Guy N. Woods
Enter ye in at the strait gate; for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat; because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way. which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it (Mat. 7:13-14).
This remarkable statement of our Lord was uttered near the close of the Sermon on the Mount. In it, he tells us of two gates, two ways, two destinies, and two groups of people. One group is composed of “few” people; there are “many” in the other. All of those pictured—and the whole human family is included—pass through one or the other of the gates, go down one or the other ways, and come to one or the other destinies.
In the statement there are a series of contrasts—a strait gate and a wide gate; a broad way and a narrow way; the few and the many; Life and Destruction.
It is as if the Master had presented two cities before us, one with a wide gate entering upon a broad street with many lanes of traffic, and down which many people are traveling; the other with an exceedingly narrow gate opening on a single narrow lane, along which very few were passing. The first of these cities is Destruction; the second is Life.
The first gate of which our Lord speaks is called strait; the spelling being s-t-r-a-i-t, and not s-t-r-a-i-g-h-t. The word straight means “not crooked,” whereas the word strait here used means narrow, pinched, difficult to be entered.
1. We are bidden to “enter” at the “strait gate,” by which it is implied that some effort is required to enter upon the way thus designated. That Jesus intended for us to regard His statement in this sense, and that the entering does require effort on our part, follows from a familiar statement of His uttered on another occasion in connection with the Parable of the Shut Door: “Strive to enter in at the strait gate” (Luke 13:24). Here the word strive is translated from the Greek word agonizomai, an expressive and emphatic term, signifying, literally, to agonize. We are therefore taught to agonize to enter in at the strait gate, by which it is implied that the attempt requires effort, wearisome and even painful toil. The word appears in the passage, “And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things,” and has reference to the self-denying discipline the athlete exercises in bringing himself to that standard of fitness essential to the attainment of the goal toward which he strives.
The passage indicates that the Lord had knowledge of the fact that there would be idle, indifferent, slothful individuals who would not expend the necessary effort to enter upon the way which leads to life.
The word rendered strive is translated “laboring fervently” in Colossians 4:12, where it is said, “Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ, saluteth you, always laboring fervently for you in prayers, that ye may stand perfect and complete in the will of God,” where it refers to agonizing in prayer; and in 1 Timothy 6:12, where Paul admonished his son in the gospel, young Timothy to “fight the good fight of faith, and lay hold on eternal life.” The word by which we are bidden to enter the Way of life suggests therefore effort, a constant, continuous, and painful struggle. It makes clear that the road to heaven is not along an easy path of idleness and inactivity, but requires persistent application, untiring, effort, and wearisome toil.
Shall I be carried to the skies
On flowery beds of ease,
While others fight to win the prize,
And sail through bloody seas?
2. The gate must be entered. We must actually pass through it to enter upon the way which leads to life, and eternal bliss. It will not suffice merely to listen to preaching about the gate, not to study its structure, nor to admire the wisdom of its appointments; it must be entered. And, we, ourselves, must enter it. The fact that our mothers and fathers have entered the gate and are now on the way of life, is not sufficient. We must enter for ourselves. Sermons on faith, repentance, and baptism avail us nothing unless they influence our hearts to act upon the duties thus announced. Our Lord and the sacred writers make crystal clear the fact that only those who comply with the will of the Lord shall be saved (Mat. 7:21; 1 John 2:4; Rev. 22:14). Just a few verses later in this same sermon, our Lord shows that the man who hears and does not is as foolish as the man who builds his house on the shifting sands.
Hearing and going we build on the rock,
Hearing alone, we build on the sand,
Both shall be tried by the storm and the flood;
Only the rock the trials shall stand.
God has never blessed anybody, in any age or dispensation because of their faith, until their faith, manifested itself in action.
