You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way. But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it. Matt 7:13-14.
The Narrow Way – Part 1
Jesus says these phrases at the end of what we know to be His ‘Sermon on the Mount.’ It's part of his closing remarks.
The gateway to life is narrow. The word used here in the King James is ‘strait,' which has a different meaning to the word ’straight.'
Straight means ‘not crooked, unbent, upright, honest, honourable in conduct.’
Strait means ‘a difficult and or narrow passageway; a confined area.’
This verse isn’t concerned with our performance of purity and excellence, it’s not talking about our ability to live up to the commandments and live perfectly – otherwise the word ’straight’ would have been used. It has behavioural implications, but its heart is more like what Romans 12:2 talks about: “Do not conform to the ways of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.”
One of the most challenging things in life is to ‘go against the flow’; reject conformity and consumerism and employ our minds and hearts to seek out for ourselves the mysteries of life and love, and in the believer's case, faith. It's much easier to live a drip fed life – follow the crowd, swallow the marketing, believe everything you’re told, never question, never seek, never learn. That's a little extreme, but you get the idea.
Questioning doesn’t mean an arrogant dismissal of tradition or systems. It’s simply a way of seeking truth, I much rather call it ‘thinking.' For, e.g., I know my Grandfather fought in WWII because my Mother told me. But until I questioned my Grandfather about it and heard it for myself, it was just hearsay and shallow knowledge. Questions, seeking, asking and knocking lead to a more defined, or narrow, path.
To live following the crowd and walk through the wide gate, is easy at first, but ends in a life not fully lived. Spurgeon says “but if you wish to go down to perdition, you have only to float with the stream, and you can have any quantity of company that you like.”
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