The Narrow Way

Matthew 7:13-14 (ESV)
"Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. [14] For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.
I think the normal reaction to this text is to try make the easy way harder, but never actually standing back from the wide gate, or getting off the easy way that goes through it. That the gate is narrow and the way hard, is never thought to mean that it is Christ alone, and that he will put his cross on you.
The way of the world is to make salvation a matter of works. This is the wide way that leads to destruction. This gate is wide enough for all religions to pass through, and they all do, organized, corporate, or personal. The religion of the barfly, and the religion of the teetotaler all go through this gate. It is the gate of works. And the works we can do are all easy.
Oh we think they are hard. We think we can make them harder. We start replacing God’s law with our own. We make salvation a matter of quitting smoking, which we think is hard, and can be by human terms, but in the grand scheme of things this is easy. Giving up the bottle the same. Laying aside the one night stands? Settling down like a dried out hippie? If only salvation we so easy. Or maybe you make it a matter of joining a monastery. Perhaps it is a matter of flogging yourself on a Philippine Street, or literally hanging yourself from a cross, maybe even by your nipples. Makes for a good freak show at the circus, but this doesn’t do anything for your salvation. It is common for people to think that salvation is a matter of merely being moral by human standards.
But the narrow gate is the one rejected by all. The narrow gate is Jesus Christ. This is the one that does not allow for your grandma or some other family member that wasn’t Christian or isn’t Christian to be saved though they were really nice. And it is so hard to think of those friends and family that don’t know Christ, or reject him, and their fate. How often I have been reprimanded for “Mormon bashing” when I explain these people are not saved because they do not believe in Jesus Christ, but in another deity altogether whom they have decided to name Jesus Christ. They don’t believe in the Triune God, and if they don’t believe that they cannot confess Jesus Christ is Lord as the apostles and early Christians did. That they do not confess him to be Lord as Christians today do. And I get the response that they are good people. Not in God’s eyes. They may not be immoral in any way we really care about. But the deceptiveness of their religion necessitates the blasphemy of God’s name. Then I’m told that if what I say is true, than a lot of people are going to Hell.
What do you think the passage above means about the gate being narrow? Seriously that is the reality! And that is why it is so important to find the narrow gate that is Christ alone. But then this way is supposed to be hard, but salvation by grace through faith alone seems so easy to those looking from the outside. This is not the easy way. Faith is the most difficult way. For man it is impossible, It is only possible for God. It is the work of the Holy Spirit, because it is too difficult to be our work. Given to ourselves we reject it. it goes against the grain of our being that wants to rely on works and hold on to our pride.
So in a way this way is easy for the Christian, because it is not his work at all. Yet it is the most difficult way, because with this faith comes the cross that Jesus gives us. We pick them up and follow him, but we do not choose them. These crosses are born in love, as Christ bore his cross in love for us. They are born in love for our neighbor which is the Christians love for Christ. It means suffering for his names sake. This isn’t a matter of choosing for ourselves what is pleasing to God, so that we quit smacking gum. This is a matter of living out the vocations that God has given us. It is a matter of living in Christ as you go to work. It is a matter of being a faithful husband, or wife and not taking what looks to be the easy way out when the marriage is not longer for better but for worse, no longer in good health but in sickness. It is a matter of being patient with your children and yet bringing them up in the fear of the Lord. It is a matter of suffering for doing what is right, when it would have been so easy to do what is wrong. It is a matter of doing everything to the glory of God. And it is not always easy, to suffer on behalf of Christ. But Christ who suffered and died for us is faithful to forgive and carry us through, to take from us those heavy yokes, and give us peace, because the world gives us tribulation on account of him whom the world despises. But he, he has overcome the world.