NOTES for Mat 7:13-14
Most Christians usually understand the question of the narrow and broad way in the context of everything Jesus said about persecutions of His followers and, in general, about opposing the evil in which the world lies. Meanwhile, this image also has a broader semantic context. Indeed, any road, whether a multilane 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 roadlessness. The absence of a way. And this is true not only for the physical way, but also, and to an even greater degree, for the spiritual way. By choosing a certain spiritual path, by setting out on it, we thereby cut ourselves off from the possibility of going at the same time on some other path. It is impossible to walk two paths at once. And the path turns out to be the narrower the more its spiritual quality is defined.
Here the issue 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 this word. The soul as 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 accident 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, sharing more and more in its life, then the quality of his soul becomes more and more spiritually defined.
And at the same time the path becomes ever 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 as well. And without this, life in the Kingdom is impossible. There everything is utterly clear and distinct. As clear and distinct as the will of God. And everything is in fullness, in the same fullness in which God's breath that permeates the Kingdom abides.