Scripture Reading: Matthew 7:13-29
There are two gates — one narrow and one wide — and two ways corresponding thereto. The easy way is not the good way. This is true in a very wide sense. It is true in the life of a child. There is a broad way of indulgence and indolence, but we know where it leads. There is a way of patient obedience in duty, and the end of this is worthy life and noble character. It is true in young manhood and womanhood. There is a way of pleasure, of ease, which leads to unworthy character. There is a way of self-denial, of discipline, of hard work, and this leads to honor. Then there is a broad way of selfishness and sin which never reaches heaven’s gates: and there is a way of penitence, of devotion to Christ, of spending and being spent in His service, whose end is a seat beside the King on His throne.
It is a reason for great thankfulness that there is a gate into the spiritual and heavenly life and into heaven at the end. The glorious things are not beyond our reach. They are high, on dazzling summits, but there is a path that leads to them. We must note, however, that the gate is strait, that is, narrow. Some people have a way of saying that it is very easy to be a Christian. But really it is not easy. It was not easy for the Son of God to prepare the way for us. It was necessary for Him to come from heaven in condescending love and give His own life in opening the way. Jesus said also that any who would reach the glory of His kingdom must go by the same way of the cross by which He had gone. He said that he who will save his life, that is, withhold it from self-denial and sacrifice, shall lose it, and that he only who loses his life — gives it out in devotion to God and to duty — shall really save it (see 16:24, 25). In one of His parables, too, Jesus speaks of salvation as a treasure hid in a field, and the man who learns of the treasure and its hiding-place has to sell all that he has in order to buy the field (see 13:44). In another parable the same truth is presented under the figure of a merchant seeking goodly pearls, who had to sell all his stock of pearls that he might buy the one peerless pearl (13:45).
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