Strive to enter through the narrow gate,
for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter
but will not be strong enough.
The entrance to the Kingdom is not wherever and whenever we please. This is difficult, since we would prefer a gate through which we could easily fit with room to spare, one still open after we finally got bored with all other options and conceded to go through it. We are often suspicious of a Kingdom with such a specific entrance. If we were creating it ourselves we would probably have included various gates of various sizes to correspond to the wide variety of people in the world. Even if a door had to close for some reason we would have stationed someone ready and waiting to open it to a person knocking outside. The actual Kingdom, by contrast, has only one door, not broad, but narrow, that will not open again after it closes, no matter how persistent the pleading from those outside. Harsh, we think.
And you will say,
'We ate and drank in your company and you taught in our streets.'
We should realize that the only business we might have in the Kingdom is on the basis of our association with the Lord. It is a Kingdom that was utterly closed off to humanity until he came to open the way in his own flesh (see Hebrews 10:20), by means of his cross, his death, and resurrection. The entrance was therefore narrow in that it was only through Jesus himself and by no other way. There was no other name given under heaven by which we could be saved (see Acts 4:12). Could he have opened a broader way, easier to enter? Not if the core meaning of the Kingdom was life together with God forever. If that was its meaning then it is amazing we could enter at all. Only because Jesus himself chose to become the bridge between heaven and earth was it even possible. The reason we experience the gate as narrow is because of all the baggage we would like to bring but has no business in the life of heaven. There is no room for our disordered affections or our lingering earthly attachments. And the only way to shed our excess is through the grace Jesus made available. Hence he was not only a way, but the way. Yet, although the entrance may seem constricted, we will be amazed by the spaciousness within.
And people will come from the east and the west
and from the north and the south
and will recline at table in the kingdom of God.
We are called to strive to enter this Kingdom. This striving is world's apart from forcing our way in by our own strength and ability, or by somehow earning a place inside. This Kingdom admits whom it will. In what sense, then, must we strive? As Hosea tells us, "Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth" (see Hosea 6:3). We are called to work out our salvation with fear and trembling remembering always that it is God who himself works within us for his good pleasure (see Philippians 2:11-13). Eternal life isn't ultimately about us or our greatness but rather surrendering ourselves more and more to Jesus and his greatness. As we read, "this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" (see John 17:3). It is precisely this connection to the king that makes perseverance possible. It can transform our experience of suffering, so that we can see it as discipline that is not pointless, but goal directed. When we see it this way it is not a guarantee that we will persist. But it will definitely make it less likely that we give up immediately in despair. It will enable us to more easily keep the goal in sight, and to trust in the Father who is helping us attain it.
For what "son" is there whom his father does not discipline?
At the time,
all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain,
yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness
to those who are trained by it.
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