John 14:3

John 14:3. And if I shall have gone and prepared a place for you, I come again, and will receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye also may be. All that has preceded these words has rested upon the idea that, although Jesus is now ‘going away' to the Father, He is not really forsaking His disciples. Even when in one sense separated from them, in another He will still be with them; and this latter presence will in due time, when they like Him have accomplished their work, be followed by their receiving again that joy of His immediate presence which they are now to lose. This double thought seems to explain the remarkable use of two different tenses of the verb in the second clause of the verse, ‘I come,' ‘I will receive.' He is' wherever His people are: they ‘shall be,' when their toils are over, wherever He is (comp. chap. John 12:26). The Second Coming of the Lord is not, therefore, resolved by these words into a merely spiritual presence in which He shall be always with His people. The true light in which to look at that great fact is as the manifestation of a presence never far away from us (comp. John 14:18). Our Lord is always with us, though (as we have yet to see) it is in the power of the Spirit that He is so now. He will again Himself, in His own person, be with us, and we with Him, when our work is ‘finished.'

Observe also the change of order in the original in the case of the words ‘I am' and ‘ye may be,' the effect being to bring the ‘I' and the' ye ‘into the closest juxtaposition (comp. on John 14:1).'