Broad Path, Narrow Path

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.

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.

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.

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.

as i was saying . . .

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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.

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.

Because a truth is distorted by man to lead to something not true.

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.

The definition of salvation is to walk? I don't think the dictionary will agree with you.

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.

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.

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?

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)

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