The Narrowness of the Christian Faith Matthew 7:13-14 Introduction This morning we’re going to deal with an aspect of Christianity that today is very controversial. It’s the narrowness of the Christian faith. The fact that Christians believe that they have “the truth.” The idea that there is only one way to God. The exclusivity of the gospel. “The truth” that means that even the most sincere and well-meaning Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, and Hindus are wrong, and will not be welcomed into heaven when they die. And typically, people outside the church have resisted the exclusivity of the Christian faith along four lines. I’m adapting these from Tim Keller’s phenomenal book, The Reason for God, which is now available in paperback. So then, here are four common objections (and solutions) to the exclusivity or narrowness of the Christian faith: “All major religions are equally valid and basically teach the same thing.” What people who assert this don’t see in it is its inherent inconsistency. Essentially, what they’re saying is that the specific doctrines or teachings of a particular faith don’t matter…which is itself a doctrine – the doctrine that all major religions basically teach the same thing! More than that, if you were to ask a person who says this, what that “same thing” is – that “same thing” would also be a doctrine, and often, a doctrine that fundamentally contradicts the doctrines of the major religions of the world. “Each religion sees part of spiritual truth, but none can see the whole truth.” This objection plays off the very true notion that we are limited by our own perspective. None of us can see something in its totality; we can only see one side at a time. If this seems compelling to you, consider what one writer says: “There is an appearance of humility in the protestation that the truth is much greater than any one of us can grasp, but if this is used to invalidate all claims to discern the truth it is in fact an arrogant claim to a kind of knowledge which is superior to all others.”  How can he say that? Well, let me put it in the form of a question: “How could you possibly know that no religion can see the whole truth unless you yourself have the superior, comprehensive knowledge of spiritual reality you just claimed that none of the religions have?” “Religious belief is too culturally and historically conditioned to be ‘truth.’” Now, like the objection from the limitations of our own perspective, this objection is rooted in a half-truth. It is true that we believe what we believe because we are socially conditioned to do so. Even though we like to think that we think for ourselves, it’s not that simple. We tend to think like the people we most admire and need. Every one of us belongs to a community (Christian or otherwise) that reinforces the plausibility of some beliefs and discourages other beliefs. The evidence for this is apparently pretty conclusive. HOWEVER (and here’s what makes this a half-truth) it would be wrong to infer from this that it is impossible to judge the rightness or wrongness of competing beliefs. If that were true, then people who say that religious belief is too culturally and historically conditioned to be defined as truth would have to say that that belief itself is too culturally and historically conditioned to be defined as truth, too! In other words, if my beliefs are socially conditioned, then so is my belief that “no belief can be held as universally true for everyone,” therefore, it can’t be true ON ITS OWN TERMS. And is therefore self-defeating. Finally, (and I think I hear this one most of all): “It is arrogant to insist that your religion is right and to try to convert other people to it.” Some people say that because many very intelligent people hold contrary views to yours, people who can’t be convinced otherwise – because of this, it’s arrogant to think that your view is superior to theirs, that yours is “the truth,” while theirs is false. Again, like the objection which appeals to the limitations of our perspective, this can seem to be quite humble. It’s not! The statement, “All religions views that claim to have a corner on the truth are arrogant” is itself an arrogant statement. Why? Because many very intelligent people hold a contrary view and can’t be convinced otherwise. How arrogant to think that your view that there is no such thing as absolute truth is absolutely true?! And really, in the final analysis, whatever your objection to the narrowness of Christianity may be, your objection will itself be a kind of narrowness. As Keller puts it: “It is no more narrow to claim that one religion is right than to claim that one way to think about all religions (namely that all are equal) is right. We are all exclusive in our beliefs about religion, but in different ways.” Christians Become Arrogant When Christianity Becomes Religion Now this is not to say that it is impossible for Christians to hold their views arrogantly! Nothing could be further from the truth. We can be arrogant about the Christian faith. Necessary narrowness can become obnoxious arrogance in a heartbeat. This happens when Christians turn the Christian faith into “religion” (a system of behavior to gain God’s acceptance). Religion works like this: Your religion has “the truth.” Your job is to perform “the truth” with utmost devotion. As a result, you feel superior to other people who either don’t have “the truth” or who fail to perform it. This is always bad, and often leads not just to stereotyping and caricaturing, but also to oppression, abuse, and even