MANSIONS AND ROOMS IN GOD (Part 1)

QUESTION: Hello good evening, there’s this text John 14:1-3 that I have been battling with but can’t understand, are there mansions in heaven or what was Christ referring to when He talked about going to prepare a place for us so that where He is we be also.

My questions.

1. Can mansions be built in a house?

2. Where was Christ that He wanted us to be as well?

3. Has He gone to the father to build these mansions or not yet

4. Which kind of mansions could these be and when shall we get into them if at all?

Feel free to share your thoughts, mine will come later. All thoughts are welcome.

Pr Collins Odero

RESPONSE: Pastor, thank you for your questions and praise God. Most of us are interested in the topic of mansions because we all want to get to that ‘place’ called heaven where all good things are and we all anticipate owning plenty. Let me try to answer the question, as well as the other follow-up ones.

THE TEXT

“Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. ² In My Father’s house are many ^[a]mansions; if it were not so,^[b]I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. ³ And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also” states John 14:1-3 in the New King James Version.

Some have interpreted these verses as referring to the rapture as occurring after the Tribulation. They contend that Jesus’ words “do not be concerned” refers to the end times (eschatology), and that this is when the church will be raptured.

But, because the rapture is not a component of Christian eschatology or even Christian theology, I won’t waste time on it for the time being.

The text we’re looking at can be broken down into three sections:

1. believe in God, believe also in me;
2. there are many mansions in my father’s house; and
3. I’m going to prepare a place for you, and I’ll come and receive you to myself.

To understand these claims in the passage, we must first study the Greek text, and only then can we move to theology on the passage after we have grasped the language structure.

BELIEVE = Pisteuete eis tonne theon kai eis eme Pisteuete would be the Greek transliteration of verse 1. ‘Believe in God and believe in me,‘ according to the English version, seems like Jesus was saying believe in BOTH God and Jesus. However, ‘Believe’ is in the indicative present active with imperative connotations in the Greek syntax.

This means that Jesus is teaching his audience that BELIEVING IN GOD MEANS BELIEVING IN JESUS CHRIST…not because GOD and JESUS are two separate entities that agree (as Trinitarians teach), but because God and Jesus are both names for the same being. In other words, God is one, while the others (father, son, and spirit) are anthropomorphic communicative divine manifestations.

This is why, later in John 14:7-11, Jesus tells Thomas, “He who has seen me has seen the Father; how then can you say, “Show us the Father?”?” Believe that I am in the father, and that the father is in the father.‘ The BELIEVE IN ME method to gaining entrance to the mansions and places in the Father’s house is new and different in comparison to other methods. To get into the father’s house, you’ll need two things:

1. Tribe (you must be from the Levite tribe or at the very least from King David’s royal kin) and
2. Religion (you have to be in the lineage of the Aaronic priestly order).

Here we have Jesus of Nazareth telling us that all you have to do today is believe in order to gain access to the inaccessible, and the object of that BELIEF is none other than Himself.

HOUSE WITH MANY MANSIONS AND THE PLACE = We have a house, translated in Greeks as Oikia and mansions, which is Mone in the Greek, which means domicile or dwelling place. If we are to grasp the father’s house, the many mansions, and the place (Greek: Topos) that Jesus intended to prepare for Believers without preconceived concepts of heaven, I believe we need to review this perspective. The Mansions to be given to believers and a place to be prepared for them are in the father’s House. To comprehend the Father’s House, you must first comprehend who the father is. Patros Mou is the Greek word translated as ‘My Father‘ in John 14:2. It’s worth noting that Jesus did not say Patel emon which means “Our Father” (Matthew 6:9), but rather “MY FATHER“. To his audience, such language communicated the relationship between a Son and a Father who, in this audience’s culture, were one and the same person.

In Greek, my father is in the Genitive Case. Patros Mou is in the Genitive of Relationship in the Greek syntactical classification of the genitive case. Although the genitive of relationship is a subset of the genitive of possession, the one of relationship is more concerned with identity than with ownership. When the incarnate God says, “My father,” he is referring to himself, not to another being who is not himself. He is, after all, the physical father (John 1:1-3, 14). A human being addressing God as their father was blasphemous and punishable by death to the Jewish audience. Because doing so meant referring to yourself as a God.

The term ‘My Father’ is thus not a father he shared with them in this capacity, but rather the father himself speaking to them, promising mansions and a place in his house to anybody who believes him. Patros Mou (my father) tells us all that you can’t acquire the House (Oikia) without first getting the owner of the House, who is none other than the father. I’ll return to this issue later; for now, let’s continue with the other statements in the passage.

I GO, I PREPARE A PLACE, I COME = According to our translations, Jesus ascends after his resurrection, and he will return at the second coming, which we all await. The Greek subjunctive aorist in the first phrase I go and the indicative present middle in the second phrase I come, on the other hand, imply that the GOING and COMING take place at the same time. It is a single event occurring at a single point in time.

The incarnate God has physical limitations while on Earth, but the resurrected God has no such geographical or physical limitations. As events unfold, we witness the same Thomas in John 14 in the upper room chamber, where God enters their presence without being agitated as before (John 20:24-29).
The I GO might refer to God’s time in the grave (he had gone), and the I COME could refer to his resurrection (when he appeared to them again). However, in John 14:3, God challenges us, saying, “When I come, I will take you to myself, that where I am, you may be also.”

There are two alternative interpretations here: first, eschatologically (in the end times), when Jesus appears in the clouds, he would have returned to take us away from this Earth and to his dwelling place in heaven. Second, we may maintain consistency with the act of I go (Poreumai) and the act of I come (Erikomai) and confirm that believers in the God who resurrected were able to do so immediately after he regained his Authority, which had been limited in his incarnation form (Mathew 28:18).

If we take the second viewpoint (which I agree with both contextually and linguistically), the going and coming has already occurred. This is to suggest that John 14:1-3 should not be interpreted as referring to the eschatological second coming of Christ or the end of the world.

Next, I’ll discuss the text’s theology.

God bless you,

I invoke TRUTH, WISDOM and FAITH (2Tim 2:7)

Priest M.I.T White (+256-775 822833)

iTiS Well of Worship Fellowship (John 4:24)

Questioning to Believe and Believing to Live