Let’s go higher! Let’s move up through metaphors! Mixed metaphors are a problem to the tidy Western mind, which has “a place for everything and everything in its place”. But in the Middle East metaphors are mixed often. The apostle Paul ‘swaps horses midstream’ (so to speak) by changing his description of the church at Corinth from a planted field to a building site — in the same verse! (1 Corinthians 3:9, 10)
The inspired writers of the New Testament segue between metaphors as seamlessly as worship leaders and musicians do between songs. (Segue was originally a musical term.)
In Revelation 21:9, 10, an angel takes John to a high mountain to show him “the bride, the Lamb’s wife” – and then shows him the New Jerusalem! John seems not to have had a problem with the switch from a bridal beauty to a celestial city. We would laugh if someone said, “When you are riding the crest of a wave, why is it that someone always pulls out the rug from under your feet?” A classic mixed metaphor!
Jesus went to prepare a place for us in his father’s house. Tom Wright translates, “There is plenty of room to live in my father’s house…I’m going to get a place ready for you! And if I do go and get a place ready for you, I will come back and take you to be with me, so that you can be there, where I am.” The “father’s house” is pictured by the apostle Paul as a “temple” that is “the habitation of God by His spirit” (Ephesians 2:22). Jesus is the temple’s cornerstone, the twelve apostles are foundation stones, and believers are “living stones”.
The “mansions” (KJV) in the Father’s “house” are the “rooms” or “places” Jesus has prepared for us in God’s house. In the book of Revelation John uses metaphors to illustrate spiritual realities, and Paul does the same in his epistles. The City is the Bride in purity, the Lamb’s Wife in relationship, the Body in function, the Church in exclusivity, and the Temple is the residence of God by His Spirit. We need to practice holiness, to be true in love, to work in unity with other members, and to prepare ourselves to be filled with God completely when the temple is finished.
We need to occupy the place that Jesus has prepared for us: a place variously described as “in the Lord”, “in Jesus”, “in Christ”, “in Jesus Christ”, and simply as “in him”. John saw the bride as a radiant city coming down out of heaven from God. In this yet to be completed city all believers are one in Christ. Jesus said, “I go to prepare a place for you”, but we should not think of pillar-fronted mansions in heaven, but rather places in a house “not made with human hands”, one that is being built by God as His final, eternal residence.
John’s Gospel is so different to the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. Jesus speaks a language that the disciples simply do not understand. “Lazarus sleeps” he says, and then accommodates their lack of understanding by saying bluntly, “Lazarus is dead.” When Jesus says something they can understand, they respond with relief. “Finally, you are speaking plainly!” (John 16:29). When we need a narrative of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, we go to the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. When we need a revelation of the Son of God, we go the gospel of John, which is the Rosetta Stone of the Bible.