“HOW NARROW THE GATE?"
Matthew 7: 7-14 New Revised Standard Version
7 “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. 9 Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? 10 Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
12 “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.
13 “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. 14 For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.
I. How Narrow the Gate?
“The gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”
Jesus brings judgment to the self-righteous and to all who feel secure in their religion. Jesus undermines every manmade security and every human reassurance that we’re all okay with God.
Today’s question is How narrow is that gate? The idea that it is narrow at all immediately awakens an insecurity in us. Each of us likes asks in our hearts, “Am I one of the few?” This question is the basic insecurity of every religion and religious system, and the counter measures to that insecurity make up most of religious thinking, especially idolatry.
The all-too-human side of religion wants to pump up that insecurity to get us to jump through the various hoops set up by religious communities. There is a kind of gospel preaching that focuses exclusively on making us feel insecure so we can be sold a pre-packaged gospel solution.
So how narrow is that gate? How narrow the way to salvation?
I’m sure we’d all like to think it’s the other way around—that the wide open path with the wide open gate is the way to salvation, and the tight, narrow gate the way to Hell and destruction, but that’s not what Jesus says.
“The gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”
This is disturbing, and if we’re not disturbed by it we are probably misreading it. Or ignoring it altogether.
As we consider this question, we need to make clear a few things.
1. People do not know how wide or narrow the gate—only God knows.
2. The things we invent to make ourselves feel better about our own chances are falsehoods.
3. We must abandon hope in every manmade thing if we are to find our way.
So most Christians may find this narrow gate troubling, and think: “Well I just think that if you believe in Jesus then you’re saved.” That’s nice, but you don’t know.
The problem is that we are not saved by finding Jesus; we are saved by Him finding us. Later, Jesus will say of those who knew Him: “Depart from me—I never knew you.” “But we cast out demons in your name, yada, yada”—what matters for our salvation is not that we know Jesus, but that He knows us. This may seem a very subtle distinction, but it is an extremely important one.
II. Religionist Reassurances: We Don’t Know
In every one of us there is need for reassurance because we are all basically insecure when it comes to the question: will God save you. Does God know you. Because we all want to be saved and it scares us silly to think that we might know Jesus but not be known by Him. And by silly I mean religious.
Into that place of basic insecurity, we’ve created all kinds of idols to fill the gap. We are all like Linus from Peanuts with our security blankets. We make these blankets in response to our insecurities. And these security blankets are idols—idols to ease that insecurity—little religious artifacts that we can hang onto for reassurance, and I’m saying they are all false and worthless little idols.
Most of what the world calls religion are the manmade things—rituals, practices, sacrifices, ideas and idols—that tell us we’re okay with God. They tend to sell very well because we all really want to be okay with God. So the priest tells the people, “Jump through this hoop and that hoop and then you’re okay.” That’s religion, but the priest doesn’t know who is saved and who is not. Only Christ knows.
The old Roman Catholics said, “You wanna be saved? You must be in this church and under these seven sacraments, and then we’ll reassure you that you’re saved.” Orthodox churches, largely the same. But they don’t know. Only Christ knows.
Baptists and Methodists and other evangelicals: “You wanna be saved? Give your heart to Jesus and be born again and then you’ll be saved. Say this prayer, let us dunk you, and then you’re okay with God—trust us.” But they don’t know. Only Christ knows.
“What about Presbyterians, huh?” Fair enough. I would say that being a Presbyterian is the least of all human causes to trust in your salvation. There.
So our denominations cannot save, but nonetheless attempt to cater to that basic insecurity. We make up rules, customs, and denominational identities in response and expect these to be our security blankets of faith. But I tell you in Jesus’ name: all denominations are equally fallen, equally false, equally insufficient in and of themselves either to produce salvation or to provide you with any final assurance of salvation. That’s for God alone. Only Christ knows. No blankets allowed.