violence. But this is emphatically not Christianity. Christianity is all about grace, sheer and unmerited and undeserved acceptance. And it works like this: You were given “the truth” as a gift. Your job is not to perform “the truth,” but recognizing your inability to perform your way to God; your job is to rely on Jesus who is “the truth.” As a result, you cannot legitimately feel superior to people because (1) your possession of the truth is a gift; and (2) “the truth” is not a performance, it is a person. You can’t legitimately look down to people who haven’t received this gift (it’s a gift!) and you can’t legitimately look down on people who fail to perform the truth because Christianity is not about your performance; it’s about a relationship with a person. The result will be that for Christians who live consistently with the gospel is that we will acknowledge that people of other faiths have goodness and wisdom to offer the world, and that many people will live morally superior lives to our own. After all, we’re saved by sheer grace, not by our own religious IQ or superior morality!  Now all this is to say that Christianity is narrow. But its narrowness is no narrower than claims to the contrary. The narrowness of Christianity is not arrogance. The arrogance of some of us is not our narrowness – it’s our religiosity that makes us arrogant. It’s forgetting that the Christian faith is all about grace. Decision Time at the Crossroads Now then, with that said, what I want to do with you in the balance of our time is park in a text that addresses the narrowness of the Christian faith head-on. It’s the next passage in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Turn with me in your Bibles to Matt 7:13-27 and read with me. <Read the text> Here is where Jesus moves into his appeal based on all that he’s said in the Sermon on the Mount. I call it “The Crossroads of the Sermon on the Mount.” Jesus doesn’t let us sit comfortably by, listening to his message, impressed with his speaking ability, awed by the simplicity and profundity of his description of life in a fallen world. He calls us to take action. It is not enough for us to sit nodding our heads in approval. We have to take action. He says, “I’ve described the character of the Christian faith (in the Beatitudes). I’ve given you the conduct of the Christian faith in the body of the sermon. Now my question to you is this: what are you going to do about it?” Listening to me isn’t good enough. As Lloyd-Jones puts it: “The Sermon on the Mount is not to be commended, it is to be carried out.” And the way Jesus chooses to call us to action is through a series of what I’ve called crossroads, showing us that when it comes right down to it, we can either follow him or go our own way. There is no third alternative. So he gives us two roads, two trees, two claims, and two foundations. Two, and only two. There is no third option. This morning, we’re going to look at the first pair, the one found in vv 13-14. <Read the text> To unpack it, I’d like to ask and answer four questions: (1) Who is on the narrow and broad ways? (2) What is the difference between the narrow and broad ways? (3) Who does Jesus call to the narrow way? and (4) What’s at stake? Who Is on the Narrow and Broad Ways? Question number one: who is on the narrow and broad ways? The answer to this is at first really simple: Christians are on the narrow way and non-Christians are on the Broad Way. The narrow way is the Christian way and the broad, or spacious way is the non-Christian way. The narrow way leads to life (life in the kingdom) and the spacious way leads to destruction (life outside the kingdom). Now what’s important to notice here is that the people on each road are not good people and bad people. As if Jesus is saying, “The good people go to heaven and the bad people go to hell.” He’s not making a distinction between good and bad, he’s making a distinction between Christians and non-Christians. And this difference couldn’t be bigger. Our tendency is to think that the narrow way is full of the nice people and the good guys, while the broad way would (or should) be full of the mean people and bad guys. But even though Jesus doesn’t make a distinction between the nice/good people and the mean/bad people, he does say that there are only two kinds of people in the world. There are people on the narrow road to life and there are people on the broad way to destruction. Two kinds of people in the world. Now, if you know anything about the Sermon on the Mount, this should strike you as odd…because throughout his message, Jesus has been saying not that there are two kinds of people in the world, but that there are three. Let me show you. The first kind of person in the world is a religious person, a religious hypocrite, a Pharisee cf. 5:20; 6:1, 2, 5, 16. <Read the texts> The second kind of person in the world is an irreligious person, a person without true religion, who makes up his own, a pagan cf. 5:47; 6:7, 32. <Read the texts> And then, of course, the third kind of person, it should go without saying, is a Christian. A person who is characterized by the life described in and defined by the Sermon on the Mount. So throughout the Sermon on the Mount that there are three approaches to life: Pagans, Pharisees, and Christians. Now, with the two roads (and two of everything in the appeal section of his sermon) Jesus seems to be changing his tune, telling us that there are only two possibilities: Christians and non-Christians. So how should we understand this? Is Jesus really changing his tune right