The Narrow and Wide Gates
13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.
14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
True and False Prophets
15 “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.
16 By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?
17 Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.
18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.
19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
20 Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.
True and False Disciples
21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’
23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’
The Wise and Foolish Builders
24 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.
25 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.
26 But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.
27 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”
Jesus finishes his Sermon on the Mount by giving a series of spiritual warnings to his audience. There is a sense of spiritual longing that is common to man. If you look at cave paintings from thirty thousand years ago, it is very likely that these had some kind of religious significance. The Egyptians buried their dead with gifts for the afterlife thousands of years ago. All the world over people have taboos designed to placate hostile spiritual entities and myths about gods and heroes accomplishing supernatural things in the distant past.
It is clear that spirituality is important to mankind, and we all, to a greater or lesser extent, have a tendency to believe in something, whether it is ghosts, gods, angels, demons or any number of other potential beings that are not in the realm of the purely physical. There are plenty of scientific explanations for this commonality, such as a human’s tendency to personify things, or their sense that any pattern must have been accomplished by intent, rather than by randomness. But the sheer ubiquitousness of spiritual belief implies that there is likely something to it. It seems odd that all of humanity for all time in every culture/place and time would have had the same delusion.
Of course, Jesus has a vested interest in helping his students to see that his offer of life is the only valid one. He has spent much of the preceding verses establishing his own authority in matters of morality. In the cultural context that he was speaking into, where virtually everyone was Jewish, there was not much competition for which God to believe in, but the question of whether Christ was Him was what these people would be wrestling with, and whether to follow Christ in his explanation of Jewish law or to listen to others or to give up on the whole thing altogether.
In Matthew 7:13-14 he says that the gate that leads to life is narrow and not many find it, whereas the road to destruction is broad and many go that way. The broad road represents alternative philosophies. There are roughly 8 major categories of religious belief that people in the modern world choose to believe. There is atheism or secularism, the belief that there is no God or that even if there is, we concern ourselves primarily with the physical world around us and give second regard to spiritual concerns at best. There is Christianity, which has many offshoots, variations and denominations. There is Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Judaism, for the traditional non-Christian religions that are still common worldwide. There is Animism, the belief in gods of nature or spirits that animate things, which can take many forms but modern versions usually take the form of some kind of New Age crystal power kind of vague spiritual practice. And there are the Christian-esque cults, where they claim to be Christian but deny core doctrines of Christianity. There are many of these, usually denying Christ’s deity and claiming that he was merely human or some angelic being.
Of the disparate options that we have in this world, only Christ and the Bible have truth on their side. In this case, Christ is not making a case for why he is the one to choose, but claiming that there is only one (narrow) path to life and that all other options lead to death. It is critical, in the first place, that we seek out which path truly leads somewhere and is a credible option. Of course, I am convinced that Christianity is the correct one, as was Christ. The reasons for that are beyond the scope of the teaching, but this directly refutes our cultures postmodern nonsense that all religions are different paths to God. That may fit with the teachings of some other religions, but as for Christianity, it is a binary option. Either it is true and is the one exclusive way to come to God, or it is false. It is impossible to say that you believe in the Bible and that you believe other religions are also valid roads to God.
Therefore Christ’s first warning is that there is only one path to God, and that we must seek that out as it is of paramount importance to our lives.
In verses 15-20 he warns against false prophets. These are people who claim to speak for Christ or God but are not speaking the truth. This is an especially dangerous error to fall into. People love to twist the Word of God to match what they would prefer it to say. Paul warns that this will happen in 2 Timothy. In verse 3:5 he warns against people who practice “a form of godliness but deny its power”, claiming that there will be people who seem outwardly to be following God, but inwardly are not. In 2 Timothy 4:3, he says that a time will come when people will no longer endure sound doctrine but will seek out teachers that tell them what they want to hear instead of what is true.
Even when we seek out people who call themselves Christian and outwardly agree with the core doctrines of faith in Christ and salvation through grace, there are plenty of hypocritical people out there. The self-righteous Christians, the Health and Wealth preachers on TV asking for you to give your money to them so God will bless you with more money, and the hipster Christians who claim that God’s love means that he would never judge anyone are just some examples. Christ is obviously concerned that we might fall into the sway of leaders who are leading us down the wrong path.
Christ gives us a pattern to follow in determining whether or not the person we are listening to is actually speaking the truth. He says that we will know a tree by its fruit. The implication is that if we look at the people who are giving us this message, does it actually lead to goodness and not to evil? Does it work in the real world? Do they display the “fruit” of godliness in their own lives? In Galatians 5:22-23 Paul talks about the fruit of the spirit, saying that the fruit of the spirit is love, demonstrated through “joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” Does the person who you are listening to display those characteristics? Does following their teachings lead to these fruits in your own heart?
Obviously none of us are perfect in this regard. An angry outburst or a lack of self-control on the part of a leader cannot be completely disqualifying or we wouldn’t be able to trust anyone. Instead we should consider the balance of someone’s life. Are these attributes increasing as time goes on? Do we see God working these things into the hearts of the people who are speaking for Him?
Turning to our own hearts, we should see that as we listen and put into practice the truth of God that these things are increasing in us as well. If not, we have probably been led or led ourselves astray at some point. This should act as an early warning signal that we have believed some lie at some point. It is certainly possible that someone deliberately deceived you. Likewise, it is possible that they themselves are self-deceived and thought they were communicating truth. Further, it may be the case that they are not deceived or deceiving you, but that you have deceived yourself by not listening carefully, or by twisting the words of truth in your own heart.
