January 16, 2026
I’m going to start with two verses not found in today’s reading.
And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade” (John 2:15–16).
What does Jesus mean when he says here, “My Father’s house”? The answer is (of course) the Jerusalem temple. But then why, in John 14:2, which is the only other place in John’s Gospel where Jesus uses the phrase “my Father’s house,” do we assume he means some heavenly home?
The King James Version, following the Vulgate, originally translated John 14:2 as follows:
“In my Father’s house are many mansions (Latin: mansiones): if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.”
The idea of heavenly mansions waiting for Christians after death has been part of the Christian collective imagination for a long time. But the ESV provides a better rendering.
“In my Father’s house are many rooms (μοναὶ). If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?”
The point is not heavenly mansions but dwelling space. The temple symbolizes the place where heaven and earth connect and where God lives with his people. There are many dwelling spaces in the “temple,” meaning there is room for all of God’s people to live with God in the place where heaven and earth meet.
The place where heaven and earth meet is now the community of believers who are filled with the Holy Spirit and the temple of the living God (cf. 2 Cor 6:14). Is it any wonder then that Jesus promises the Holy Spirit in this same chapter (John 14:16, 26)?
Furthermore, the Greek word μονή, which is translated as “rooms” in the ESV, appears in only one other New Testament passage, and it’s (again) in this same chapter.
Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home (μονὴν) with him” (John 14:23, ESV).
Whatever Jesus means (and I acknowledge it’s difficult to understand fully), he definitely isn’t saying that mansions are waiting for us in the sky. Instead, he seems to be explaining that through the gift of the Holy Spirit in his people—“my Father’s house” understood pneumatically—Jesus is preparing a dwelling place not in heaven later, but within the community of faith now. In John 2, Jesus cleanses the physical temple. In John 14, he promises to dwell within a new temple—his people. And if you want to know how to find this new temple, he is the way (14:6).