at the end of his message? Actually, no. We can safely assume that the greatest preacher in the history of the universe is not changing his tune at the end of his greatest sermon. We’re getting the full picture. Let me suggest to you is that what Jesus is saying is that the religious and the pagans/irreligious have something in common, when push comes to shove, even though they look like they’re completely different, they are really the same. And the bottom line of it is this: They are both trying to save themselves. They are both engaged in a self-salvation project. The only difference is the props, the set, the dialogue. It’s exactly the same storyline. Irreligion/paganism avoids God as Lord and Savior by ignoring him, or choosing a god of our own making. Religion avoids God as Lord and Savior by developing a system of moral righteousness to put God in our debt. This way we don’t need him to save us, we just need him to serve us. Irreligious people seek to be their own saviors and lords through irreligion, “worldly” pride. (“No one tells me how to live or what to do, so I determine what is right and wrong for me!”) But moral and religious people seek to be their own saviors and lords through religion, “religious” pride. (“I am more moral and spiritual than other people, so God owes me to listen to my prayers and take me to heaven.”) Thus moral-religious people may be characterized by intense arrogance and pride, or they may seem extremely penitent and sorry for their sins. But even in their confession, they see sins as simply the failure to live up to standards by which they are saving themselves. They go to Jesus for forgiveness, but only as a way to “cover over the gaps” in their project of self-salvation. The important thing to see is that both irreligious people and religious people are seeking to be their own saviors and lords. And both moral people who hate themselves, feeling like failures, and moral people who feel good about their record are both seeking to be their own saviors and lords. Both religious pride and despair are forms of self-righteousness. But Christians are people who have adopted a whole new system of approach to God. They may have had both religious phases and irreligious phases in their lives. But they have come to see that their entire reason for both their irreligion and their religion was essentially the same and essentially wrong! Christians come to see that both their sins and their best deeds have all really been ways of avoiding Jesus as savior.  They come to see that Christianity is not fundamentally an invitation to get more religious. A Christian comes to say, “Even though I have often failed to obey the morals and ethics of the faith, my deeper problem was why I was trying to obey it! Even my efforts to obey it have been just a way of seeking to be my own savior. In that mindset, even if I obey or ask for forgiveness, I am really resisting the gospel and setting myself up as Savior.” To “get the gospel” is to turn from self-justification and rely on Jesus’ record for a relationship with God. The irreligious don’t repent at all, and the religious only repent of sins. But Christians also repent of their righteousness. That is the distinction between the three groups: Christians, moralists (religious), and pagans (irreligious). So there are two kinds of people: Christians and non-Christians. Christians are on the narrow road and non-Christians are on the broad road. That’s the answer to question 1. And it leads very naturally to question 2, which we can answer very quickly. What’s the Difference between the Narrow and Broad Ways? What’s the difference between the narrow and broad ways? The difference between them should be obvious; it’s what we’ve already seen: it’s the difference between works and grace. When Jesus says “Enter by the narrow gate,” he’s not telling us to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps and do what it takes to put ourselves in God’s good graces. Instead, he’s saying the polar opposite. He’s saying, “Despair of your own performance. Acknowledge your inability to perform and the desperateness of your condition. That you need someone else to save you. You can’t do it on your own. Take the road of grace,” he’s saying. As Tim Keller says, “God’s grace does not come to people who can outperform others, but to those who admit their failure to perform and who acknowledge their need for a Savior.” This is what puts Christians in the minority. It’s what makes Christianity unique. It’s why Jesus says here in vv 13-14: Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it. Since all of us are oriented to works…and since every other religion in the world is essentially a form of self-reliant, self-salvation, Christianity is a minority religion. In fact, it’s one of a kind. It’s all about grace.  