Will I Have My Own Home in Heaven?
By Randy Alcorn
“In my Father’s house are many mansions… I go to prepare a place for you.” - John 14:2
Perhaps you’re familiar with Christ’s promise in John 14: “In my Father’s house are many mansions… I go to prepare a place for you” (v. 2, KJV). The Vulgate, the Latin Bible, used the word mansiones in that verse, and the King James Version followed by using mansions. Unfortunately, that rendering is misleading if it makes us envision having massive lodgings on separate estates. The intended meaning seems to be that we’ll have separate dwelling places on a single estate or even separate rooms within the same house.
New Testament scholar D. A. Carson says, “Since heaven is here pictured as the Father’s house, it is more natural to think of ‘dwelling-places’ within a house as rooms or suites… The simplest explanation is best: my Father’s house refers to heaven, and in heaven are many rooms, many dwelling-places. The point is not the lavishness of each apartment, but the fact that such ample provision has been made that there is more than enough space for every one of Jesus’ disciples to join him in his Father’s home.” [1]
The New International Version rendering of John 14:2 is this: “In my Father’s house are many rooms… I am going there to prepare a place for you.” Place is singular, but rooms is plural. This suggests Jesus has in mind for each of us an individual dwelling that’s a smaller part of the larger place. This place will be home to us in the most unique sense.
The term room is cozy and intimate. The terms house or estate suggest spaciousness. That’s Heaven: a place both spacious and intimate. Some of us enjoy coziness, being in a private space. Others enjoy a large, wide-open space. Most of us enjoy both—and the New Earth will offer both.
Heaven isn’t likely to have lots of identical residences. God loves diversity, and He tailor-makes His children and His provisions for them. When we see the particular place He’s prepared for us—not just for mankind in general but for us in particular—we’ll rejoice to see our ideal home.
When you’re traveling late at night and you don’t know where you’re going to stay, nothing’s more discouraging than finding a No Vacancy sign. There’s no such sign in Heaven. If we’ve made our reservations by accepting God’s gift in Christ, then Heaven is wide open to us. Jesus knew what it was like to have no vacancy in the inn and to sleep in a barn. On the New Earth, He’ll have plenty of room for all of us.
Our love for home, our yearning for it, is a glimmer of our longing for our true home.
[1] Donald A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 489.
Adapted from Randy Alcorn’s original article on Eternal Perspective Ministries, “Will We Have Our Own Homes in Heaven?”. Used with permission.You can view the article in full here.
For more on the eternal life that awaits us, see Randy’s book Heaven. You can also browse additional books and resources on Heaven available from EPM.
Randy Alcorn (@randyalcorn) is the author of over fifty books and the founder and director of Eternal Perspective Ministries.
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