The Narrow and Wide Gates

In our daily meditations, we reflect on what Jesus taught His disciples in the Sermon on the Mount. In chapter seven of the Gospel of Matthew, the Lord Jesus now focuses our attention on making wise decisions about how we choose to live our lives while we pass through this evil world system:

13“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it (Matthew 7:13-14).

People make many choices and decisions about their lives every day, but choosing to live by catering to their flesh and sinful nature, and by pursuing what seems right for their own desires, is viewed by Jesus as a broad gate and a road that many travel. Instead, the Lord wants us to take the difficult path, the one that leads to life and eternity. Jesus illustrates this by depicting a man entering through a large, easily identifiable gate into a significant city and walking along a wide main avenue. The broad road is so expansive that it can accommodate any ideas about who you are and where you are going. You can carry anything on your shoulders, and you won't even have to lighten your load to enter through the gate. This route requires no effort on your part, and no change of heart is necessary, as all are welcome. Unfortunately, it leads to destruction, and many are walking along that main avenue. Many of us reflect on times in our lives when we have walked through a gate that led to succumbing to our passions and sinful actions and attitudes, which we now regret, and that have impacted our character. This was the experience of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charlemagne:

In 768, Charlemagne became king of the Franks, a Germanic tribe in present-day Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and western Germany. He had gained an empire, yet in his dying days, he discovered that living for oneself and obtaining an empire without Christ seated on the throne of one’s life resulted in a miserable death. One hundred and eighty years after Charlemagne’s death, around the year 1000, officials of Emperor Otho opened the great king’s tomb where, in addition to incredible treasures, they encountered an unusual sight: the skeletal remains of King Charlemagne seated on a throne, his crown still upon his skull, and a copy of the Gospels resting in his lap with his bony finger positioned on the text, “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?” (Matthew 16:26). He had everything, but at the end of his life—oh, how he wished he’d made different choices. At the end of your life, what regrets will you take with you into eternity?

Jesus also talked about a narrow gate, and a narrow road, a path not easy to find that requires effort and the casting off of lethargy and a passive spirit to seek out the way with our whole heart. Only a few find and walk the narrow road. The author Alexander Maclaren compared the first two Beatitudes to the side posts of the narrow gate or door. One side post signifies the need for an awareness of one’s spiritual bankruptcy, while the other side indicates the demand for sorrow over sin. When entering through the narrow gate, the road to eternal life remains narrow and difficult, requiring us to die daily to selfishness; however, it is the way the Holy Spirit transforms us. We'll only see the fruit of the Spirit's work in us on that last day when we will stand before the Lord of Glory, for we “graduate” into eternity with the inner character that God has shaped us into.

Too many people rush about seeking fame and fortune, desperately investing all their time, energy, and money into climbing the ladder of success, only to discover that at the end of their lives, their ladder has been against the wrong wall. May it be far from us to regret how we spent our years on trivial matters. Keith Thomas