WALKING THE NARROW WAY.
Matthew 7:13-23.
The Sermon on the Mount is book-ended in these terms. ‘Seeing the MULTITUDES (Jesus) went up into a mountain: and when He was set, His DISCIPLES came unto Him’ (Matthew 5:1). ‘And when Jesus had ended these sayings, the PEOPLE were astonished at His teaching’ (Matthew 7:28).
It is incumbent upon us all to examine ourselves and to check that we are on the right road or building upon the right foundation. We are called upon to enter the narrow gate and walk the narrow way of the Gospel (Matthew 7:13-14). We are called to shed the cares of this world and follow Him (Matthew 16:24).
What Jesus exposed in this Sermon is the spirituality of the Law, its deeper meaning (e.g. in Matthew 5:21-22 and Matthew 5:27-28). The Law only serves, to use Paul’s later expression, ‘as a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ’ (Galatians 3:24). We cannot keep the Law apart from the new birth (John 3:7), apart from the Holy Spirit, who ‘writes it upon our hearts’ (Hebrews 8:10). By the same token, neither can we keep the Sermon on the Mount in our own strength.
First in today’s passage, Jesus describes the two ways: the broad way which leads to destruction, and the narrow way that leads to life (Matthew 7:13-14).
The broad way is easy, it is spacious. Tolerance is its password; its watchwords are diversity, permissiveness and synchronism; its mottoes are come as you are and remain as you are, do what you want, follow your own inclinations. It is ‘the way of the ungodly’ (cf. Psalm 1:6) and leads to death.
The narrow way is that which is taken by those who have had the righteousness of Christ imputed to them (2 Corinthians 5:21). They are called ‘the righteous’ in Psalm 1:6. We cannot take this way unless we are born again (John 3:3), our eyes set upon Jesus (Hebrews 12:2), and we are following after ‘holiness without which no man shall see God’ (Hebrews 12:14).
The one has a wide gate, the other a narrow gate. People pass through the wide gate with ease: in fact they crowd through without much difficulty. The narrow gate is more of an obstacle: a turnstile too narrow for us to go forward with the baggage of the life we are supposedly leaving behind. We pass through as individuals, each with our own testimony.
Second in today’s passage, Jesus warns against false teachers (Matthew 7:15-20). They are wolves in sheep’s clothing. They are like the false prophets of Old Testament days, who preached ‘peace, peace’ when there was no peace (Jeremiah 6:14).
Jesus warns us that there will be false prophets in the last days (Matthew 24:11; Matthew 24:24). These are the days in which we live. These false teachers lurk around our doors, and the doors of our churches (cf. 2 John 1:10).
The false teachers are not always obvious: they may wear clerical collars - or not; or have strings of initials after their names - or pride themselves on the fact that they do not. They may seem to subscribe to the right creeds, carry their Bibles, be civil and polite and all: but changing the analogy from wolves to trees, Jesus twice tells us that we will “know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16; Matthew 7:20).
But what are these fruits? Elsewhere, Jesus equates fruitfulness with Christ-likeness (cf. John 15:5). The branch is attached to Jesus, the true Vine, and brings forth much fruit in the exercise of His grace and the performance of good works. A true minister must surely possess and demonstrate “the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance (Galatians 5:22-23). A true minister, too, must be judged by his teaching. Jesus repeats the analogy in Matthew 12:33-34 and adds ‘by your words you shall be justified, and by your words you shall be condemned’ (Matthew 12:37).
In the end false teachers, unless they repent, will be with those who are finally rejected in Matthew 7:21-23. They will PROFESS, “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name, and in your name have cast out demons, and in your name done many wonderful works?” To whom He will PROFESS, “I never knew you: depart from me, you (all) that work (literally) LAWLESSNESS”!
May the Lord help as we walk in His way, and may He keep us ever alert to the dangers of all that is false.