III. Dogma for Reassurance: Belief Blankets
“Well then, it must be the content of what we believe, right? We’re saved if we believe in the right things, right?” Not so fast.
Just as we have historically created elaborate rituals(around the sacraments) and pointy hats and long beards to make ourselves feel more secure about our salvation, so we have also codified systems of belief that stack up in exactly the same way. The same one who says, “It’s not about religion, it’s about right faith and right belief,” stands prepared to build the same security blanket out of his or her ideas. Beliefs are also blankets.
“To be a member of our church,” they say, “you must believe in the plenary inspiration of Scripture, the premillennial rapture of the church, and communion that doesn’t use real wine.” Even the humblest of churches, in time, tend to develop their own little codes—little, in-house rules that comprise their security blanket.
The problem with the security blanket is that it is manmade, not God-made, although the blanket has Scripture verses embroidered on both sides. It is possible—and even pretty widespread—to make an idol out of the Bible. Call it biblicism or bibliolatry, but we proclaim that Christ saves, not the Bible. The Word is Jesus Christ, not the words on paper.
So we, too, can mentally create security systems that amount to nothing more than the big pointy hats and religious artifacts that we grasp onto—Belief Blankets—all in order to assuage that basic insecurity—that place within our souls that wants to be reassured that we are among the saved, the okay, God’s Elect.
IV. Knotholes
Jesus does not say, “The way to salvation is an easy breeze—so just hang loose, Bro—you’re good.” No, He says the way to destruction is like that. The way to salvation is narrow and there are few who find it—Wow, right back to that insecure place, right?.
The word “hard” as in “the way is hard” is literally constricted or hard-pressed. It is like being pulled through a knothole in a fence, like a camel through the eye of a needle—tight, constricted, and difficult.
No one can be simply socialized into the gospel; the gospel requires transformation. Anyone who thinks it’s going to be an easy hurdle will find the bar a lot higher than they ever imagined. This is one of the basic themes of the Sermon on the Mount—that we’ve under-reckoned righteousness and the demands of righteousness, and all the little righteousnesses we create for ourselves do not impress God and ultimately worthless.
The call to faith, the call to follow Jesus, is constricted and narrow like a knothole because it allows us to bring none of our baggage with us. And no security blankets. Remember what Jesus says about the rich man—or what we should call the self-sufficient man: He is like the camel looking at the needle’s eye with little hope of getting through only because of all the wealth and investment in this world that he must abandon before He can belong to Christ alone.
The religious person—the righteous zealot and sincere pietist—must abandon all of that stuff as useless guff, surrendering it all to Christ in getting through that knothole—that narrow gate. We don’t bring our precious idols with us, no matter how Christian they appear to be on the surface. Our blanket—embroidered with Bible verses—will not help us through.
Sometimes life provides us with knotholes of its own—natural knotholes—difficulties, trials, and sufferings that threaten to strip the flesh off our bones—and it is uncanny how often such experiences turn out to be spiritually rich in the long run. It is so often personal disasters and catastrophes that prove to be the very vehicles that finally deliver us to the feet of Jesus with nothing in our hands and nothing in our hearts but our love and desire for Him. Such knotholes assist our salvation and as such are better than all the other other things to which we like to cling.
The way of salvation is more like a knothole than a wide-open freeway with no traffic. As you think about it and reflect more, I hope you’ll reconsider some of the tragedies within your own life for how they were knotholes that have shaped you for Christ alone.
V. We Like Universalism
So the way to life is constricted like a knothole and there are few who find it—does that mean that only a few are saved? Not necessarily—that’s the voice of our insecurity worrying about our own souls or those of our loved ones—which really isn’t our business, but God’s business. How many are the few and who are the few who find life as Jesus says?
The good news of the gospel is precisely this: that although there are few who find the narrow path, few indeed who find the way to true righteousness in God’s eyes, Christ Himself may find many more than find Him.
