The narrow gate

“Enter through the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who go through it. How narrow is the gate and difficult the road that leads to life, and few find it.
Matthew 7:13-14

Notes:

The narrow gate is the rigors of discipleship to which Jesus calls his people: genuinely difficult, radical.
The call to righteousness occurs in the context of grace.
Jesus invites his disciples to travel upon the way he has outlined in the high ethical teaching of the preceding material.

(Donald Hagner)

We are meant to be participators in this; it is a call to action... an invitation and an exhortation... something that demands a decision and a committal.
You cannot have a detached, intellectual attitude.
The gospel demands control of our lives, demanding a decision, a commitment.
The narrow gate is not something to look at and ponder, but to enter into.
The gospel will now govern my life and I will follow Jesus' teachings come what may.

(Martyn Lloyd-Jones)



This is a warning.

The Sermon on the Mount produces despair in a man who is not born again.

Jesus regenerates.

The devout life of a disciple is not a dream.

Determination does not produce the new life of God.

But we must determine to let that new life work itself out according to Christ's standard.

The Christian life is a holy life.

Never substitute happy for holy.

Happiness comes from holiness.

The narrow way means pure and holy living.

His life in mine through grace.

Even tribulation.

To treat the Sermon on the Mount merely as and ideal is misleading... it is a statement of the working out of Jesus Christ's disposition in actuality in the life.

(Oswald Chambers)

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Oswald Chambers, Studies In the Sermon on the Mount

Donald Hagner, Matthew, Word Biblical Commentary

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies In the Sermon on the Mount