What Is the Narrow Gate?

The saying about the hard and the easy way, the narrow and the wide gate (Matt. 7:13–14) depends on the content one gives to the picture. According to the rationalistic, moralistic, and pietistic tradition, one interprets the saying to mean that the person walking on the hard way and entering through the narrow gate is simply what one normally means by “a pious person,” the person who keeps away from all the lusts of the world and by the virtue of this good work then enters heaven, while the person on the easy way who enters through the wide gate is the “man of the world” who follows up all his lusts and therefore goes to hell. If one follows this interpretation, then all is lost, the saying is defrauded of its real meaning. For then in place of the new, better righteousness of the kingdom of heaven there arises the old “righteousness of the Pharisees and scribes,” which is precisely what was to be overcome, since it leads to destruction. Then here at the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount (in strict opposition to what was said at Matthew 5:20!) the law would again be preached in a most threatening way, only as law, the moral and religious conduct of man, commandment without promise. That cannot be what is meant! The saying is a touchstone for the interpretation of the whole Sermon on the Mount, to the extent that it becomes clear here whether the promise is seen in the saying’s commandment or not, that is to say, whether the interpretation is Christological or not. The history of the interpretation of this saying would for this reason be worthy of special investigation. The result would be to show that the false, unmessianic, legalistic understanding far overweighs the right Christological understanding. Now the threatening severity, the character of admonition and warning that adheres to this saying, is indeed unmistakable. Here indeed there is command, requirement: “Enter by the narrow gate!” But can the content of this admonition be other than being called to join the people of spiritual poverty, those who sorrow for their sins, the meek who do not try to assert themselves, who instead hunger and thirst after true righteousness, as they are portrayed at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount? It is they who are meant by those who walk on the hard way and enter through the narrow gate.

Natalia Rozmus-Esparza, Shuk Machane Yehuda, oil on canvas. Used by permission.

But who wishes to reckon himself in this people, who wishes to be found in the way of these who are dependent on the grace of the coming kingdom alone? “Those that find it are few.” That is said in a lamenting way quite comparable to the woes handed down alongside the Beatitudes by Luke (Luke 6:24–26). Here is uncovered the immeasurable danger in which those stand, who, like the scribes and Pharisees, and with a display of great earnestness and much sacrifice – even appealing to Jesus and goals set up in his name “did we not do many mighty works in your name?” (Matt. 7:22) – would like to prance along a religious and moral highway parading a complete attainment.

This very highway could be the easy way and the wide gate that leads to destruction. Why? Because those who walk here no longer belong to the people of the poor to whom the kingdom of heaven is promised. They fulfill the law themselves. For this reason they no longer need the fulfillment by Christ. They think they are well, and can dispense with the physician. But one cannot be sicker than these “well” persons who are unaware of their sickness and hence cannot recognize the Savior who calls them to life. This passage calls one back from this path. But one is not able to hear the threatening seriousness of this call without at the same time hearing the even greater encouragement and comfort here given those who know of their sickness and hence wish only to wait for their Physician and Savior. In waiting this way, one is on the narrow way that leads to life, just as surely as he who speaks here is Jesus the Christ.

The parable of the hard and the easy way must be seen together with the two other parables with which the Sermon on the Mount closes: the parable of the two trees, the good and the bad tree, and the parable of the two houses, the one built on rock and the other on sand. The meaning of all three parables resides in what is expressly said in the introduction to the third parable: “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does the …”(Matt. 7:24). The word of Jesus places one in decision. It is the decision of hearing aright, in which case one “does” the word, or of hearing falsely, in which case one “does not do” the word.

What “doing” means need not be discussed again here. But yet one final thing should be said. This “doing,” the doing of the word, is a quite special, qualified doing. It is no work that we could accomplish of ouselves. Whoever thinks that has not heard the entire Sermon on the Mount aright. Once again everything teeters in the balance. A person can perhaps have heard the whole Sermon on the Mount as gospel, and then at the end understand this hearing itself as a law that we can fulfill of ouselves. Then one would have stricken the gospel out again and robbed the whole Sermon on the Mount of its meaning. No, the innermost content of these three parables is that we cannot of ourselves fulfill this commandment itself, the commandment to hear aright. This commandment and precisely it must be first fulfilled for us, in order that we may then become obedient to it. “A sound tree cannot bear evil fruit.” One must first be this good tree, in order to hear the good fruit. But no one is originally that. No one begins by being where the Beatitudes are, in the position of those who truly hear, who “do” the word and will enter the kingdom of heaven. If a person does nevertheless – and it is a matter of the opening of closed doors – then it is only because this “hearing and doing” is wrought through the word. The preacher of the Sermon on the Mount calls the “poor in spirit,” who are not there; but in that he calls them they are there.

But this means that here at the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount, as the final mystery lying behind it, election becomes visible. One is commanded to build the house upon the rock, to bear good fruit, to choose the hard way. But when it happens it is grace. The Sermon on the Mount is then only understood aright when it is understood in terms of predestination. Understood thus it is gospel since the grace in the commandment of the Sermon on the Mount itself comes to us. For the commandment of the Sermon on the Mount is not only commandment (Gebot); it is also offer (Angebot). For it is the commandment of the Christ who in and with this commandment sets up his kingdom, his lordship over us. The people who recognize this commandment as Christ’s commandment are as such already the chosen children of this kingdom. They are the “everyone” meant in Matthew 7:24: “Everyone then who bears these words of mine and does the …” It is thus that all the commandments of the Sermon on the Mount are meant. They all testify to grace, because they all testify to Jesus as the Christ, to the freely calling and choosing Lord of his coming kingdom.

Source: Eduard Thurneysen, The Sermon on the Mount, trans. William Childs Robinson Sr. with James M. Robinson (SPCK, 1965), 60–64. Used by permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers.