There are only two ways the broad and the narrow. Along one or other of these has every mortal pilgrim gone. By one or other of these is every living man travelling now.
I. Look first at the broad way. It is the most manifest and obtrusive, and the nearest to us naturally. (1) It has a gate. A gate is a place of entrance to a city, or a field, or a country. As a religious term it means the beginning of a course or onward career. It points to the great moral truth, that there are critical and decisive points in life to which men come. (2) The way is broad. All kinds of persons may walk in it. Some are much worse than others; some are on the darker side of the road, some are on the side nearest the narrow way, "not far from the kingdom of God."
II. We come next to the strait gate. There is thus an undisguised difficulty in salvation. The way is narrow, but the gate that gives entrance to it is narrower still. The gate can be none other than repentance, the leaving of one life behind, and entering on another. The turning and the change are the greatest that can possibly be. The principleof the life is changed. The affections must follow the principle. The habits must follow the affections. It is a change throughout the whole being.
III. Note these inducements to walk in this narrow way. (1) The gate is strait, but it is always open. Always open and strait as it is, there is not a man living who cannot, if he will, get through. (2) The narrow way is narrow, but it grows wider as you go on; not that Christians ever cease to deny themselves, but that the self-denial becomes easier, more full of recompense, more the normal law of life. (3) The end is everlasting life. Who can tell the meaning hidden in the heart of God that these words contain? It leadeth unto life.
A. Raleigh, Dawn to the Perfect Day,p. 62.
The Strait Gate.
Why should this gate be called strait? In order to understand the language of our Lord, let us call to mind the four great laws of the kingdom, and it will not be difficult to understand why this gate should be called strait.
I. Christ enjoins us to love our enemies. If you consider what that means, you cannot but feel that such a gate is a very strait one, and hard indeed to enter in at.
II. Moreover, the Lord also laid down a principle of unostentatious sincerity, which forms a very strait gate to all manner of hypocrites and formalists.
III. Jesus goes on yet further to say, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness." The carnal, worldly mind finds it a very hard thing a very strait gate indeed to set its affection on things above, and trust God for all that may be needed. And yet we cannot enter in at the strait gate, unless we take no thought for the morrow, but seek first the kingdom of God, and trust Him to provide the rest.
IV. And now add to all these difficult requirements the further demand made on us, that we should do to others as we would that they should do to us. Now here again is an extremely strait gate. It implies that we should never judge hastily, but take pains, and be at some trouble to understand our neighbour's case, and to feel what he may be expected to feel, and to follow up our sympathy with active help and kindness. And it is hard for the selfishness of our hearts to take the same interest in another as we do in our own affairs. Yet we cannot really enter in at the strait gate, unless we are prepared to bear each other's burdens in this spirit, and so fulfil the law of Christ.
W. C. Smith, The Sermon on the Mount,p. 308.
There are two things which Holy Scripture sets before us in every possible way the exceeding desire of the Almighty to save mankind, and the exceeding unwillingness of mankind to turn to Him and be saved, on account of the extreme corruption of our hearts.
I. It has been well observed, how easy it is for God to create is evident from the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, for He has only to speak the word and all things are made. But how difficult it is, even for almighty power, to redeem will appear from the sufferings of Jesus Christ, from all the history of the world, and from the fact that, after all that has been done, the way of life is narrow. And this was very apparent when our Lord was manifest in the flesh, for He went about with almighty power, exceedingly desirous to restore and to do good to all, to heal every disease and remove every shape of evil, but still He could not do, it is said, what He wished to do, because of man's unbelief. It was easy for our blessed Lord to walk upon the waves of the sea; it was easy for Him to feed thousands with a few loaves; but not so easy was it to get one child of Adam to repent and be forgiven. And therefore, perhaps, it is that there is joy among the angels of heaven over one sinner that repenteth, so great and difficult a matter is it to get one sinner to be converted that it makes a movement, as it were, and a stir among the blessed societies of heaven.
II. As eternal salvation is of all things the highest object on which our hearts can be set, so it is the most difficult. And a great part of the difficulty consists in this, that we will not be persuaded it is so difficult in our own case, but think that on account of the unbounded mercies of God, we may ever secure our pardon, and can repent whenever we please. And therefore, when worldly things go well with us we are full of self-confidence, we are full of care about everything but our spiritual condition, and when we are afflicted we are too much cast down; whereas in adversity we should learn Christian hope, and in prosperity we should fear always and exceedingly.
III. It is very awful, and enough to make the hardest heart serious, to consider that if there are many who go the way of destruction, and few that find the way of life, then each should reflect that the chances are that he himself will not find it. He is more likely to be of the number of the many than of the few. If each person would seriously consider this, such a thought would make him very earnest about his salvation.
Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times,"vol. ii., p. 233.
References: Matthew 7:13. A. Jessopp, Norwich School Sermons,p. 1; T. T. Lynch, Sermons for My Curates,p. 353.Matthew 7:13; Matthew 7:14. E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons to a Country Congregation,vol. i., p. 164; E. Bersier, Sermons,2nd series, p. 82; Parker, Inner Life of Christ,vol. i., p. 255; W. Wilkinson, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. iii., p. i.