September 8, 2019 – John 14:2

In my Father’s house are many rooms.
—John 14:2

This means that there are seats of various dignity and different degrees and circumstances of honor and happiness.66 Though they are all seats of great honor and blessedness, yet some are greater than others.
This is how a palace is built. Though every part of the palace is magnificent, some apartments are more stately and costly than others. One apartment is the king’s chamber, other apartments [are] for the heir to the crown, others for other children, others for their attendants and the great officers of the household.
Another image of this was in Solomon’s temple. There were many rooms of different degrees of honor and dignity. There was the holy of holies, where the ark was, the place of God’s residence, where the high priest alone might enter. There was another apartment called the holy place, where the other priests might enter. Next to that was the inner court of the temple, where the Levites were admitted, and [wherein were] lodgings for the priests. Next to that was the court of Israel where the people of Israel might enter. Next to that was the court of the Gentiles, where the Gentiles might enter.
Not that we are to understand the words of Christ so much in a literal sense, that every saint in heaven is to have a certain seat or room or dwelling where he or she is locally fixed. But we are to understand what Christ says chiefly in a spiritual sense. People will have different degrees of honor and glory in heaven, aptly represented as different seats of honor. Some will be nearer the throne than others. Some will be next to Christ.
When Christ was going to heaven and the disciples were sorrowful at parting with their Lord, he let them know that there are rooms of various degrees of honor in his Father’s house, that there was not only one for him, the head of the church, but also for those who were his disciples and younger brothers and sisters.
Christ also may mean not only degrees of glory in heaven but different activities. We know their activities in general—some may be set in one place for one kind of work and others in another. God has set everyone in the body as it has pleased him; one is the eye, another the ear, another the head, and so on.
—Jonathan Edwards