3. The gate is strait, by which it is meant that it is narrow, close, hemmed in, and not easily entered. It should be carefully noted that Jesus did not make the gate, and the way which it leads to, narrow; He merely describes it as it is. A wider way to heaven, just as a wider way to virtue can mean only a weaker virtue. We may be sure that the gate which leads to life is as wide as the love of God could make it. Jesus said, “Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers and murderers, and idolators, and whoso loveth and maketh a lie” (Rev. 22:14-15). Thus, to have allowed a wider gate to heaven would have let in the wicked characters here enumerated. It should be remembered that a gate is made to enter by and not to exclude. Far from being intended to keep men out, it is a standing invitation to enter. In Revelation 21:12, the city of God is pictured with 12 gates, 3 on each side, to indicate the wide welcome which extends in every direction and to every tribe and tongue and people. These gates are never shut, but each is so narrow that “there shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the lamb’s book of life” (Rev. 21:27). It could not be otherwise and be the city of God. All may enter, and all are invited, but they may enter only when they have stripped themselves of the things which exclude.
The way is narrow? Ay, but think how wide
The fields it leads to. Wide as hope are they.
Into a larger life the path will guide.
What matter then, if narrow be the way?
It is not difficult for our imagination to visualize the scene which occurs before this gate as men, encumbered with the world and its follies, attempt to enter. The gate is barely large enough for a man to pass through kneeling. Here, for example, comes a man, struggling under the burden of heavy money bags, representing ill-gotten gain. He seeks in vain to enter. The way is too small for his bags. Another grasps the world in his arms, but it is too large to pass through the gate. He will not divest himself of it and turns away. Another, with huge bales of self-righteousness, seeks to enter, but he, too, is so encumbered he cannot pass. Another enters, only when he has cast forevermore aside his bottle, which lies broken at the bottom of the hill by the gate. There is room for any man, but to enter, he must rid himself of his sins.
No, it is not an easy gate to enter. Being narrow, pinched, and compressed on either side, it may be entered only by those stripped of all excess baggage of the world. Jesus said, “A rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom” (Mat. 19:23). How foreign is this idea to that which generally prevails in the church? How many there are who boast of being the Lord’s people, who even now are engaged in a desperate struggle to amass a fortune without the slightest fear that such will exclude them from the kingdom of God. Do not thousands among us think that all one must do to be saved is to believe that Christ come down from heaven and to be baptized for the remission of sins? Ah, but there is the difficulty. How few actually see what is involved in such faith and obedience. It means much more than intellectual assent to the truth of a proposition and a mechanical response to a command. The devils believed and acknowledged His authority. They believed in His deity, in His virgin birth, in His triumphant resurrection, and in His universal reign. But their belief did not make them less devilish, less carnal, less worldly, more truthful, more honest, more helpful to their fellows. Such belief is worthless. If faith were nothing more than the assent of the mind to the truth of a proposition, then might millionaires be saved with their riches in opposition to what our Lord plainly said. But, it is with the heart that man believes unto righteousness, and the heart is the seat of man’s affections. Unless, therefore, the heart is changed, and one hates that which he formerly loved, his faith is vain. Jesus taught that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. A man who trusts in his riches cannot enter into the kingdom of God—whether he possesses one dollar, or a million. So, our Savior said, and so it is, despite the efforts of Bible expositors and commentators to soften the effect of our Lord’s statement and to weaken its implications.
Trusting in riches is far from being the only thing which keeps people out of the narrow way. The desire for fame, the love of the plaudits of men, is a barrier to the salvation of many. “How can ye believe which receive honor one of another and seek not the honor that cometh from God only?” (John 5:44). The pursuit of pleasure, the “lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye and the pride of life,” all constitute obstructions to the narrow path. The Lord constantly sought to disabuse the minds of the disciples of the idea that the way to heaven is easy. He taught that those who come to Him must hate (love less) those nearest them and seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness. He taught that the right eye must be plucked out, and the right hand cut off, if such causes one to stumble; and He declared that in order for a man to be His disciple, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Him. Instead of offering His followers an easy and smooth voyage through life, He warned of storms and floods, and spoke of sweat and blood and tears. Far from inferring that a single act of obedience saves, He said, “but he that shall endure to the end, the same shall be saved” (Mat. 24:12). The gate to life is a narrow one; and it will not admit those who are loaded with the arms of rebellion against God, nor those who walk arm and arm with the world. To enter the narrow gate, the heart must be humbled, sinful pleasures forsaken, and worldly companions abandoned. The way our Lord walked was a painful, laborious, wearisome one, and there is not one path for the Redeemer and an easier one for the redeemed.
