John 14:2-3 “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. (3) And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.”
In this passage, when He speaks of His Father’s house, our Lord Jesus is referring to the heavenly city of Jerusalem. The word translated “mansions” in this passage, can more accurately be translated, “dwellings or residences”. And so, in His comment about the city, Jesus explains to us that the city is made up of many residences. Jesus then goes on to say, that He is preparing a place for each one of His saints. So what does that mean? It does not mean that for every saint that comes into the kingdom, Jesus then adds a new residence to the city, for as we have already seen, all the residences are already in place. Jesus confirms that truth for us in this passage, for He said, in My Father’s house are (present tense) many residences, and I am going to prepare one of them for each one of you. In other words, from eternity, each residence has already been built by God for each one of His saints. That happened, when God originally designed and built the city. But what Jesus is doing at this present moment, is He is making each residence individually suitable for each one of His saints. Another way of putting it would be to say, that Jesus is currently putting the finishing touches to each of His saint’s residences in the eternal city.
Matthew 20:23 “So He said to them, "You will indeed drink My cup, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with; but to sit on My right hand and on My left is not Mine to give, but it is for those for whom it is prepared by My Father.”
As we look at the heavenly city in more detail, we will see that there are not only residences in the city, but that there are also thrones there. In the above passage of scripture, our Lord Jesus alludes to two of the thrones, when He speaks of who will be seated at His right hand and on His left. If you read the passage, in context, James and John had asked Him, if they could be seated on His right hand and on His left, in His kingdom. But the point that I wanted to highlight from this passage in this section however, is that God the Father has already preordained which saint will be seated on which throne in eternity, which is why Jesus said that He did not have the authority to give those positions. And so, just as God the Father has preordained which saints will sit on which thrones in the heavenly city, so He has also preordained which residence each saint will reside in, in the heavenly city.
Michael E.B. Maher
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