by Jacob Ninan
What did Jesus mean when He said, "Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able" (Lk.13:24)? We can understand from the rest of the New Testament that He did not mean that we need to work and earn our salvation. What He meant was that we ought to search for and enter through the right door. The door is narrow, and there are many other doors through which people are entering in, and we ought to make sure that the door we enter through is the way Jesus has prescribed. He said He Himself was the door (Jn.10:9). In the same context, Jesus also said that anyone who tried to take a shortcut in order to avoid this narrow door, and climbed in over the wall was a thief (v.1). In this verse, he was referring to shepherds, but we can take the same concept for the sheep too.
Avoiding the narrow door, many preachers a wider door so that more people can easily get in, saying, "It's simple, just ask Jesus to be your Saviour, raise your hand, sign here," etc. These are wide doors that appear to point to Jesus, but finally lead to destruction (Matt.7:13,14). This is even 'another Jesus' who is being preached (2Cor.11:4).
What is the narrow door? The first message that Jesus preached when He started His public ministry was, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matt.4:17). This was the same message John the baptiser came with, who was the forerunner for Jesus. This was also the charge Jesus gave to His disciples before He was taken up to heaven, "Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and He said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem" (Lk.24:45-47). There is no forgiveness of sins without repentance, and if we omit repentance from the message of the Gospel, we end up making the door wider.
We can say that if Jesus had a mission statement, that was that His primary purpose for coming to earth was to 'save His people from their sins' (Matt.1:21). Of course, because He was easily moved with compassion, He also healed the sick, raised the dead, cast out evil spirits, etc. Even though we can reach out to Him for such mercies which we need in our lives, we should not forget that our primary goal in going to Jesus should still be to be saved from our sins.
There are three signs to see if our repentance is genuine.
1. We recognise and acknowledge that we are sinners in the sight of the holy God. Many mistakenly think of God only as a loving Person who is always patient with, who keeps forgiving our sins and loads us with His blessings. No, He is holy, righteous, just and impartial too. He cannot tolerate any sin, and His justice demands that every sin should be punished. If we don't see our sinfulness as we face this God and tremble before Him realising that we deserve hell as our punishment, there is no repentance in us.
2. We feel a great sorrow for what we have done, when we understand His love for us. When we have seen what we deserve and then we understand His great love for us in giving His Son to die for our sins, our hearts are filled with sorrow for hurting this God. This sorrow prompts us to want not to sin again.
3. We determine not to sin again but to be pleasing to God (out of gratitude to Him). Of course, because of the weakness of our flesh, we are not going to become perfect here on earth. But even though we may fall now and then, we press on towards an overcoming life. If this determination is lacking, our repentance is not genuine.
We can see that much of popular preaching does not tell people to repent or to deal with sin. It is mostly to offer blessings and benefits if they 'came to Jesus'! As a result, many have not found the narrow door, but entered through some other door, still thinking that everything is fine for them!
God is the Lawgiver. He decides what is right and wrong, and what is good and evil. The right way for us is to live in subjection to God, and not according to what pleases us. Obviously, the right way is to read the Bible and learn what God wants us to do, and to seek His help to do it. We can understand this a little better if we look at what transpired between Satan and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
What happened there was not a simple case of Eve disobeying God's commandment that she should not eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It was disobedience, but it was more than that. Satan tempted Eve by saying that it could make her like God. When we think of becoming like God, we usually think of becoming more loving, kind, patient, forgiving, etc. But what Satan had in mind was what he himself wanted. When he was the covering cherub in heaven at one time called Lucifer, he wanted to be equal with God (Isa.14:12-14 KJV). Apparently he did not want to be subject to God but to be able to make his own decisions. This was the same proposal he was making to Eve, that once she had the knowledge of good and evil within herself, she did not have to be dependent on God to make her decisions. This was the crux of the sin which she fell into, and that is the same nature we inherited from her after she fell.
Salvation now is not just about forgiving our sins, but to restore us to the original situation where we would live in subjection to God. It is not about getting our forgiveness, living afterwards how we like and then expecting to be in heaven at the end. It is also not about coming to Jesus for getting all His blessings. God is not like Aladdin's genie who runs to our aid whenever we want. It is when we receive forgiveness and surrender to God as living sacrifices which means doing His will all the time (Rom.12:1).
A mark of true conversion is when we choose God's will above our own will. "For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf" (2Cor.5:14). "No longer for ourselves but for Him" is the key concept. This will be our motto if we have entered through the narrow door.
Instead of making our own plans and then asking God to bless them, we begin to constantly ask God. "What do You want me to do, Lord?" We keep reading the Bible to find out what He wants us to do, and then we follow up with prayer to guide us in specific situations. But this is not how many Christians live. God tells us not to get married to unbelievers, but some say that this unbeliever is a better person than many believers know. People like to dream big and follow their dreams, as the world teaches its people nowadays. They do not ask God to show them what course they should take in college, what job they should take, which house to take, etc. If we follow our own plans, can we expect God to follow us and grant us blessings, protection, etc.?
Jesus taught us to pray, seeking for Him first in our lives. "Pray, then, in this way: 'Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, On earth as it is in heaven" (Matt.6:9,10). He Himself, when He came as a Man on the earth, had this motto for Himself, "Then I said, 'Behold, I have come (In the scroll of the book it is written of Me) To do Your will, O God'" (Heb.10:7).