4. Not only is the gate which opens on the way of life strait, but it is also a narrow way. It is a narrow path, because truth on any point is narrow, while error includes all the rest of space. The captain of a ship out on the ocean may see numberless stars, but there is but one North Star which will lead him aright. The way to destruction is as broad as all the sins and follies of men, while the highway of holiness is but a single tract.
The reason that it is narrow is that it is shut in by the divine commands. It forbids fleshly license and lawless liberty. It is traveled in faith, and faith is opposed to sight, to sense, to self will, and to self-pleasing. It is a narrow way, because it is directed to one goal, whereas, the ways of the world tend toward all the aimless wanderings characteristic of the thoughtless. That the way is narrow and excludes great tracts on either side adds to its value. One traveling the highway out to Key West does not complain that it is necessary for him to keep on the roadway, lest his car drift into the waters on either side. The narrow way is a highway cast up on which one may safely travel, while on either side are the dangerous and treacherous quicksands of the world. The way is narrow enough to shut out the world, broad enough for all the redeemed of humanity.
5. On this narrow way few travel. In comparison with the multitudes which go down the broad way, it is a seldom traveled road, and “few there be that find it.” It requires effort and thought to find it, and energy and perseverance to enter it and pass along it. Few, therefore, are willing to make the attempt. This is a hard and unpopular doctrine. The popular and prevailing view is to regard all, saved and the most abandoned, as equally favored of the Lord and on the way to life and salvation. The Jews were filled with spiritual pride and believed that all were to be admitted to the privileges of heaven from the fact that they were descended from Abraham. Theirs was a fatal delusion. Jesus made it clear throughout his Sermon on the Mount that there are things much more essential than ancestry and submission to ceremonial rites. He emphasized that there is a straiter gate to be entered than any privilege which natural birth gave admittance to, and a narrower way to be traveled than the religious life mapped out by the scribes. He warned that those whose righteousness does not exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven (Mat. 5:20).
There is much of the Pharisaical spirit in the world today. If those Jews prided themselves on being the children of Abraham, there are those among us today who take comfort from the fact that this is a Christian nation, that their parents are religious, and that they hold church membership. It is not popular to teach as Jesus did that comparatively few people will ever reach heaven. But such is true, and no other conclusion can be reached from what He has here said, “few there be that find it,” can mean only that few will eventually enter paradise. Who is there in the world today who really believes this? When and where do we hear such truth boldly proclaimed today? On the contrary, it is assumed, yes, openly declared, that many people will ultimately sweep through the gates into the city. Let a man die whose life has been outwardly respectable, and his friends do not hesitate to say that he is “at rest.” When the funeral sermon is preached, it is expected that the preacher will console his loved ones with the comforting assurance that he is “better off now.” To question that such is his state and that heaven is his eventual destination is at once to mark one as uncharitable, bigoted, and narrow in attitude.
One may in vain protest that Jesus said that “few there be that find it,” but people are little impressed. We are told that we must not look for perfect people in this life. We are reminded that all of us have our failings, and that there is so much bad in the best of us that we should not expect much
from any of us. So, far from believing that only a few will reach the blissful state, the vast majority of professed believers hold that somehow, and in some way, the greater part of our fellows will get there. Hell, if there be such a place, will be peopled by arch-criminals and villains. Just as our prisons house only a small percentage of the population—the “unfortunate” and “misguided ones.”
And why is it that so many believe that the population of heaven will be immense? There is but one answer: Because it is believed that heaven can be had on much easier terms than those announced by Christ. Many there are among us who believe that the kingdom can be entered without passing through “much tribulation” (Paul said it could not, Acts 14:22); that we may be disciples of the Lord without denying ourselves (Jesus said we could not, Mat. 16:24); that it is not necessary for us to take up our cross and follow Jesus where He leads. Such do not really believe that if our right eye offends, it must be plucked out, and that if our right hand causes us to stumble, it must be cut off (Mat. 5:29,30). They do not accept the view in practice that if we live after the flesh, we shall die, and that it is necessary to mortify the deeds of the body if we are to live (Rom. 8:15). They think it is possible to serve two masters, and they doubt that the way to heaven is either strait or narrow.
