True Heart of Worship
Church of God (Seventh Day) Independent
Church of God (Seventh Day) Independent
Jesus speaks in only two places about the narrow gate, but there are lots of other places where he talks about entering the kingdom and who will, and who won't, enter the kingdom. That's what we're going to be looking at in many different Bible verses.
This picture is a nice-looking picture, but it's not exactly a great picture for a narrow gate. I had a lot of trouble finding a picture for this topic. Surprisingly there are lots and lots of people who have done pictures of narrow gates or what they called narrow gates, but in most cases, they either weren't narrow or they weren't a gate at all. This one isn't a gate, but at least it's narrow.
I thought it was interesting that a lot of people didn't even understand what a narrow gate was and the Biblical implications of that. We're going to sort that out in this study.
I found an article from 2021 on Facebook that I thought was appropriate here. The title of the article is "Nancy Pelosi Slams Catholic Bishop, Defends Abortion, Says God Has Given Us Free Will." The article says, "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi lashed out at her Catholic Archbishop Thursday after he described a pro-abortion bill that she supports as legislation one would expect from a devout Satanist, not a devout Catholic."
So, Nancy says that God has given us free will, which is true, but she thinks free will means she can do whatever she wants and that will be acceptable to God. That's not what free will is about, of course. Free will is the ability to choose to do right or to do wrong, and God does care which you choose. You'll see how that relates as we go on into this study.
We've all read the places in the Bible where Jesus talks about the narrow gate and who enters and who doesn't enter, and the narrow paths and the wide paths that lead to those gates. We're going to dig a little deeper into that gate and what he means by that. Just how narrow is that gate? What does the Bible say about who can and who can't go through that gate?
The main idea is that there is a path that leads to a gate that leads to the Kingdom of God. This was a reality in the lives of people in Jesus' time. It was also a reality of the sheep of that time. Jesus doesn't explain it, because his audience is so familiar with the idea; He's talking about sheep.
At the end of the day, the sheep needed to be inside the fenced pen for their protection, peace, and comfort. The sheep were sent into the fields during the day. To get back in the evening, they needed to travel along the path to the gate where the shepherd would let them into the fenced area. In this parable, people are sheep.
We'll start with Matthew's account of what Jesus said about the narrow gate. That is very short. Then we'll look at Luke's account, which is longer.
In both cases, Jesus is responding to a question that came from his audience. A man asked him if a whole bunch of people are going to make it or will there be only a very few. Jesus is answering that question.
Enter the narrow gate for the gate is wide and the road is spacious which leads to destruction and many are those who are going in it. How narrow is the gate and strict the way that leads to life and few are those who find it. (Matthew 7:13-14)
Jesus' answer is that very few people are going to make it.
Now, of course, these gates and these roads are metaphorical. There isn't a real gate that we would enter, and there isn't a real road that we're traveling on. As metaphors, the elements stand for other things, and we'll talk about that in a moment.
He does talk about destruction, saying that the wide road leads to destruction. Some people think that destruction means annihilation, but that isn't how the Bible uses the word. "Destruction" is ruin, loss, or waste. Jesus is talking about spiritual things, so he's talking about spiritual loss, spiritual waste, and wasted spiritual life.
In this translation, we see the words "road" and "way." That is just the translator. The original text uses the same word.
This translation uses the word "strict", but that might not be the best word here because it has some negative connotations associated with it, like meanness and harshness. What it really means here is constrained, limited, or the opposite of spacious or wide.
In this metaphor, then, when Jesus mentions the road, he is talking about the life we live. Do we live a "spacious" life where we do whatever we want, as Nancy implied, or do we live a life that is constrained or limited? Jesus, of course, means a life constrained to God's pattern. There are many things that we wouldn't do that other people would do.
Sometimes that restricted or limited life seems like a hard thing for people to endure. We'll see that idea expressed in Luke's version of this parable.
Some people walk a wider road than others, meaning they live a life to the very extremes and don't care about right and wrong. Jesus doesn't talk about that. I think that's because, while there may be roads that are wider than others, there is only one narrow road that leads to life. The width of the other roads changes nothing.
Jesus says something here that I thought was especially interesting: there are only a few who find it. You don't stumble onto the narrow way and find yourself walking on it. You have to search for it. You have to find it. We'll see later on, in Luke's version, that you need to try to stay on it. It's not an easy path to walk on.
Those of us who are searching for truth and life and God and all those good things, we will find this path and we will walk this path, but it isn't an easy path to walk.
The other symbol in this metaphor is the gate. It represents judgment day. Therefore, entering into everlasting life requires two things: walking the narrow path during this life and entering the gate on judgment day.
