NOTES for Mat 7:13-14
Most Christians usually understand the question of the narrow and broad way in the context of all that Jesus said about persecutions of His followers and in general about opposition to the evil in which the world lies. Meanwhile, this image has a broader semantic context as well. Indeed, any road, whether a multi-lane highway or a narrow path, always and by definition presupposes limitation. The absence of "narrowness," and therefore of boundaries, can mean only one thing: complete tracklessness. The absence of a way. And this is true not only for a physical path, but also, and to an even greater degree, for a spiritual path. Choosing a certain spiritual path and setting out on it, we thereby cut off the possibility of going at the same time by some other path. It is impossible to walk two paths at once. And the path turns out to be all the narrower the more its spiritual quality is defined.
Here the matter is not so much external as internal. The quality of a person's life becomes more and more definite. The quality of his existence. Or, in other words, the quality of his soul, in the biblical sense of the word. The soul as that stream of life which flows through us and in which we ourselves abide. The quality of this stream determines what our life will be.
How much of it will be spiritual, and how much natural. How much will be our will following God's commandments, and how much will be chance and automatism, inevitable where there is no awareness of one's own intentions, decisions, and actions, no relating of them to the commandments given by God. And if a person walks the path of the Kingdom, partaking more and more of its life, then the quality of his soul becomes more and more spiritually defined.
And with this the path becomes narrower and narrower. For the definiteness, the formed character of the path, outlines its boundaries more and more clearly. Quality presupposes form, and form is impossible without boundaries. The absence of boundaries and form means the absence of quality. And without this, life in the Kingdom is impossible. There everything is utterly clear and distinct. Just as clear and distinct as God's will. And everything is in fullness, in the same fullness in which God's breath, permeating the Kingdom, abides.