Broad Path, Narrow Path

  • Christian Chat is a moderated online Christian community allowing Christians around the world to fellowship with each other in real time chat via webcam, voice, and text, with the Christian Chat app. You can also start or participate in a Bible-based discussion here in the Christian Chat Forums, where members can also share with each other their own videos, pictures, or favorite Christian music.

    If you are a Christian and need encouragement and fellowship, we're here for you! If you are not a Christian but interested in knowing more about Jesus our Lord, you're also welcome! Want to know what the Bible says, and how you can apply it to your life? Join us!

    To make new Christian friends now around the world, click here to join Christian Chat.

Blik

Senior Member
Dec 6, 2016
7,312
2,424
113
ALL false religions ans religionists are promoting the broad path.

The broad path is people attempting to earn entry into Heaven by their own efforts (good deeds or good works).

At the same time they include idolatry in their religions, whether False Christianity, Paganism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, etc.

They are sincere but sincerely wrong.
This is a truth that can lead to following the broad path.

God gave many instructions to us to help us find the narrow path, each instruction includes disciplining ourselves. When God first took a large group of people aside as God did when He freed Hebrew slaves in Egypt his first retraining of them includes discipline. God even used rituals to help them, ones that were purely physical but meant to help them with the spiritual walk. Diet to remind them of the need for purity in anything that enters the body. There was circumcision to remind them they were different and on a special path.

People began following the physical reminders but not the spiritual discipline they were to lead to so God took those away, but we are to listen to the Holy Spirit to guide us to the same discipline.

Now, the Christian is glorying in such as the law of Moses not in effect any longer. The law of Moses gave them ways that love of all God created were to lead to, and God said go directly to be led by love. With the law being taken away in the minds of Christians, they are simply going on the wide path to destruction. At least the law of Moses gave them the steps to giving love, with the steps gone people go astray.

Meditating on the Lord as we are instructed to do, filling our minds and soul with the word is the first step to walking with the Lord. As our minds think so does our walk happen for our minds lead us. It takes discipline. It takes filling our minds with the Lord and following the path God lays out for us. It takes such as the thoughts we are to allow ourselves to have as told in Phil. 4:8.

Deciding you won't work to "earn your salvation" is based on the truth that it is God alone who savers us, not our works. This truth can lead to just not working for why work when it won't save. It takes work and discipline of self to follow Jesus on the narrow path. Salvation is not the result of this discipline and work, but the rewards are monumental.
 

posthuman

Senior Member
Jul 31, 2013
36,647
13,124
113
for God has consigned all to disobedience, that He may have mercy on all
(Romans 11:32)
but the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin,
so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe
(Galatians 3:22)


interestingly, it doesn't say He constrained 'many' or 'most' under sin, but 'all' and 'everything'
a great confounding truth! but He gives also the explanation to us: so that He may have mercy on all; so that the promise, by faith, is given to those who believe.


seems to me that if i think the 'narrow path' has to do with a perfect accomplishment of sinlessness through works, i run into a problem when i read these verses. few 'find' it, He says: it has to do with seeking, and seeing, rather than doing. looking at what i've cited above, the narrow way in these sayings is a passage through mercy, through faith, through belief, to the promise in Jesus Christ.

now if only i could preempt the antinomian strawman that will inevitably raise it's head, lol
 

Blik

Senior Member
Dec 6, 2016
7,312
2,424
113
for God has consigned all to disobedience, that He may have mercy on all
(Romans 11:32)
but the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin,
so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe
(Galatians 3:22)


interestingly, it doesn't say He constrained 'many' or 'most' under sin, but 'all' and 'everything'
a great confounding truth! but He gives also the explanation to us: so that He may have mercy on all; so that the promise, by faith, is given to those who believe.


seems to me that if i think the 'narrow path' has to do with a perfect accomplishment of sinlessness through works, i run into a problem when i read these verses. few 'find' it, He says: it has to do with seeking, and seeing, rather than doing. looking at what i've cited above, the narrow way in these sayings is a passage through mercy, through faith, through belief, to the promise in Jesus Christ.

now if only i could preempt the antinomian strawman that will inevitably raise it's head, lol
Your problem is deciding that your choice is limited to a perfect sinlessness or a whoopie, I'll satisfy the flesh because I can't be perfect. That is not the case at all, it is something that man has made up. Scripture tells us to work and try. When you tell the Lord that you won't try because God told you that you can't be perfect it is just a cop out, it is not at all a valid excuse.
 

Blik

Senior Member
Dec 6, 2016
7,312
2,424
113
Another popular excuse to choose the wide path is the fact that it is work. Work does not save, and that is to them the only reason they accept to work, they do not know love. Again, it is not scripture as a valid excuse, it is something man has made up as an excuse.
 

Dino246

Senior Member
Jun 30, 2015
24,685
13,373
113
Your problem is deciding that your choice is limited to a perfect sinlessness or a whoopie, I'll satisfy the flesh because I can't be perfect. That is not the case at all, it is something that man has made up. Scripture tells us to work and try. When you tell the Lord that you won't try because God told you that you can't be perfect it is just a cop out, it is not at all a valid excuse.
It's a little silly to use a false dichotomy to attempt to refute a false dichotomy.

As long as people continue to do so, this debate will be pointless.

God gave us His Spirit to empower us to walk in His ways. We do not walk in His ways by following the Law, but by walking with His Spirit, Who guides us into all truth. The Law is inadequate for that.
 

posthuman

Senior Member
Jul 31, 2013
36,647
13,124
113
now if only i could preempt the antinomian strawman that will inevitably raise it's head, lol
as i was saying . . .

Your problem is deciding that your choice is limited to a perfect sinlessness or a whoopie, I'll satisfy the flesh because I can't be perfect. That is not the case at all, it is something that man has made up. Scripture tells us to work and try. When you tell the Lord that you won't try because God told you that you can't be perfect it is just a cop out, it is not at all a valid excuse.
________________________:rolleyes:
 

posthuman

Senior Member
Jul 31, 2013
36,647
13,124
113
Another popular excuse to choose the wide path is the fact that it is work. Work does not save, and that is to them the only reason they accept to work, they do not know love. Again, it is not scripture as a valid excuse, it is something man has made up as an excuse.
just stating some facts, dear :)

i don't stop racing just because within the first few seconds it's been established that my attempt doesn't have a chance of breaking the olympic record. i have peace if i'm not competing against anyone else, and i also have motivation if i'm competing only against myself. but if i simply love to run - then i have something better than both of those, something greater than a gold medal: joy, and gratefulness! no amount of training can ever give these things to a person; they come from above
 

Nehemiah6

Senior Member
Jul 18, 2017
24,418
12,903
113
This is a truth that can lead to following the broad path.
Why would the truth lead to the broad path, which leads to Hell?

Looks like you are a little confused. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself is the narrow gate and the narrow path. That is all that people need to know. He Himself is salvation - YAH SHUA.
 

Blik

Senior Member
Dec 6, 2016
7,312
2,424
113
It's a little silly to use a false dichotomy to attempt to refute a false dichotomy.

As long as people continue to do so, this debate will be pointless.

God gave us His Spirit to empower us to walk in His ways. We do not walk in His ways by following the Law, but by walking with His Spirit, Who guides us into all truth. The Law is inadequate for that.
I agree, the law is inadequate to use only, without accepting the spirit of the Lord. What I do not accept is that the law is against the spirit of the Lord.
 

Blik

Senior Member
Dec 6, 2016
7,312
2,424
113
Why would the truth lead to the broad path, which leads to Hell?

Looks like you are a little confused. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself is the narrow gate and the narrow path. That is all that people need to know. He Himself is salvation - YAH SHUA.
Because a truth is distorted by man to lead to something not true.
 

Blik

Senior Member
Dec 6, 2016
7,312
2,424
113
Why would the truth lead to the broad path, which leads to Hell?

Looks like you are a little confused. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself is the narrow gate and the narrow path. That is all that people need to know. He Himself is salvation - YAH SHUA.
If salvation is all you want, go for it! A relationship with the Lord comes with walking with Him.
 

Nehemiah6

Senior Member
Jul 18, 2017
24,418
12,903
113
If salvation is all you want, go for it! A relationship with the Lord comes with walking with Him.
Well the saying about the broad and narrow ways is indeed about salvation. So there is no need to go off on another tangent.

