Most Bible teachers interpret the Lord’s words in verse 3, “I am coming again and will receive you to Myself,” to refer to His second coming. However, in verse 18 the Lord again says, “I will not leave you orphans; I am coming to you.” Then He adds, “Yet a little while and the world beholds Me no longer, but you behold Me; because I live, you shall live also. In that day you shall know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you” (vv. 19-20).
When the Lord went to prepare a place for the believers by death and resurrection, He came again in resurrection to them. His going was His coming! He came back to enter into the disciples by going into death. “I go away, and I am coming to you” (v. 28). This coming is not His second coming, but His coming in resurrection. For a little while they lost Him, but they would behold Him. Because He lived, they also would live. In that day they would know that He was in the Father, they were in Him, and He was in them. “In that day” is not the day of His second coming; if it were, we would all be here as orphans! “That day” came after three days. On the day of resurrection He brought us not to the heavens but into the Father. The Father was the place where He was and where He promised to bring us (v. 3).
The Lord’s concept is that He was in the Father, but that we were not. We were outside. He would die to take away our sins, to destroy the Devil, and to release the Father’s life. Then in resurrection He would bring us into His Father. Thus where He was, we also would be.
Through His death and resurrection He has brought us into the Triune God. For this Triune God we are the many abodes of the Father’s house. This is the church! The church is implied in John 14 in this wonderful way. The church is our home, yet we are all rooms (abodes) in which the Father and the Son may dwell.
You may never have heard such an interpretation of John 14 before. I hope you will not pass off my words as a peculiar way of looking at these verses. If you take the traditional interpretation, you will destroy these four chapters. To consider these verses as referring to literal heavenly mansions is too low, too physical. Such an interpretation is off. John 14 through 17 reveals that we the redeemed ones, through the death and resurrection of Christ, have been brought into the Triune God. The thought here is the Triune God, not heavenly mansions. Because we have been brought into Him, we become Christ’s mystical Body. As His mystical Body, the church is the house of God. In this house of God, which is the real temple of God, are many abodes. Each of us is one of these abodes.
The church is the Father’s house. For centuries 14:2 has been wrongly interpreted. When the Father’s house is mentioned in 2:16, Bible teachers do not connect it with the heavenly mansions. They all recognize that the Father’s house refers to the temple on this earth. Why, then, do they think the Father’s house in 14:2 refers to heaven? It is a principle of biblical interpretation that we must understand the Bible by the Bible. God’s dwelling place in this age on this earth is the church.
The Father’s house in John 14, then, refers to the church. We, the regenerated ones, are the abodes in this house.
“I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing....This is My commandment, that you love one another, even as I have loved you” (John 15:5, 12). The branches of the vine are the church. When the Lord said that we should love one another, He was implying that fruit-bearing is not an individual matter. If we each go our separate ways and seek to bear fruit, there does not need to be any love for one another. To bear fruit while we love one another means that together we bear fruit. The fruit is brought forth in a collective way.
The branches of the vine form a corporate entity, the church. If our concern is only to win souls and we have no regard for the church life, we are being individualistic. We are killing the Body while we are “bearing fruit”!
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