Jesus Brings Us Home

By John Greco

I wasn’t married when I bought my first house, a small ranch in need of some serious renovation. And I got to work, fixing what I could and hiring help for what I couldn’t. During the remodeling, I met and fell in love with Laurin, the woman who is now my wife. That updated ranch became our first home together. It was just the two of us, and although the home would be considered cozy by most standards, it was enormous to us. We had a hard time imagining how we would fill all that space.

Then we had our first son, and our home suddenly had to accommodate a nursery, then a playroom. Our spare bedroom became part-home office, part-guestroom, part-storage facility. Baby equipment began to fill our living room. Things were tight but liveable—until we found out that we were expecting again. Suddenly, the fixer-upper that seemed so enormous to me as a bachelor and a newlywed was too small for our expanding family.

As families grow, they need more space. It’s simple math. That’s what Jesus was getting at when He told His disciples, “In my Father’s house are many rooms; if not, I would have told you. I am going away to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2). Every one of Jesus’s followers will one day share a home with God. That’s how it was in the beginning for God’s children, back in Eden, and it’s how it will be again when Jesus returns. The apostle John caught a glimpse of this in the book of Revelation: “I also saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband” (Revelation 21:2). This was the “house” Jesus spoke about, where He is now preparing a place for us.

In the Jewish culture of the first century, when a man and a woman planned to get married, the bridegroom-to-be would visit the home of his beloved to arrange the marriage with the bride’s father. As our bridegroom, Jesus did this when He left heaven to come to earth. The groom would pay an agreed-upon price for his bride’s hand and then make payment. Jesus paid for His bride with His own life at Calvary. Then the bridegroom would leave the bride’s house and return to his own father’s home, where he would begin the work of constructing a new room, an addition to the house, where he and his bride will live after the betrothal period is complete. Jesus returned to heaven, to His Father, and is now preparing a place for us in His Father’s house.

This is why Jesus alone can say, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). The only way to draw near to the Father is to be made part of the family, to be the bride of the bridegroom. Jesus did everything necessary to make this glorious happy ending a true story, including being nailed to a Roman cross for our sins. This is the good news of Easter: our sins have been paid for; injustice, pain, and death will be no more; and Jesus is preparing a forever-home for us in His Father’s house. It doesn’t get much better than that. “He who testifies about these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming soon.’ Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 22:20).

Written by John Greco