Sin is especially powerful in this regard. Romans 1 says that people in their sin will suppress the truth in unrighteousness. This means that if we are wrapped up in our own sin, we can find ways to disbelieve what is true and accept what is not true in order to justify our sin, or the sin of others. All cultures have been susceptible to this, and many have been completely overtaken by it. The Spanish Inquisition is a famous example from the Middle Ages. Under the inquisition, around 3000 to 5000 people were sentenced to death over 350 years, under the thinking thinking that the “truth” of needing to protect from heresy outweighs the need to try and convert the lost. Instead of engaging with opponents of their beliefs intellectually, they arrested and persecuted their opponents.
The simple test of whether this was producing love, patience, joy, etc, should have been enough for people to realize that this was not an appropriate application of Christian doctrine. Ironically this very concern of false teachers that we are talking about now is what animated the Inquisition in the first place. They got it right that false teaching can be dangerous but they got it very wrong when they turned to persecution rather than teaching their people to take personal responsibility to assess what they are being taught.
Christianity is a thinking religion, unlike every other religion in the world, which are all based on blind acceptance of various doctrines. Of course, Christianity has the advantage of being true, which allows us to reason about it without running into self-contradiction. But a critical piece of Christian teaching is embodied in these verses, as they tell us that we personally have a responsibility to assess what we are being taught and to consider its effects and outcomes in order to discern true interpretation and application. Likewise as Christian mentors, teachers and leaders, it is our responsibility to teach our people how to think about and consider spiritual truth so that they can protect themselves against false doctrine.
One way of viewing the word “fruit” is to view it in terms of how much spiritual influence a person seems to have. Are they leading people to come to know Christ? Do they have a large following and seem to be converting the lost? Are they in a leadership position in a growing and thriving Church? I do not think this is the definition of fruit that Christ has in view here. First of all, it seems obvious that any false prophet that we need be concerned about must be pretty good at convincing others to listen to him. It is axiomatic that any false teacher who was not bringing people into following him would not be worth worrying about. Secondly the next three verses refute this interpretation.
The next three verses, 21-23 deal with the self-deception of so-called Christians. There are many who think that because they were doing the right “things” that they are saved. They believe that their outward actions in attempting to follow Christ are enough to earn their way into heaven. Either that or they believe that their outward actions that appear to be in line with what a Christian ought to be doing is proof that they are already saved. Regardless of the particular falsehood that these people fall into, Christ has the same words for them, “I never knew you.” This is the key part of Christian doctrine of salvation, and why we use terms like “personal relationship with God” or “coming to know Christ”. The key to salvation, according to the Bible is that we personally turn to Christ and accept his forgiveness for our sin. We cannot balance out our sin with good deeds and we cannot become a Christian by doing the things that a Christian does. This is not a fake it til you make it kind of deal. A Christian may go to church and read his Bible and pray, but a non-Christian can do so as well and that doesn’t make him a Christian. According to Ephesians 1, when we come to know Christ we are given the Holy Spirit who is our guarantee of entry into eternal life. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says that when we come to know God we are no longer the same person that we were. The old person who we were without Christ dies and is replaced by the new self, the one united with the Holy Spirit. It is apparent, taking the whole of scripture into account that being a Christian is not about what you do, but about what has happened in your heart spiritually.
How do we come to know Christ? Well the Bible is very clear on that front. In Romans 10:9-13, it says that we must believe with our hearts and confess with our mouths that Christ is Lord, and that anyone who so calls on Christ will be saved. In layman’s terms, anyone who asks Christ for his forgiveness and accepts the offer of reconciliation with him will come to know him personally and will be saved from the penalty of their sins. At that point the transformation I referred to earlier will occur and you will then know Christ personally.
The last warning that Christ gives is for those who have chosen the right path, and who have eschewed the teachings of false prophets who claim to speak for God but do not. In verses 24-27 he uses the metaphor of someone who builds a house. He says that if you put into practice Christ’s teachings that you will be like a person who places his foundation on stone. He will be able to withstand storms when they come because he will be safe and secure. Otherwise if a person ignores the teachings of Christ it may seem like he has a safe and secure house but it is built on sand and prone to fall.
It can be easy to hear all of this and not let it affect your life. In the worst case this would mean hearing the gospel, the news that there is forgiveness available and not taking advantage of it. It may seem for your whole life that the house you have is secure and safe but death comes to all of us. There really is no security we can every have from the spectre of death. No matter how much money, exercise, or anything else we practice here on Earth it will still come and may come at an unexpected time. We’re playing a game of poker and we don’t even know what cards we have. We try to make the best choices, but we could die tonight in a car accident through no fault of our own.
If we build our house not on the foundation of salvation in Christ, we will seem safe and secure. It will look pretty good from the outside, maybe we put in some nice crown-molding and get the steel roof so we can withstand tornadoes. But none of this matters if the foundation is insecure. The house will collapse and will do so when we least expect it. The problem is that no matter how well you build up your life, if it is based on falsehood, it is inherently unstable.
This applies to those who do know Christ as well. The extent to which we build our lives in accordance with the teachings of the Bible is the extent to which we will be able to weather storms. If you know God you are secure in your salvation. The Spirit guarantees your inheritance. But there are other storms that come into our lives. We will all suffer at various times in our lives. There will be financial and personal difficulties in every life. If we are building a life based on Christ and on what he calls us to we will find that when the winds blow, our house stands up to it. If instead we build our lives based on the teachings of our culture and of the world around us, we will find that there is no strength in those walls and that things quickly fall apart and we lose everything we thought we had built.
We must avoid these deceptions. We must choose the path that actually leads to God, knowing that most paths lead only to destruction. Having chosen that path we must make sure that we are seeking out true sound teaching, listening to spiritual mentors and teachers who have good character and whose teachings lead us to have good character. We must not become deceived, thinking that doing the right things is enough, and we must actually come to know God in our hearts. And we must continue in his teaching if we wish to withstand the storms and difficulties of our lives.