We’ve already said it’s not finding Jesus that counts so much as being found by Him. It’s not so much knowing Jesus (even the devils know Jesus), but being known by Him that is our salvation. What is the limit to how many Jesus may find? That is the true measure of salvation, not all of our manmade approaches to the knothole.
I would say that Scripture makes it clear: unless we are pulled through the knothole there is really no way of getting through. And here is where all Christians of all stripes find some agreement. We are all called to repentance—to abandon all else as we stand before the knothole—that’s Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Reformed, Baptist, Independent, Fundamentalist, Pentacostal, etc.—and we all agree that trusting in Christ alone is the way through.
But how many might Christ pull through in the end? Though few find Him, may He find many? Yes, he may. As it is up to God and God alone, He may find everyone in the end, and we should hope and pray that He does.
As we read in Romans, the Apostle Paul was likely a universalist—as all are fallen in Adam, all are redeemed in Christ, he says, and more. Many of the early Church Fathers—Ireneaus, Clement, Origen and others, suffering for Christ in the 2nd century—believed that in the end of things, Christ would and will redeem all things. This is called universalism, and while it is not our doctrine or dogma, I tell you it is something we should like more than we dislike.
Saying this creates another kind of insecurity in us Christians, because it threatens something in us—our signed, sealed, exclusive, Kingdom membership cards—and it quickly reawakens some of our idols: the things we’ve said one has to do or believe in order to be saved, but we’ve already discounted those things. Remember, Christ alone knows. Only Christ can say who is saved and who is not. Not the Church, not our blankets, nor any of our idols.
This view nicely avoids all the manmade malarkey of our religious sentimentalities. It fits the character of God as merciful Redeemer. And it is not for us to know whether or not He may eventually turn off the eternal fires and transform all that is left into His love and glory. He may! He is free to do so! We have nothing to say about it, period.
Know this: it is patently un-Christian and un-Christlike to hope that anyone should burn in Hell.
We cannot proclaim that all are already saved—which is universalism proper—but we can and do proclaim that all who are saved shall be saved by Christ alone. He is the narrow gate, the universal knothole, and there is no other way to salvation than through Him.
What we must avoid doing is making our own codes about who is or is not saved—whom He shall or shall not pull through the narrow gate. That is God’s business alone, and we need to shut up speculating about it.
VI. The Assurance of God’s Promises
Finally, we do have an antidote to that basic insecurity of wondering whether or not we are among the saved, the found, the Elect. That antidote is assurance from God’s Holy Spirit. We can and do find assurance in the Promises of God through Scripture. We can stand on those promises and trust them. It’s nothing the Church—ours or anybody else’s—can codify, but we do proclaim it and celebrate it. Our sacraments proclaim and seal God’s promises to us. We can be assured that we are known by Him. That relationship is between you and The Lord. The Church can help, can lead, proclaim and assist you, but it can’t broker the deal for you—and you should’t trust a church that says it can.
Every one of us stands alone and naked in soul before the calling of Christ. He calls us individually, and He draws into salvation all whom He wills to draw. And assurance comes as His Holy Spirit whispers to our hearts, “Yes child, I know you—you are one of mine” and from there, an old life is dead and a new, eternal life has begun.
If you don’t have that assurance today, then hear Jesus’ words to you: “Ask! Search! Knock and keep on knocking”—because even now in this moment, the door is opening to you.
QUESTIONS
- Asking, seeking, and knocking—given that God already knows what we need before we ask (Matthew 6:8), does it seem incongruous that we are to keep asking, seeking, and knocking? Why or why not?
- Consider those who are naturally hungry, bold, and aggressive in asking God for things: what can we learn from them?
- What troubles are caused by the Church when it focuses too much on the narrowness of the gate?
- What are some of the positives of universalism? Why are we not universalists?
- Why is authentic faith more like a knothole than an open freeway?
- Can you name any of your own knothole experiences?
- What assurance can we have that we are among “the few” who find life?