Some think that all there is to do to be saved is to give lip service to Christ and put Him on in baptism. They ignore or disregard the fact that we must turn our backs on the world, leave the far country of sinful indulgence, and renounce self, if we are to be saved. All must be made secondary to the cause. We must seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and put Him first in our hearts and lives. What caused the rich young ruler to go away from Christ sorrowing, after coming to Him with such high hopes and with some indication of a willingness to be His disciple? Was it not love of earthly possessions? What restrained the invited guests to the Great Supper but an immoderate affection for a farm, oxen, and a wife? (Mat. 22:5).
The reason that comparatively few will be saved is because the great majority of the people of the world prefer to travel the broad way which leads to destruction. It was so in the days of Noah, while the ark “was a preparing.” Notwithstanding that worthy patriarch’s call to repentance, the people spurned his plea and perished in the flood which followed, eight souls only being saved from the deluge, which engulfed the world. Though the Israelites were delivered from the wrath of Egypt and had manifold evidence of God’s goodness and providence, they longed for the delights of the land they had left, murmured against God and against Moses and perished in the trackless wastes of the wilderness. Out of the number who started to the Promised Land, only two—Caleb and Joshua—were privileged to enter. If but eight of the teeming millions of the antidiluvian world were saved, and if but two of the vast throngs of Israelites which came up from Egypt were allowed to enter the land of Promise, shall we doubt that but “few” of the people of the world shall be saved today?
6. The narrow way leads to Life—everlasting life with God when this existence ends. The way leads through the pearly gate to the city of gold. There the saints of God shall enter, when the fight with sin and death is over, and the redeemed of the Lord go up with singing to Zion and to the city of God. There, they shall even more be, in the company of prophets, priests and kings, the righteous and redeemed of all ages, and with loved ones gone on before.
7. The broad way is easily found and is entered without effort. It is the course of the world, the path of self-will and selfish gratification. It is wide because it has no restrictions. It is easy because it requires no effort to travel in it. The going is smooth because it is downhill. It is crowded because in it men may indulge their lusts, give rein to their inclinations with nothing to restrain them. It is a deceptive road, because those who travel in it have no idea and give no thought to where it will carry them. They have accepted the philosophy that we are young but once, that life is short, and that we should eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. It is, alas, the way “that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof is the way of death” (Pro. 14:12). It is a fatal road because it is the way to destruction. It conducts eventually to the bottomless pit, to the unquenchable fire, and to the undying worm. It is the way of the ungodly; and the Scriptures tell us that “the way of the ungodly shall perish” (Psa. 1:6). The word destruction means, literally, and is so translated elsewhere, perdition. Thus, the end of the broad way, notwithstanding its popularity, is perdition. To avoid the inevitable end to which the way leads, we must search for, and find, enter, and continue along the narrow path that escorts to life.
Broad is the road that leads to death,
And thousands walk together there;
But wisdom shows a narrower path,
With here and there a traveler.
In the long ago, the prophet Isaiah saw these two ways and described them:
And a highway shall be there” (this is the broad way that leads to destruction; it is, then, a highway) and a way (the way is the narrow way, the way to life); and it shall be called the way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall he for the redeemed: the wayfaring men, yea fools, shall not err therein. No lion shall he there, nor shall any ravenous beast go up thereon; they shall not be found there; hut the redeemed shall walk there: and the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; and they shall obtain gladness and joy and sorrow and sighing shall flee away (Isa. 35:8-9).
Though pleasant the path which leads along the broad way, it ends in unutterable woe and everlasting torment. How very important, then, that we give heed to the admonition of the wise man, “Ponder the path of thy feet” (Pro. 4:26). Men do this readily enough in material matters why not then much more in spiritual things. They do not board a train or enter a bus without first determining its destination. Why not, then, exercise equal caution regarding the journey of life by pausing and asking, where will the course I am now following bring me? In what direction are my feet headed? There is a gate that stands ajar,
And through its portals gleaming
A radiance from the crown afar.
The Savior’s love revealing.
Yes, in the blood of Christ I see,
The gate that stands ajar for me,
For me … For me …
That stands ajar for me
