Matthew 7:13-14 (ESV)
[13] “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is
easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.
[14] For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those
who find it are few.
These verses are not explaining how to be saved. They are not saying that if
you faithfully walk the narrow path then you will get to heaven. There is a
narrow gate and then a hard path. In contrast, there is a wide gate and an easy
path. Entering the gate puts you on the journey. One might say that entering
the gate is when you got saved. It is the point of faith, the point at which
one lets go of their need to earn God’s favor and simply trusts him for
salvation because of Jesus.
What Jesus is contrasting are not ways of salvation, but rather the
experience of the two different paths. The path of the Pharisees, the path of
the Law, the path of the false teachers is a path of external conformation.
That’s relatively easy. That is the wide path. The narrow path is the path of
Jesus’s teachings. It is the path of internal holiness. That’s the difficult
path because it is a path we are unable to walk. We can’t change our hearts, that’s
why it’s called the hard way. But God can and does change our hearts. That is
the good news of the gospel.
Notice that these verses are sandwiched between Jesus’s teachings about
internal holiness and a warning about false teachers. They are leading to the
conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount. When we turn the narrow gate and the
hard way into something we do out of fear of God and great determination then
we fail to understand what Jesus is saying. The narrow gate leads not just to a
hard way, but to an impossible way. It is the way of a changed heart. It is the
way of faith not law. It is the way of dependence, not independence. It is the
way of trusting, not self-sufficiency. The Christian life is hard because we
can’t do it and because it does not elevate us. It elevates Jesus. May that be
so in our lives today. Trust Him.
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