Lesson for the Lord’s Day
In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. John 14:2
My wife has been bustling about the house with dust cloth and vacuum cleaner, tidying up and cleaning. She has also been laying in extra supplies of food, including some special items. She has been making lists and checking off completed items. She is making the house ready for the various family events of the season. There is much to do, and she wants everything to be ready for when guests arrive for meals and visits. She started the planning long ago, and has everything just about ready. Is that how we perceive the Lord Jesus preparing a place for us in His Father’s house? His preparation actually involves far more than finalizing the arrangements for our eternal abode!
A few verses before today’s text, Peter asks Jesus an important question: Lord, whither goest Thou? Our text is an answer to that question. He was telling Peter that the Father’s house had plenty of mansions, but preparation had to be made before Peter and the rest of us could occupy them. I don’t believe Jesus was suggesting the mansions were in need of housecleaning, or that they were unfinished in any way. No, Jesus was not referring to going to Heaven to prepare the mansions, but was going to Calvary to prepare a way for us to go to the mansions. His preparation at Calvary was critical to our ever reaching His Father’s house.
The Father’s house is undefiled by sin. God’s presence cannot tolerate sin’s entrance. Because we are sinners, we are also barred from God’s presence. We have no access to the waiting mansions. We have no claim to the joys and beauties there. There is no gate that will allow us admittance. That’s why Jesus went to the cross, to open a gate into those mansions. That’s what He was referring to when He cried ‘It is finished’. The great roadblock of sin was cleared away, and the access to Heaven secured. The sin that was shutting us out from God’s presence was not an obstacle that we could move. It had condemned us to die. But on the cross, the Lord Jesus died for us. His death became the very gate to eternal life.
Well might we joyfully sing today, ‘The cross of Christ is all my boast, His blood my only plea. My passport to the realms of bliss is Jesus died for me.’ – Jim MacIntosh