about the kind of place Jesus must be preparing for us.

I'm satisfied with just a cottage below A little silver and a little gold But in that city where the ransomed will shine I want a gold one that's silver lined

I've got a mansion just over the hilltop In that bright land where we'll never grow old And someday yonder we will never more wander But walk on streets that are pure as gold.[3]

Sorry if this is disappointing to you, but the word “rooms” simply means a place where one can stay. The emphasis is on there being plenty of space rather than on the lavishness of the space.[4]

At the same time, Jesus does say that he is going to make preparations. And since there already seems to be enough space in the Father’s house, what are the preparations that Jesus needs to make? “It is not that he arrives on the scene and then begins to prepare the place” but rather that “it is the going itself, via the cross and resurrection, that prepare the place for Jesus’ disciples.”[5]

All this makes sense once we have grasped the temple language. Think of how the priests would go into the temple and perform their duties, how the high priest would go once a year into the Holy of Holies and offer blood to atone for the sins of the people. This is what Jesus is going to do, these are the preparations he was going to make by leaving the disciples.

The author of Hebrews explains it this way. “When Christ appeared as a high priest,” when he entered the holy places once for all in the true temple and offered himself without blemish to God, this secured for us “an eternal redemption.” This preparation has purified our consciences “from dead works to serve the living God” (Heb 9:11-14).

St. Augustine said that Jesus went to prepare the dwelling places by preparing for them the dwellers.[6] It is not God’s house that needs to be prepared for us but us who need to be prepared for it.

And that’s why Jesus went. The third stanza of Away in a Manger almost gets it right:

Be near me, Lord Jesus; I ask Thee to stay close by me forever, and love me, I pray. Bless all the dear children in Thy tender care, and fit us for heaven, to live with Thee there.

I say, “almost gets it right,” because the thing is that the biblical story is not about how we can go to be with God there but rather how God can come to be with us here.

Going to Come Again

Now all this talk of Jesus going away was troubling to his disciples, but Jesus was hoping to comfort them. “Let not your hearts be troubled.” After all, once they understood where he was going and why he was going there, then it would be inconceivable that he would ultimately abandon them. “If I go and prepare a place for you,” Jesus explains in verse 3, “I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” Yes, Jesus is going to come again.

But when?

Some have thought Jesus’s coming again to “take us to himself” refers to the moment a Christian dies and goes to be with Jesus in heaven. Most Christians today, I think, understand Jesus to be referring to his Second Coming.

But if Jesus has prepared the place, or rather, prepared us for the place, by the way in which he went to the Father’s house—by the cross, by resurrection and ascension—then there is reason to think that Jesus was speaking of a return that he has already completed.

Later on in this chapter, in verse 18, he promised the disciples that he would not leave them orphaned but would come to them. Those words come after Jesus says that he will ask the Father to send “another Helper” who will “be with you forever,” the Holy Spirit who will dwell with you and be in you (Jn 14:15-17).

This is temple language. When God sends his own Holy Spirit to dwell in disciples of Jesus, they will together become God’s new temple, the place where God the Father and Jesus the Son will come and make their home, as Jesus says right there in John 14:23, using the same word as “room” in John 14:2.

And that’s what the Bible says happened at Pentecost, just 40 days after Jesus ascended to the Father’s house.

The way by which Jesus went to the true temple of God has made it possible for everyone who believes in him to be there with him. Right now. And forever. “Believe in God? Believe also in me,” Jesus says.

Those who believe in Jesus have made their way into the Father’s house. They are now in on the action of what God is doing through Jesus and by his Spirit.

See how much he loves you? God so love the word that he gave; he sent his Son. Why? To prepare a place, to make it possible for you and me to always be in God’s temple, in his presence, with access to his power, just as the psalmist dreamed for in Psalm 27:4. The whole Christian story, including the sending of the Spirit in light of what Jesus has done, means that the wish of Psalm 27:4 has been fulfilled. Christmas, then, is just the beginning of God’s love. Celebrate well this week and then go in his love and bring his joy into the world.

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[1] Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of John: A Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012), 932.

[2] G. K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God, New Studies in Biblical Theology, ed. D. A. Carson, vol. 17 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 295.

[3] Ira F. Stanphill, “Over the Hilltop,” hymn, © 1952.

[4] D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John, The Pillar New Testament Commentary, ed. D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids: WM. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1991), 489.

[5] Carson, The Gospel According to John, 489.

[6] Augustine of Hippo, “Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel according to St. John,” in St. Augustin: Homilies on the Gospel of John, Homilies on the First Epistle of John, Soliloquies, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. John Gibb and James Innes, vol. 7, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1888), 323.