“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. (*Matthew *7:*13-14 NIV)
How narrow is that path? How do you know, brothers and sisters, that your lifestyle lines up with the narrow road that we are required to take?
What if the things you do are sinful and you don't know it?
How do you rationalize your lifestyle?
You ask a very large question! Yours should be a great thread.
The path Jesus spoke of is narrow in that it is very clear-cut. Down in verse 15 His sermon moves on to false prophets. Their spiritual fruit offers a very wide way, generous enuogh to admit probably the whole world regardless of whether meeting God's requirements. Even today I heard a podcast teaching that God matches the way to God according to national cultures. That's the widest path I've ever heard of. I will try to figure out who it was and unsubscribe tonight.
The narrow path of Jesus is likened to a circle of thorns and vines prepared by a shepherd to keep his flock together overnight, and often throughout a storm. There would be only one way into the sheephold, that being the only way out. Typical sheepfolds were very small, maybe a dozen, easy to protect like that. The entrance would be very narrow, and the shepherd would sleep in that entrance. He also had to be on guard against a predator trying to get through a weakness in the vines, of course not choosing to try overcoming the shepherd.
By analogy Jesus is our shepherd, we are His sheepfold. The only way into His kingdom is through Him. His requirements are few, but very strict.
In short, very short, the Shepherd is interested in whether you are of the Good, or the Evil. All His ideas of entrance are like that, white or black. By faith or by empirical evidence. Repented of sin or still given over to sin. Following Him or going around Him. Choosing spiritual life, or still choosing death in all it's forms.
A wide path could admit all who hope to stumble in without making such choices.
My wife and I drove 900 miles to Los Angeles, California to visit a dying relative in Anaheim. We didn't take time to get a map, those being the days before GPS maps on a cellphone. We followed the signs as best we could, seeing "Anaheim" occasionally, but were not in the right lane at each intersection. I foolishly stayed in the "fast lane" that had a much higher speed limit. It was fun in our 1969 Pontiac Lemans. We blew the tar out of it. Long story short there, we wasted at least 7 hours getting on track out of L.A. to a highway leading to Anaheim. Along the way we ended up in a slum district where people rode on the hood of our car, and some boys tried to remove our hubcaps while we were yet moving. We finally found an open gas station that resembled civilization, then asked a man on the street corner "How do we get to Anaheim?" He replied "You can't get there from here." He gestured directions to go to L.A. and basically start over.
The point I finally learned from that experience is to find out what is required beforehand so you know which path to enter. It won't be on the fast lane that most drivers want to be on. It will be on the "right" lane even if that's on the seemingly strange left side, in the middle of 6 lanes splitting off into two routes. You have to "know". To follow Jesus' way read His words and follow them. Choose life.