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What a Trip
By John R. Gavazzoni
Whether we blame sloppy, shoddy translation, or the kind of agenda that is meant to support a doctrinal presumption, or too much reliance on past translation precedents, by far, most conventional translations of the New Testament from Koine Greek to English opt out of translating the Greek using an important metaphor in Jesus' explanation of what He was about to embark on during and following His death and resurrection, or better, what He was about to continue doing in the next stage of what His Father sent Him to do.
In one of my long phone conversations with Eddie Browne, a dear friend and brother in Christ, who was a seminary-trained student of biblical Hebrew and Greek, in sharing with him what I will attempt to lay out in this article, his reply was, "you're talking about the Godyssey." That was long ago, and Ed has gone on to be with the Lord since then, but I remember how, with that one word, he encapsulated the essence of what I had shared with him that day.
Very representative of the kind of careful, non-institutionalized influence called for in order to give us entrance into the wonder of what Ed called, the Godyssey, is Jonathan Mitchell's translation of what Jesus really said His disciples should expect following His death and resurrection. Instead of how the KJV and other translations render the opening to the 14th. chapter of the Gospel of John, i.e., "... and if I go away..." our brother Jonathan handles the Word of Truth with the translating skill called for: rather than, "... if I go away, I will come again..." what the Greek text indicates is not a departure, but a point in time of a continuing journey.
From Jonathan Mitchell's Translation of the New Testament, amplified, expanded, and with alternate renderings, second edition, we have accurately what Jesus really said, third verse, "Even if I should journey on and prepare (make suitable, fit and appropriate a place (or: a spot, a position, a role) in you folks (or: with you for you) I am now presently (or progressively, repeatedly, habitually) coming again..."
Clearly what was on our Lord's mind was not a departure involving leaving those disciples behind, but of His death and resurrection being profoundly intrinsic to His continuing journey to fulfill what He set out to do for, particularly those listening disciples, but not exclusively, for through their word the promise belonged to all mankind.
Probing deeply into the nature of this journey, as God permits, we will consider first, the journey's point of origin, i.e., the dimension out from which He proceeded, and then on to its final destination. Jesus testified that He came out from the Father. The Father does not exist within a dimension other than Himself. As the Spirit instructed me upon my inquiry as to how I should understand the heaven of His abode, as in, "our Father, who art in heaven," He explained to me, "I dwell within the transcendence of my own glory." The habitation of God is the out-raying of His glory. He is clothed in, and dwells within, the excellency of His eternal Being. The Book of Hebrews explains that Jesus is that out-raying of the divine, the effulgence of God's glory, and what is ascribed to Jesus belongs to us in union with Him.
From that dimension of origin, in the beginning, Jesus, in unilateral agreement with the Father, embarked on the journey He spoke of as recorded in that 14th chapter of John. The Godyssey. What a trip! From glory to glory, taking us along for we were in Him when, from out of the timelessness of the Being within which we have our being, we were with Him, in Him. All things were created in Him according to the apostle, Paul, so that all mankind, in Christ, journeyed on, out of eternity, through the ages, through all of the human condition, returning home to the glory already in us. That glory had to endure all the gory of the human condition in order for it to shine in all its brilliance. "He was perfected by the things which He suffered," and we with Him.
Christ in us, is now translating the finished journey in Him into our eonian (age-pertaining) experience with every detail precisely predetermined, so that we are predestined to be conformed to the image of God's Son. That's the Godyssey summed up. Wondrously, it’s a journey forth from out of the midst of God, through the midst of God, and into the midst of God, as Paul explained, from Jonathan's translation (Rom. 11:36): "for forth from out of the midst of Him, and through the midst of Him, and into the midst of Him are all things (the whole)." It sure ain't just about going to heaven someday.
It is a journey to a goal into such indescribable experience of goodness, that "eye hath not seen, nether ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love Him (and we will all love Him, for He first loved us)." The journey is both one finished in Christ, inclusive of us, and progressively being unpacked for us, in us, by His indwelling. In short, what is in Him becomes our eonian experience by Him in us.
He has not gone away. That He made clear as the Greek text reveals. He is continuingly coming to us from within us, and from among us corporately. Consider what the heavenly messenger actually said on the Mount of Ascension: "... this same Jesus shall so come AS YOU HAVE SEEN HIM GO." How did they see Him go? From their midst, not returning from any elsewhere, such as a distant heaven in some set apart place in the cosmos.
What their eyes beheld, what was interpreted to them in physical terms, was what was happening within them and among them. What He spoke to them, as recorded in John 14, was complemented by a visual display. What they saw viewed in earthly special terms, was a reflection of Jesus being taken up into the abode of God which we are, the habitation of God made of living stones. There He sits resplendent in His glorified humanity, our humanity raised with Him, in Him, in us.
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