So the difference between the narrow way and the broad way is an absolute difference. It’s not good vs. bad. It’s Christian vs. non-Christian, which means that it’s grace vs. works. The narrow way, the difficult way is the way of admitting weakness, sin and failure and crying out for help to the Lord to rescue you. The broad way, the easy, spacious way is the way of refusing to admit weakness, sin and failure, and instead relying on yourself to be acceptable to God, yourself, and other people. Who Does Jesus Call to the Narrow Way? Let’s read the text again and ask the third question. <Read the text> Question 3: Who does Jesus call to the narrow way? Answer: everyone. Christian and non-Christian. Now you might have thought that in light of what Jesus says here he’s talking to non-Christians alone, that he’s calling people to make a decision for him (or to stay on the broad road to destruction). But the fact of the matter is that the Sermon on the Mount in the first place is a message about Christians for Christians. Check out 5:1-2. <Read the text> Jesus is talking to first and foremost to his disciples. Now this doesn’t mean that he isn’t talking to the crowds also. Matthew 7:28-29 makes that clear enough. Check it out. <Read the text> You can turn back to vv 13-14. So Jesus is telling everyone – everyone in this room: Enter by the narrow gate. Enter by the narrow gate non-Christian. AND enter by the narrow gate CHRISTIAN! Now by this point it should be obvious that non-Christians ought to enter by the narrow gate. If you’re still a non-Christian this morning, you stand at a crossroads, the crossroads of your own self-salvation project vs. God’s own salvation project in Jesus Christ. Either you can continue to look to yourself and your own performance to avoid Jesus as Lord and Savior. Either you can continue to look to yourself and your own standards to avoid Jesus as Lord and Savior, OR you can recognize the bankruptcy of your position and turn to Jesus to rescue you. That you need to do this is obvious.  But what I think is less obvious is how Christians need to be called to the narrow road every single day. Listen: this is a sermon that is directed in the first place to you who have understood grace and are already on the narrow road. Therefore, enter by the narrow gate is a warning to travelers on the narrow road to stay on the path. Now then, why do you think it would be necessary for Jesus to warn us like this? Why do you think that Jesus would feel the need to tell us to stay on the narrow road of grace? The answer is easy – because we all too easily take a detour to the broad road. The answer is that the gospel of grace is easily threatened in our lives. And let me tell you that it’s more difficult to stay on the road of grace than you might think. Our sin has wired us for performance – for self-reliance, self-dependence, and self-salvation. Therefore it is very easy to fall back into what I call a merit mentality. The temptation is to think that now that I’ve entered the narrow road, I need to live like I’m on the broad road. I was rescued by grace; now I’m saved by my works. The temptation is to fall back into what Jerry Bridges calls the good day/bad day outlook. How many times have you had a terrible day? You’ve been disobedient? You’ve been sinful in your attitudes, your behaviors, your thought-life, your interactions with other people, your use of time, your use of money, your eating habits, your spiritual disciplines – whatever – you’ve been “bad.” How many times have you been bad and thought something like this: “I feel so terrible. I’ll do better tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll do better.” In other words, how many times have you gotten comfort from your own resolve to do better, rather than from the fact that as bad as you are you cannot be more acceptable to God than you already are?! Or how many times have you been bad and thought: “What’s the use? What’s the point of trying? What’s the point of living out the Sermon on the Mount if all I do is keep failing?” In other words, how many times have you been in despair, not because your sin nailed Jesus to the cross, but because you failed to perform at the level you thought you should have? Or take the flip-side. How many times have you had a wonderful day? There hasn’t been a single instance of willful, conscious sin. Everything you planned to do, every interaction, attitude, and behavior was commendable. You feel like you just had a wonderful day. How many times have you had a wonderful day and as a result, expected things at home or work or school to go well? In other words, you figured that because you were doing well spiritually, that God was inevitably and invariably going to bless you. Or how many times have you been good and thought, “Why can’t Sue/Stan get this together? I can. I just don’t understand him/her.” In other words, your performance left you feeling superior to other people who couldn’t get with the program. I mean, serious, the broad road is right there, isn’t it? It is right there. The broad road of self-salvation, of merit, of performance. It is right there. And what you need to understand is that you are at this crossroads AS CHRISTIANS every single day. You cannot let up for a second! It’s too easy to revert to the broad way. And too much is at stake…which leads me to our fourth and final question; namely,… What’s at Stake? What’s at stake? What’s at stake is the difference between life and destruction. Check out vv 13-14 one last time. <Read the text> Now the life that Jesus is talking about is the life of the kingdom, eternal life – true satisfaction in the here and now, heaven when you die, and a new heavens and a new earth after the resurrection. And the destruction that Jesus is talking about is life outside the kingdom, eternal death, dissatisfaction and disillusionment in the here and now, being kept under punishment when you die, and eternal hell after the resurrection. Matthew 18:8 is a helpful parallel passage to give us clarity on this. It says: “If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; it is better for you to enter life crippled or lame, than to have two hands or two feet and be cast into the eternal fire.” Notice: you enter life or you are cast into eternal fire. The difference is between heaven and hell. At this point, let me interject two things to help us understand this a bit better. The first is a reminder of the answer to question 2: what’s the difference between the narrow way and the broad way? Answer: the difference is between grace and works. It’s an absolute difference. What this means in terms of the consequences for staying on the broad road is that you no longer need to think of getting into heaven as making the divine Dean’s list….  