Concerning those disciples who had followed Jesus on earth, He said: “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” (John 14:3). In verse 2, Jesus had said, “In My Father’s house [His Being in Heaven] are many dwelling places.”
The places that Jesus would be preparing for these disciples were within His Father, where the Son makes His home and where their inner person of Spirit and heart has been abiding since they received Christ on earth. We know this because John 1:18 says that the Son is “in the bosom of the Father,” which means that Jesus’ heavenly abode is within the Father’s heart. Though the Son travels widely, He returns to His Father’s heart as His home. In John 17:24, Jesus prays to His Father, “Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory…” which is the radiance of the Father’s goodness in the Son.
In John 12:26, Jesus told His disciples, “If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him.”
We also know that Jesus lives within the Father from Hebrews 12:22-24, which also describes the city and throne of God in the present Heaven:
22 “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, 23 to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, 24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel.”
This is the dwelling place within the Father God that Jesus promised His disciples in John 14:2-3 that where He is, there they may be also.
The blood must reach into the farthest depths of Heaven – which is the heart of God. The full extent of the payment must be made into the deepest and most private depths of all – It is not there to cleanse God. It is there to pay the complete price to God.
Christ Jesus carries the spirits of all believers on earth who have been joined to Him as one spirit. For “the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him” (1 Cor. 6:17).
When each such believer dies on earth, that one is given a spiritual body in Heaven until the time of the general resurrection when all believers in Heaven and believers who are alive on earth at that time will be given resurrected bodies like Christ’s. Paul said: “For our citizenship is in Heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory” (Philippians 3:20-21).
THE BRETHREN ABOVE
The believers in Heaven are generally:
- Those who have emptied themselves of their fleshly soul life and allowed Jesus to replace those areas of their souls with Christ Himself.
- Those who, on earth, did not crucify the fleshly parts of their souls.
Those in the first category are taken to live within the Father. The second are granted to live in three places:
- a) In the beautifully wooded garden in Heaven generally called Paradise. It comprises the outer border of Heaven; (Rev. 2:7) or
- b) In the beautiful personal homes within the city called the heavenly Jerusalem; (Heb. 12:22) or
- c) To live a great deal of their time on the large, luminous floor before the throne called the sea of glass; (Rev. 4:6; 15:2-2).
ONE OF THE GREATEST PROMISES ABOUT GOD
The Lord Jesus made a magnificent promise to His disciples on the night before He was crucified:
“… I have made Your name [the Father’s spirit nature and heart character] known to them [His disciples], and will make it known [in the future, so that the love with which You [the Father] loved Me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:26).
Disciples are promised here two awesome pledges by Jesus:
- They will receive the same love from the Father that He has for the Son in them; and
- There will be no end to the new revelation of the Father, which Jesus in Heaven will continue to share with them there. Furthermore, each new disclosure of His Father will be deeper and more glorious than the previous ones. New depths within the Father will be opened to our brethren in Heaven by these revelations – which are part of those which Jesus referred to in John 16:12: “I have many more things to say to you, [the disciples] but you cannot bear them now.”