This is Luke's account.
But a man asked him if there are few who have life. 24 But Yeshua said to them, "Strive hard to enter the narrow gate, for I say to you, many shall seek to enter and they shall not be able."
25 "Then the Lord of the house will rise and shall bolt the gate, and you (all y'all) will be standing outside and you will begin to say, 'Our Lord, Our Lord, open to us.' And he shall answer and he shall say, 'I say to you, that I do not know you. From where are you?'" 26 "And you shall begin to say, 'We ate and we drank before you and you taught in our streets.' 27 And he shall say to you, 'I do not know you and from where you are; depart from me, workers of lies.'"
28 "There will be weeping and gnashing teeth when you will behold Abraham and Isaaq and Jaqob and all the prophets in the Kingdom of God, but you shall be cast out." (Luke 13:23-28)
Notice that the man asked if there are just a few people who will have life because he's coming to an understanding that it might just be a few people. Probably he has seen that there aren't many people who can really live the way God wants them to live. We'll see that mentioned again.
Notice also that Jesus responds, but not just to this man. We know that because verse 24 says "to them," and verse 25 uses the plural form of the word "you." I've noted in the verse where that plural "you" is by adding "all y'all," which is the Southern form of the plural of "you." So, Jesus is referring to all of the people who are listening to him, not just to that man.
Jesus also says, "Strive hard to enter the narrow gate." I mentioned earlier that we need to make an effort to stay on that narrow road. That's the "striving hard" that Jesus is talking about. As I said, it's not an easy road to stay on. It requires vigilance. There are all kinds of people who wanted to and tried to get on that road. Maybe they even were on that road for a while, but they went off the narrow road and over to the spacious road.
Jesus says, "Many shall seek to enter and they shall not be able." In our lives, I expect we've seen that there are many people who really want to go through that gate. They want all that God has to offer, all those good things, life eternal, all joy, happiness, peace, and all that stuff. They want all that stuff, but they're not able to because they cannot walk the narrow way that leads to that gate.
The next thing I want you to see is that "the lord of the house will rise and shall bolt the gate." Bolting the gate would mean that it is locked closed; no one else can pass through it. Jesus is saying there's going to be a point in time when he, the Master of the House, is going to bolt the gate. After that, nobody else gets in, ever.
This means the plan of salvation that existed up until that time comes to an end when Jesus comes. If there's a new plan for salvation, I don't know. I don't see it in scripture. Isaiah 2 speaks about a future temple after Jesus comes. But nothing about the original temples ever brought salvation.
Jesus says, and this is where I added the note, "all y'all will be standing outside." He is warning the entire crowd. The Master of the House will say to y'all, "I do not know you and from where you are." Their response will be, "We ate and we drank before you and you taught in our streets."
Is that enough to pass through the gate? No, that's not enough. Eating and drinking with Jesus or listening to him teach and having those teachings change nothing in you, that's nothing to God. He's not interested in that kind of person. That's the kind of person who wants to enter but isn't able to enter because they just won't accept the changes that have to come with that. Jesus calls such people workers of lies. That's like saying liar, liar, pants on fire. You claim to be that, but you aren't … Liar.
Jesus says, "There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you will […] be cast out." That idea of weeping and gnashing of teeth appears in the Bible in a few places. It's an idiom that indicates strong regret, regret so strong that you're weeping and gnashing your teeth, knowing what you could have had but you don't have.
I dug up a couple of other verses that say the same thing, but in different ways.
Yeshua said to him, "I Am (the living God), the Way and the Truth and the Life; no man comes to my Father but by me alone." (John 14:6)
The translation I'm using here has added the words "the living God". The translator is marking a place where the great "I AM" is being used. In Hebrew and Aramaic, you can say "I am" in two ways. This one is reserved for God and kings. Jesus referred to himself that way frequently, and it drove his enemies crazy. They knew what he meant, but he couldn't be prosecuted for using the language that way.
When he says "I am," he means he is the living God, the way, and the life. Jesus is the way, the path that we walk, or at least the path that we try to walk, which is the path that he walked. He is also the life that is accessed by the narrow gate.
But again Yeshua said to them, "Timeless truth I speak to you; I Am (the living God), the gate of the flock. 8 And all who had come were thieves and robbers, but the flock did not hear them. 9 I Am (the living God), the gate; if anyone will enter by me, he shall live and shall go in and out and shall find the pasture. 10 But a thief does not come except to steal, kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life and have whatever is abundant." (John 10:7-10)
Again we see this idea of the gate, but this is a little different. Here, Jesus said he is the gate. Earlier, the gate was the judgment. Both are true. Jesus is the way to get past the judgment.