“In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.”
Devotional
“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me.”
Those are Jesus’ amazing words to Peter directly after he predicts that Peter will betray him. What he says next in our passage is meant to give our troubled hearts peace as we trust his promise.
"In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.”
Jesus wants us to be convinced that we have a place in his Father’s house, that our future eternal destination is God’s house. If the reason he goes to the Father is to prepare a place for us, we can be sure he will come and take us there. He always completes his work.
Jesus doesn’t require us to find and work our way to the Father’s house. He both prepares the place, through his death and resurrection, and takes us to the place. The best thing about this place, the most essential thing about it, is that it’s where he is, and he wants us there!
Jesus’ promise gives our troubled hearts peace as we stop trusting in ourselves and trust him, who has secured and prepared the place for us in his Father’s house. It gives us power to endure suffering with hope as we anticipate the joy of being with him. As we grow in assurance of and desire for our home in the Father’s house and Jesus’ return to take us to himself, we will happily lay down our earthly lives in gospel proclaiming self-sacrifice as we follow Jesus. As he said in John 12:26,
“If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also.”
“What does God require in the sixth, seventh, and eighth commandments?
Sixth, that we do not hurt, or hate, or be hostile to our neighbor, but be patient and peaceful, pursuing even our enemies with love. Seventh, that we abstain from sexual immorality and live purely and faithfully, whether in marriage or in single life, avoiding all impure actions, looks, words, thoughts, or desires, and whatever might lead to them. Eighth, that we do not take without permission that which belongs to someone else, nor withhold any good from someone we might benefit.”
Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Man cannot even keep the Ten Commandments. And yet he talks glibly about keeping the Sermon on the Mount, and of imitating Christ. . . . And if a man cannot keep the Ten Commandments, as they understand them, what hope have they of keeping the Ten Commandments as they have been interpreted by the Lord Jesus Christ? That was the whole trouble with the Pharisees, who so hated him and who finally crucified him. They thought they were keeping the Ten Commandments and the moral law. Our Lord convinced them and convicted them of the fact that they were not doing so. They claimed that they had never committed murder. Wait a minute, said our Lord. Have you ever said to your brother, “Thou fool”? If you have, you are guilty of murder. Murder does not only mean actually, physically, killing a man, it means that bitterness and hatred in your heart. . . . And he taught the same, you remember, with regard to adultery. They claimed that they were guiltless. But wait a minute, says our Lord, you say you have never committed adultery? “But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart” (Matt. 5:28). He is guilty; he has coveted, he has desired. You see, as our Lord comes to interpret the law, he shows that an evil desire is as damnable as a deed. A thought and an imagination are as reprehensible in the sight of God as the act committed.
Source: New City Catechism, Question 11
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New City Catechism
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