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Narrow Gate...

             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. Jesus (Matthew 7:13-14)

Observe the masses and do the opposite. James Caan

One of the things I learned from Dallas Willard is that what we find in Scripture about life isn’t just what things will be like in heaven. Today’s verses are usually understood to refer to salvation and teach the idea that there is only one way to Heaven - Jesus Christ, our Lord. Many will go through the gates of other religions (including the supposed “no religion”) but only those who come to Jesus will be saved. Yes, this is so.

Today, however, I’m looking more at the “everyday” and “today” of this passage, which James Caan, quoted above, may have paraphrased nicely. In the Old Testament, God repeatedly told Israel not to live like the nations lived. He gave them laws that specifically forbade practices of other nations. In the New Testament, Jesus and His followers taught that we should not conform to this world or love it.

The other interesting thing about this passage is the understanding of the term “gate.” If you’ve read The Odyssey, you may remember that after Ulysses and his men blinded the cyclops, he positioned himself across the entrance of his cave and as the sheep approached to be let out to forage, he ran his hand across the sheep’s back, to make sure he was allowing a sheep to leave, and not a man. In some ways, this seems clever to us, but for those reading it, this section of the story is in keeping with the practice of shepherds at the time. They were the gate to the sheepfold. When Jesus referred to Himself as the gate, He wasn’t saying something bizarre to His listeners. They understood.

A narrow gate would therefore be a gate where the shepherd was there. A wide gate was where the shepherd was not. A modern equivalent might be like taking a nap, leaving the doors of a house wide open with three toddlers in the house, a busy city street 20 feet from the front door, and an inground pool 10 feet from the back door as the wide gate. With the narrow gate, the three toddlers are watched over by an attentive care-giver and the doors are thoroughly latched at a level they can’t unlatch. It’s not only that the narrow gate leads to heaven and the wide gate leads to hell, but that the narrow gate represents protection and care, and the wide gate show a lack of care that leads - in life - to danger and calamity. 

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