NOTES for Mat 7:13-14

How simple it is to be righteous, how simple to enter the dwelling of the Father: everything is written in Ps 14! Only for some reason the previous psalm declares: "They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt. There is none who does good, not even one." And Jesus, after giving the very simple "golden rule of ethics" (Matt 7:12), immediately adds that the way is narrow and few find it.

Apparently this simplicity is deceptive: these words are "simple" only when spoken by God, for whom righteousness is a natural state. But if these words are taken up, passed on, and received with faith, then salvation becomes possible and righteousness attainable.

Most Christians usually understand the question of the narrow and broad way in the context of everything Jesus said about persecutions against His followers and, more generally, about resisting the evil in which the world lies. Meanwhile, this image also has a wider semantic context. Indeed, any road, whether a multilane highway or a narrow path, always and by definition involves 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 of a physical way, but also, and even more, of a spiritual way. Choosing a certain spiritual path and stepping onto it, we thereby cut ourselves off from the possibility of taking some other path at the same time. It is impossible to walk two paths at once. And the path becomes narrower the more clearly its spiritual quality is defined.

Here the matter is not so much external as internal. The quality of a person's life, of that person's existence, becomes more and more definite; in other words, the quality of the person's soul in the biblical sense of the word. The soul is that stream of life that 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, and no relating of them to the commandments given by God. And if a person walks the way of the Kingdom, sharing more and more in its life, then the quality of that person's soul becomes more and more spiritually defined.

And along with this, the way becomes narrower and narrower. For in gaining definiteness and form, it inevitably gains clear boundaries. Inner quality is unthinkable without form, and form does not exist without limits. The absence of boundaries and form also means the absence of quality, and without it life in the Kingdom is impossible, for there everything is utterly clear and distinct, just as God's will is clear and distinct. And everything is present in fullness, in the same fullness in which the breath of God abides, penetrating the Kingdom.

God warns us from following easy ways; from what we so often want to do – to surrender ourselves to the flow, to relax and to go down straight, not “stressing”. Yeah it is really easier, easier like that to manage our problems and burdens. But will this give us happiness? No. We are in fact independent of anywhere we move. Up or down – is already another question. But if we relax, the stream starts then to pull us where we possibly don’t quite wish to get into. And when we begin to stress ourselves, to apply efforts, then at least a kind of use can come out of that. There is a known enough image: Spiritual life is as an escalator running downwards. And remaining even on one place, we need to be running on it upwards. Everyone runs as he can. Everyone has his own road, a “narrow way” leading to God. We must go on it; otherwise the tape will take us away where all people fall. We have to go – It may be difficult to pass, it may be a painful way, but we must go, so that we can enter into life, into everlasting life. Moreover, we should do that with joy and a pure heart – as the psalm invoked us: “Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise” (Ps 100:4).

At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, where the most important rules for the life of Christ's disciples are gathered, there is a kind of comment by Jesus Himself on this whole moral teaching: one cannot limit oneself to hearing the word; one must carry it out, that is, apply it in life. This means that all these rules, commandments, and moral guideposts are not only ethics, a "moral code," or a charter, but rather instructions for putting faith into practice. For faith is the presence of God in a person's life, and therefore to believe means to live in a godly way. For Christ, no "religious convictions" detached from practice are possible. He is not expecting some special worldview or set of beliefs from us. He is expecting God to be present in the world through us...

Today's reading is devoted to the theme of false prophets (v. 15) and false disciples (vv. 21-22). But before speaking about false prophets and false disciples, Jesus says that the way into the Kingdom will not be simple, that it is a narrow way that few will want to walk (vv. 13-14).

This sequence is, of course, not accidental. False prophets appear because they are expected. Fallen human nature is inclined toward compromise; for complete peace of mind, everyone would like to fulfill what God requires, but to fulfill it in such a way that the fulfillment is as little burdensome as possible. To violate the word of God directly would be too risky; then, when meeting God face to face, there would be nothing to say to Him. It would be another matter if some spiritual leader appeared, for example a prophet, who by his authority sanctioned such a violation, took the responsibility upon himself, and thereby removed it from those who did not want to walk the narrow way. Of course, if one wants to, such a "prophet" can always be distinguished from a true person of God. But if there is no desire, if the listener is seeking not truth and not God's revelation but self-justification, he can fail to notice even completely obvious things.

It is no surprise that all this is also characteristic of those who call themselves Christians. One name alone, as Jesus says, is not enough; what is needed is readiness to walk that same narrow way. Meanwhile the devil is always ready to point to easier roads, supposedly leading to the very same goal, as he pointed to them for the Savior Himself during the temptation in the wilderness (Matt 4:3-10). The only criterion of truth turns out to be the doing of Jesus' words (vv. 24-27).

And the point here is not only that a person who lives by the Kingdom and in the Kingdom, as all true Christians do, cannot be confused with anyone else: it is impossible to imitate the grace of God. The point is that no abilities and no gifts of God, by themselves, bring a person closer to the Kingdom; for this, a person must first of all change inwardly, and if such a change has not taken place, everything else is useless, even if the action of God is noticeable in that "everything else" (vv. 22-23). But for fallen man, inward change is the hardest path of all, and few are truly ready to walk it. There is no other way into the Kingdom.