SALVATION BY GRACE THROUGH FAITH = CHRIST HIMSELF

ALL RELIGIONS = SINNERS ATTEMPTING TO SAVE THEMSELVES

So just focus on Christ Himself -- crucified, resurrected, ascended, and exalted.
 

Blik

Senior Member
Dec 6, 2016
7,312
2,424
113
Well the saying about the broad and narrow ways is indeed about salvation. So there is no need to go off on another tangent.

SALVATION BY GRACE THROUGH FAITH = CHRIST HIMSELF

ALL RELIGIONS = SINNERS ATTEMPTING TO SAVE THEMSELVES

So just focus on Christ Himself -- crucified, resurrected, ascended, and exalted.
The definition of salvation is to walk? I don't think the dictionary will agree with you.
 

posthuman

Senior Member
Jul 31, 2013
36,647
13,124
113
I agree, the law is inadequate to use only, without accepting the spirit of the Lord. What I do not accept is that the law is against the spirit of the Lord.
certainly not the law properly understood & used lawfully. but the law, properly understood, is spiritual and testifies of Christ.

there is a great mystery here; for some reason circumcision is part of the law, but Paul is able to charge by the Spirit that accepting it physically is falling from grace. this is really astonishing! at least it should be! so we have to properly understand how that can be so in order to understand how the law & its relation to us as having been immersed into Christ is properly understood. this is only one example of many, but it's indispensable, and useful as a test because scripture is so clear about it: if some understanding of the law and its application to believers can't explain circumcision, then it can't be right; it is evident immediately that it must lack something.
 

Nehemiah6

Senior Member
Jul 18, 2017
24,418
12,903
113
what if a truth is incomplete, and the missing bits replaced with deception?
Today the Bible is FREELY available to all in every language (and English is already the language of the world). No excuses for half-truths. Jesus is THE TRUTH.
 

posthuman

Senior Member
Jul 31, 2013
36,647
13,124
113
there is a great mystery here; for some reason circumcision is part of the law, but Paul is able to charge by the Spirit that accepting it physically is falling from grace. this is really astonishing! at least it should be! so we have to properly understand how that can be so in order to understand how the law & its relation to us as having been immersed into Christ is properly understood. this is only one example of many, but it's indispensable, and useful as a test because scripture is so clear about it: if some understanding of the law and its application to believers can't explain circumcision, then it can't be right; it is evident immediately that it must lack something.
i'm laughing to myself,
because this is the same as flat-earth, in an abstract sense.


flat-earth cannot explain sunrise and sunset, and sunrise and sunset are very clear aspects of inhabiting the face of the earth. it's a very useful test, just like the startling fact of the command to physically circumcise going back to Abraham and carried through Moses being spoken astoundingly authoritatively against by Paul in defense of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
flat earth cannot be correct, because, sunrise. a gospel that cannot explain circumcision is likewise false.


does this make sense? am i wrong?
 

posthuman

Senior Member
Jul 31, 2013
36,647
13,124
113
Today the Bible is FREELY available to all in every language (and English is already the language of the world). No excuses for half-truths. Jesus is THE TRUTH.
of course, and amen

but someone who only has part of the truth, however it is they came to fail to attain all of it, and to have what has been excluded replaced by a lie, can be led astray. is led astray!
i just meant, this is how a portion of truth, mixed with a lie, can lead a person to do evil instead of good
 

Nehemiah6

Senior Member
Jul 18, 2017
24,418
12,903
113
of course, and amen

but someone who only has part of the truth, however it is they came to fail to attain all of it, and to have what has been excluded replaced by a lie, can be led astray. is led astray!
i just meant, this is how a portion of truth, mixed with a lie, can lead a person to do evil instead of good
If God says that they are all WITHOUT EXCUSE, believe it.

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: (Rom 1:20)
 

posthuman

Senior Member
Jul 31, 2013
36,647
13,124
113
If God says that they are all WITHOUT EXCUSE, believe it.

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: (Rom 1:20)
funny you should mention it :)

earlier today i was talking to my wife about something, and started to say, 'you can't always expect people to understand . . ' - and i stopped and thought, is this something that's always true? could you say in every case, you can't assume people ought to understand? it seemed to my wife at first that yes, that seems like it might be universally true, then we thought of this verse, that it negates the thought as a principle.

some things, yes, no one has an excuse not to understand :):unsure: