Paul prays for a spirit of wisdom and revelation (1:17). Wisdom is the ability to realize and understand things. For example, if you would give me a camera, I may not know how to put in the film or how to take a picture. I may not even realize that I have to take the lens cover off. I simply do not have the wisdom to know and understand how to operate a camera. Wisdom is to know and understand something, but revelation is to see something. Suppose there is a big factory with many machines. We may have the wisdom to know how to operate all the machines, but if the factory is not open to us, we cannot see anything. On the other hand, if the factory is opened, we can see everything, but if we do not understand the machines, our seeing means very little. We need both the wisdom and the revelation. Our spirit is a spirit of wisdom and revelation. We must turn to our spirit to get the wisdom to know and understand the things of the church and also to receive the revelation to see the things of the church.
First, we must have the proper base and foundation of being in the spirit. Then Paul prays that we “may know what is the hope of His calling” (v. 18). Because we have been called by God, we now have a marvelous hope. Paul’s concept is that this hope is our destiny and also our destination. We all must see the hope, the destiny, and the destination to which God has called us.
The hope of God’s calling is not that we would go to heaven. Although this traditional thought is held by many Christians, it is superstitious and completely off the line of the revelation in the Bible. In the New Testament and even in the entire Bible, you simply cannot find a verse where God says clearly that when we die, we will go to heaven.
Throughout the centuries, many have held the concept that the Father’s house in John 14 refers to a mansion in the heavens to which the believers go after they die. The King James Version renders John 14:2, “In My Father’s house are many mansions.” But if you look into the Greek text, you will find that in the same chapter, the word translated mansions in verse 2 is the same as the word translated abode in verse 23: “If anyone loves Me,...We will come to him and make an abode with him.” The only difference is that in verse 2 the plural form of the word is used, and in verse 23 it is singular. According to the Greek, it is not mansions in John 14:2, but abodes: “In My Father’s house are many abodes.”
When I was young, I heard a respected Bible teacher say, “John 14 tells us that the Lord Jesus has gone to prepare mansions for us in the heavens. After He has prepared them, He will come back to take us there. Because He has not come back yet, this means He has not finished the mansions. The Lord Jesus Himself has been building these mansions for over nineteen hundred years and still He is not finished. Consider what marvelous mansions those will be.” At that time, I was really captured. I said: “Lord, thank You. I do not care what kind of poor cottage I may live in today. You are preparing a marvelous, gorgeous, all-splendid, big mansion in the heavens for me, still not yet finished!” I held this kind of teaching for many years. Then one day, after nearly twenty years, the Lord opened my eyes to see the truth concerning all these things, and I cast aside all of these traditional and superstitious teachings.
The Lord’s word, “I go to prepare a place for you” (14:2), does not mean that He has gone to the heavens to build a big mansion for us. God’s intention in the Gospel of John is not to build a physical mansion in the heavens and then bring us there. This is absolutely against the concept of this book. The main concept in the Gospel of John is that Jesus as the Word was God. Then He became flesh to die on the cross for us that we might be redeemed. In His resurrection, He wrought Himself into His redeemed people that they might be regenerated, born of God. As a result, God can be in us and we can be in God. God’s intention is that He would abide in us and that we would abide in Him (John 14:20; 1 John 4:13). As long as we are in the Lord and the Lord is in us, whether the abodes will be in the heavens or on earth should not matter. We are not for the heavens; we are for the Lord. The heavens are not our abode, but the Lord Jesus is. We abide in Him, and He abides in us.
We should not trust in the traditional and often superstitious teachings that we have received in the past. It is not so simple to understand and interpret the Bible. We need to ask ourselves what is meant by “My Father’s house” in this book. In the Gospel of John, this expression is used twice: in 14:2 and also in 2:16. In chapter two the Lord Jesus said, “Do not make My Father’s house a house of merchandise.” Here the term, My Father’s house, refers to God’s temple. Then in verse 19 the Lord said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” John tells us that the Lord’s meaning was that His body was the temple (v. 21). The Jews tried to kill Him, to destroy His body on the cross, but in three days He resurrected His body. Now in resurrection this body is not only the Lord’s own physical body but also His mystical Body, the church. In John 2 the Father’s house is God’s temple, and God’s temple is the Body of Christ, the church, produced out of the Lord’s death and resurrection. If the term “My Father’s house” denotes the church in chapter two, it would not be logical for it to denote the heavens in chapter fourteen of the same book.
In 14:2 the Lord said, “In My Father’s house are many abodes;...I go to prepare a place for you.” By this word, the Lord reveals that in the church there are many abodes. Furthermore, His going to prepare a place for us was His going by His death and resurrection. By His death on the cross, He accomplished redemption to remove every obstacle between God and man, opening the way for us to have a standing, a place, in God. By His resurrection, He was transfigured from the flesh into the Spirit that He might regenerate His redeemed people, entering into them to dwell in them. As a result of His going through death and resurrection, we have become His abodes. God abides in us, and we abide in God. In chapter fifteen, this mutual abiding is clearly revealed by the Lord’s word, “Abide in Me and I in you” (v. 4). The Greek word translated “abide” in this verse is the root of the words translated “abodes” and “abode” in 14:2 and 23. The verb, abide (Gk. meno), is the root of the noun, abode (Gk. mone). Chapter fourteen deals with the noun, the place, the abode. Then chapter fifteen refers to the verb, the action, the abiding. Before you can abide, you need the abodes. The abodes are prepared through the Lord’s going in chapter fourteen. Then the mutual abiding is revealed in chapter fifteen.
In John 14:3, the Lord Jesus said, “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I am coming again and will receive you to Myself, that where I am you also may be.” The explanation of “where I am” in this verse is provided in verse 10: “I am in the Father.” Therefore, the Lord was revealing to His disciples that they would also be where He was, that is, in the Father. While the Lord was speaking this word, He was among His disciples, but it was not yet possible for them to be in the Father. He needed to go, to accomplish the work of redemption through His death on the cross, to take away sin. He also needed to be resurrected, to open the way that the disciples might be brought into the Father and that the Father might be brought into them. The Lord’s work is not to bring us merely to the heavens. The Lord’s work of death and resurrection is to bring us into God and to bring God into us.
In verse 20 the Lord said, “In that day you shall know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.” In that day, the day of resurrection, the disciples would know that He is in the Father. Surely if He is in the Father, they will be in the Father because where He is, there they would also be (v. 3). Since He is in the Father and the disciples are in Him, spontaneously, they also are in the Father. Because the Father is in Him and He will be in them, the Father also will be in them. Furthermore, verse 23 says, “We [the Lord and His Father] will come to him and make an abode with him.” This abode is one of the many abodes in verse 2. It is a mutual abode for the Triune God to abide in the believers and for the believers to abide in Him. We must drop the false, unscriptural, and leavened concept of going to a physical, heavenly mansion. We must care for Christ and for the mutual abode, the church.
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