Matthew 7:14 Commentary and Bible Study

By contrast the gate that leads to life is narrow and many are put off by this. It is entered by a strait gate, an exacting gate. This wonderful summary points to what is distinctive about this gate. The narrow gate through which Christ says we must enter is in Greek ‘the strait gate’ or the restricted or exacting gate. We have the English medical word ‘stenosis’ derived from the Greek, meaning a narrowing of a duct or passage. This is something hard to get. The English word ‘strait’ describes a narrow passage of water through which a ship must go in order to reach more open waters beyond. You cannot get through while you are carrying the baggage of sin; the gate is too narrow to allow these things to pass through: only a naked soul can squeeze through. You come to God as a sinner, but as one who longs to be rid of sin. You come in repentance and ask God to open the gate for you. This gate is not narrow in the sense that you have to be full of good works, and only the righteous can enter. No, we cannot deny that we are sinners, and God himself must provide us with righteousness and give it to us freely, but we must leave the old life behind in order to go through this gate. You cannot take known sins with you into God’s kingdom; you must forsake them all and there must be a death to the old life. You must enter the pathway to life by going through the narrow gate, for this gate forces you to enter with the proper qualifications: repentance of sins, and faith in the person of Christ and in his saving work on Calvary. To use Bunyan’s illustration in Pilgrim’s Progress, you cannot get onto the path by coming over the wall. To become a Christian, we must go through difficult experiences. We must be prepared to feel the shame of sin. The human heart is so proud. Although salvation is free, we have to humble ourselves before God, and ask him to give us life.When people consider it, they find it narrow in its entrance and narrow in the path that follows. To the worldling the entrance to this way seems hard and the way seems onerous. There are too many rules for his liking and the conditions of entrance into the Christian life are too demanding. He senses that a person must give up all for Christ and be willing to leave behind all his sinful pleasures and, in effect, to lose his life as he knows it. This is too high a price to pay. There are few that find this way. This warning from the Author of life ought to be most alarming to the person outside of the kingdom. ‘Lord, let me not be left out! Let me not be one who fails to understand the eternal importance of these things, and who only realises too late that this should have been the all-consuming passion of his life. Let its narrowness not put me off. Let me not be so foolish as to see it in these terms, but let me be willing to pay any price to secure my place in that kingdom.’