When you spend a lot of time on music blogs and hang out with snobby music fans, you frequently broach the same controversial topic: What’s the worst song of all time?

Nickelback’s catalog is always a safe choice. So is Creed’s, seeing as they’re just Nickelback but 10 years older and less self-aware. Some staunch rock purists elect something from Justin Bieber’s mop-top era, although 2015’s Purpose earned him the good graces of hipster poptimists everywhere.

Really, though, we’re all just wasting our keystrokes. The worst song of all time has already existed for the past quarter-century.

It’s “Big House” by Audio Adrenaline.

Hear me out. These Christian alt-rock boys from Grayson, Kentucky kick off sophomore album Don’t Censor Me innocently enough, all jangly guitars and stray horns as singer Mark Stuart delivers his best impression of “Weird Al” Yankovic covering the Spin Doctors. But then we reach the chorus that’s echoed through Sunday school classrooms across the nation:

It’s a big, big house, with lots and lots of room
A big, big table, with lots and lots of food
A big, big yard, where we can play football
A big, big house—it’s my Father’s house

Love it or hate it, “Big House” has achieved pop cultural ubiquity and become a bona fide anthem in Christian rock circles. There’s just one problem: It doesn’t quite jive with Jesus Christ’s own teachings.

Mansions?! What was Jesus talking about?

In John 14:2, Jesus told His disciples,

In My Father’s house are many abodes; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.

The big house concept comes from the fateful linguistic development of an innocuous translation choice made by the King James Version translators in 1611. They followed William Tyndale (1525) and the Douay-Rheims translation of 1582 in translating the Greek word for ‘abodes’ (monai) as ‘mansions’. Tyndale and the Douay-Rheims translators borrowed here from the Latin Vulgate, the king of translations at that time and the official translation of the Catholic Church. Now to be fair, the word ‘mansion’ is a perfectly literal translation of the Latin word here (mansiones). ‘Mansion’, back then, simply meant ‘a stopping place’ or ‘dwelling place’. But later, the English word took on the narrower meaning of a large and extravagant residence. From there it’s easy to see how the concept of individual heavenly mansions developed, but this led to a very wrong perception of the goal of God’s salvation. Sweet deal, right? All we have to do is confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord, and we’ll get that Malibu beachfront property we’ve always been dreaming of up in heaven!

Except not at all.

“My Father’s house” in John 14:2 isn’t a physical dwelling place. It refers instead to the temple, or the body of Christ, as God’s dwelling place (John 2:16-21). At first, the body of Christ was only His individual body. But through Christ’s death and resurrection, He imparted His life into all of His disciples to build His corporate body—the church.

Accordingly, the “many abodes” aren’t a bunch of mansions that comprise a pearly-gated community up in the clouds. Instead, these abodes are the many individual believers that make up the body of Christ.

In other words, the Lord wasn’t making room for us in heaven so we could all float amongst the clouds, wear billowing white robes, don halos, and play harps all day (although I’m certainly guilty of thinking that as a kid). He was making room in God for us to dwell in Him and for Him to dwell in us.

In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. (John 14:20)

Preparations—Jesus in a hard hat?

Still, He had to make significant preparations. When Christ dwelled on the earth, the disciples did not yet have His life in them. Too many barriers stood in their way: sin, death, the flesh, Satan. Only by undergoing death and resurrection on the cross could the Lord remove these barriers and be transfigured from flesh to Spirit, so that He could dwell in them and they in Him.

This life-imparting process was a two-way street, though. The Lord didn’t go to the cross just for our sake. He continues in John 14:3, and 23:

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I am coming again and will receive you to Myself, so that where I am you also may be.

…And [My Father and I] will come to him and make an abode with him.

Through death and resurrection Christ built a house for Himself. Without the corporate body of believers, Christ is “homeless”.

Here we see the mutual abiding between God, Christ and the believers. The Lord needed to “go” to the cross to eliminate the obstacles between us and Him. This was the preparation He was talking about. Once the Lord died for these sins, He had to “come” again to receive and dwell among us. This proves that the Lord and His believers are codependent. We need the Lord for salvation; the Lord needs us for rest.

This word wasn’t easy for the disciples to process. In John 14:5 Thomas said, “Lord, we do not know where You are going; how can we know the way?” Christ responded, “I am the way and the reality and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.” Because the way is a person (Christ), the destination must also be a person (the Father).

What’s better than a mansion?

Because the dwelling place is spiritual, not physical, it can be hard to express to skeptics or non-believers. It also doesn’t fit neatly into the narrative of mainstream Christianity, where if you simply believe that Jesus Christ died for your sins, you’ll get all you ever wanted and ritzy mansion. I’ll admit: as a coercive tool, the second option sounds a lot more enticing.

But what’s the point of physical possessions anyway? Giant houses, fast cars, fancy clothes, expensive dinners—they’re all just feeble attempts to approximate the joy and satisfaction that Christ delivers in HIMSELF. Anybody who chases material wealth is actually seeking God, whether they know it or not. If we make that wealth our primary goal in life, we’ll find ourselves caught in an endless cycle: always pursuing, never enjoying. Besides, if the entire point of salvation was to cash it in at the end of our lives for that big mansion up in heaven, what point would there be to living?

In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. We get to enjoy something infinitely greater than material riches: a loving, merciful, gracious, omnipotent and altogether perfect God, who absolutely depends on our living. The Lord needs us for His move and His dwelling place; we need Him to continue growing as the Body and to reach the God the Father Himself.

Human beings naturally crave more concrete evidence. They want to be able to visualize the fruits of their labor. But in considering the Lord’s word in John 14, we have to focus instead on experience. The mutual abode between God and man provides the ultimate joy, peace, comfort, satisfaction and rest. This abiding will be fully realized when the Lord returns and redeems His people, living in and among us as His eternal resting place.

It’s a lot better than a big, big house—but we can’t just sit around and wait for it.

We’ve got work to do.

By: Bryan Rolli

Bryan Rolli
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