THERE is a beautiful parallelism in John 14:2-23 somewhat obscured in the English Bible, from the fact that the same, word in the original is translated in two different manners; but the expression is used in such a way as to leave no doubt that our blessed Lord intended both a comparison and a contrast.
In speaking to His disciples of His departure He explains that He would be an invisible object of their faith, as was the God they and their fathers had long worshipped. They had never seen this mysterious Being dwelling between the cherubim of glory, yet they believed in Him: just so (says Jesus) “believe in Me.” Then using the figure, suggested probably by the invisibility of Israel’s God―the temple―and employing the very expression He applies even to Herod’s temple, “My Father’s house” (John 2:16), He gives to it a profound and heavenly meaning, with which it was His habit to invest the simplest facts and truths with which He dealt.
“In My Father’s house are many mansions” or “abodes,” He assures them; “if it were not so, I would have told you.” An Israelite’s thought would have been arrested at this “many abodes.” The temple provided but few chambers, and they were sacred to the priestly family and to the Levites (1 Chron. 28:11, 12; 2 Chron. 31:11; Neh. 13:9; Jer. 35:1, 2, 36:10). Here was an assurance of ample space and wonderful nearness to God, to be enjoyed by all who shared this belief in the Saviour during His absence. A blessed view this gives surely of the freedom and communion to exist in the Father’s presence, into which an entrance has been guaranteed by Christ Himself; the very place has been prepared by His going to the cross to meet our judgment, and ascending to glory as our Forerunner.
“My Father and your Father” (John 20:17) tells the tale of the place prepared for us―and peculiarly so surely―of being sons before the Father, of whom He is the firstborn (Rom. 8:29). Into this He will Himself introduce us, for it is not a service to be entrusted even to the archangel. “I will come again, and receive you unto Myself, that where I am, there ye may be also.” His love and care would not cease with the preparation of the place, and will withhold nothing of all that joy and glory He has won, which is possible to be communicated to the creature (John 7:22, 23).
But in verse 23. we find another “abode” or “mansion.” The intermediate verses show that the blank caused by the absence of Christ was to be filled by the presence of the Holy Spirit on earth, the possession of whom by the believer is not as a guest, but as One that abides forever, “dwelling with us” and “in us” (vers. 16, 17)
It is the Spirit who gives the sense of sonship (Gal. 4:6), and enables us to take the position of obedience and dependence, characterized by keeping Christ’s commandments―which cannot certainly be the law. The enactments and prohibitions of the decalogue have no sense applied to Christ, because they suppose a spring of evil within—a will that needed to be bridled—a lust that demanded a curb. This Christ never had (2 Cor. 5:21; 1 Peter 2:22; 1 John 3:5).
Acquaintance with these “commandments” is gained by hanging upon the Lord’s “words,” and He who is so conformed to His mind will find a blessed spiritual manifestation of Christ’s presence and favor, incommunicable to another by us, yet really known, felt, and enjoyed. Such a soul becomes an “abode” which the Father and the Son can already inhabit, as He has said, “I will dwell in them and walk in them” (2 Cor. 6:16). Would that there were “many” of these “mansions” F. L.