110. A Prepared Place
John 14:3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am there ye may be also.
The promise of Jesus is that we will be with Him where He is. Where He is there we will be also; we will be with Him. Jesus said He would go and prepare a place; He prepared that place when he died on the cross and rose again from the dead. Where He went was to the Cross and the Tomb to overcome Sin and Death. He has done that as promised. Then He will come again to receive us; He did that when He sent the Holy Spirit to come and be with us where we are. Now the promise is fulfilled and we are with Him.
According to John 14:23, “We will come to him and make our home with him.” The word for home in v. 23 is the same rare Greek word for “place” in vv. 2, 3. It appears that the place He prepared for us is within us, in our spirits, where He and the Father would come and make a “home.” In other words, the place He prepared for us by His death and resurrection is in our hearts where God will dwell with us. Jesus is at home in our hearts. Jesus lives within my heart, that special place He prepared for us to live with Him and He with us.
The other, more usual, way of interpreting the “place prepared” is the place in heaven, which His death and resurrection makes for us there. Both ways may be taken as true: heaven is “up there” as well as “right here” within. This already and not yet paradox is hard to understand, but it can be believed. What it says is that we “go to heaven” to the place prepared when we go to Jesus living within. The Good News is that we can go to this place any time, anywhere. It may blow our mind to think that we may “go to heaven” now while we live on earth, but this is the promise: the “prepared place” is heaven on earth, and that place is where God makes His home in our spirit.
All of this is in the context of John and especially John 14-16, where Jesus says He will send the Holy Spirit to be with us and in us. When the HS is there so also is the Father and the Son. Reflect on this promise and let it sink in: God is in heaven; God is in my heart; heaven is where God is; heaven is within our spirit where God is at home, the place prepared. By faith I am with Him at home in my heart. We believe the “already in heaven” and the “not yet in heaven” promise. It is hard to see and hard to believe, but it is true.