Get a 3.5 on the goodness scale and get to heaven. On the other hand, if you get a 3.498, you go to hell. This is not how it works. God is not like this, even if many Christians have given this impression. The difference between Christians and non-Christians, according to Jesus is an absolute difference. The difference between the roads is an absolute difference. You are either looking to Jesus to save you or you are looking to yourself. There is no in-between. It’s the narrow way or no way. And THAT you should take to be a good thing. There is no arbitrary cut-off point for goodness or sincerity. The issue is whether or not you are relying on Jesus alone to save you. The second thing that you need to see here is that the consequences of the two roads are ironic. As one writer puts it: “It is about being on the road that starts narrow but opens out into the life of heaven, or staying on the broad road of our self-centeredness until it contracts to a dead halt in final destruction.” In other words, it’s actually narrowness that leads to spaciousness, while it’s spaciousness that leads to narrowness – eternal narrowness. And I think that deep down we all know this. We know this because of how it feels even in this life to walk the broad road. The broad road of self-effort and self-salvation, even though it is self-determined is a straightjacket! It chokes the life out of us because all our lives we’re full of insecurity (did I do enough?) or superiority (aren’t I better than you). The broad road only looks broad from the outside. But as we’re on it, we realize that its broadness leads only to narrowness in this life. On the other hand, we also know that the narrowness of grace leads to spaciousness because even in this life we taste the freedom and boldness and joy of the gospel of grace. We aren’t insecure because our salvation is dependent totally on what Jesus has done. We aren’t full of feelings of superiority because we know that what we have we have received only as a gift. And this leads to great joy and satisfaction in the here and now, which leads only to further satisfaction and joy in the “there and then.” This is why I say that the road you’re on makes all the difference in the WORLD! Life and death, heaven and hell, spaciousness and narrowness are “what’s at stake.” You want to know what’s at stake? Your eternal destiny is at stake. That’s what’s at stake.  So if you are not yet a Christian, Jesus is telling you something of very great moment! It is profoundly important and significant and (can I say?) RELEVANT. If you do not make a decision for Jesus Christ. If you do not turn from your project of self-salvation and embrace Jesus as your savior and Lord, then you will continue unabated on the road to destruction. It is an all or nothing proposition. Therefore, you can’t say, “I like Jesus and I like my own approach to life.” Jesus makes it clear that it’s him or nothing. And you also can’t say, “I’ll do nothing.” Doing nothing is itself a kind of doing that Jesus forbids. In reality, you don’t have to choose the road to destruction, the narrow road. You are on a road. You are on a path. And your path is not without its consequences. Therefore a non-choice is your choice. And for Jesus your non-choice results in your destruction. Lloyd-Jones puts it like this: “Indecision is fatal, because it means wrong decision.” That’s what’s at stake for you if you are not yet a Christian. So let me appeal to you today: enter by the narrow gate. God’s grace is available for you. And if you’re already a Christian, you need to understand what Jesus is saying here. Or better, what he’s not saying. He’s not saying that we can lose the life we’ve been given as a gift. It is ours permanently. Instead, what Jesus is telling us here is more like what the Apostles Paul and Peter say: “Test yourself to see if you are in the faith, examine yourselves”; or “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling”; or “Be all the more diligent to make certain of God’s calling and choosing you.” In other words, Jesus is saying, “Make certain you’re on the narrow road! Make certain you are truly on the road of grace.” And then, “Make every effort to stay on it.” That’s how you make certain of his calling and choosing you – you continually come back to the narrow road of grace. You continue to repent of your broadness to embrace the narrowness of the gospel. And as you do, you will be assured of your entrance into life. Conclusion So then, what are our questions and answers: (1) who is on the narrow and broad ways? Answer: Christians and non-Christians, respectively. (2) What is the difference between the narrow and broad ways? Answer: the difference between grace and works, an absolute difference. (3) Who does Jesus call to the narrow way? Answer: Christians and non-Christians. And finally (4) what’s at stake? Your joy or misery, now and forever. Don’t you see how important this all is?! Don’t you see how significant it is? So let me end where Jesus does – with this first of his crossroads of the Christian faith. Matthew 7:13-14: “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” Amen.