Gospel in Life

Guest (Female): Welcome to Gospel in Life. Why does the truth of the gospel make some people uneasy? Most are comfortable talking about spiritual searching, but when Jesus claims that he is the only path to salvation, many people view that as oppressive. Today, Tim Keller shows us how the gospel is not arrogant but instead is humble, gracious, and available to anyone. It is an exclusive truth, but it is the most inclusive exclusive truth in the world.

Guest (Male): "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." This is God's word.

Tim Keller: We’re going to do a brief series by Jesus—of sayings by Jesus on finding. And you see, though it's actually acceptable nowadays to say "I'm spiritually searching," it’s not acceptable to say "I found." It's okay to say "I'm searching for God," but to say "I found God" is not. Why not? Because it's narrow. We want to search, but we’re afraid to say we found it because it’s narrow.

Now, in this text, Jesus frontally confronts the issue of spiritual finding and the implication of narrowness. And what he does is he says all spiritual approaches basically break into two categories: two ways, two paths, two roads—it can be translated any one of those ways. Two ways or paths or roads. And what we're going to do is very briefly look at what he says: where they lead, the two paths; then secondly, what they are; then thirdly, why they lead there; and lastly, how you can be on the true way, how you can find the true path.

First of all, where they lead. Now, Jesus uses the most shocking language. First of all, the word narrow. Not just today, but even in the Bible, the word narrow has very negative associations and references. And the word broad has very positive associations and references. The word narrow literally means to be squashed or crushed. If I step on a bug, what does it die of? Narrowness. Because your physical being needs a certain amount of spaciousness so you can breathe, work, and live.

Remember the little girl that fell into the pipe in Texas, Jessica? It was a little pipe, ten inches wide or something like that, and she was stuck way down underneath the surface. Of course, just the very thought of it gives you the screamie meemies to think about being like that because if they hadn't rescued her, she would have died. She would have died of narrowness. Whereas the word broad means spaciousness, and in the Bible, it has the ramifications of freedom.

Like the psalmist in the Psalms is always saying, "You have led me into a broad place," or the psalmist says, "I walk at large," and so forth. It's shocking that Jesus would use such a negative word for the right way and such a positive word for the wrong way. But beyond that, he goes even further. Jesus doesn't only say that, but he says the broad way leads to destruction. The narrow way leads to life.

And that means Jesus is saying the broad way is the way to narrowness, and the narrow way is the way to spaciousness. What he's actually saying is the thing that looks superficially very spacious leads into suffocating, deadly narrowness. And the thing that superficially looks incredibly narrow is the thing that leads to, eventually, incredible vastness and breadth and freedom.

There's one of the Narnia tales, which is C.S. Lewis’s series for children. At one point, a man gets into a stable—it’s a little stable. And when he looks into the stable, he goes inside, he looks up, and he sees this incredible high blue sky, and he sees forests and lakes and everything. And he says in the text, "It seems that the stable as seen from the outside and the stable as seen from the inside are two different places." And a person next to him says, "Yes, its inside is bigger than its outside."

And that's what Jesus is saying here. Jesus is saying that the gospel on the outside looks incredibly small and cramped, and when you get inside, it’s unbelievably spacious. And the alternatives to the gospel look incredibly broad and spacious and free and tolerant, but on the inside, they’re incredibly cramped and narrow. In fact, they lead into a hole. They lead to suffocation. They lead to death through narrowness.

Now, that's where they lead. But what are they? Now, most people, when you read about the broad way and the narrow way, you say, "Well, what are those two ways?" That's where they lead, but what are they? What does it mean to be on the broad way? What does it mean to be on the narrow way? It’s normal for people to say—because it is possible and sometimes the translations talk about the broad and easy way and the narrow and hard way. Some translations talk about the easy way, "Wide is the gate and easy is the way that leadeth to destruction," I think the King James says.

And so people say, "Oh, I know what that means. The narrow way is the way of the people that take the hard, disciplined approach. You see, self-denial. They’re the good people. They’re the people who care for the poor, they’re the people who obey the Ten Commandments, they’re the people who pray all the time and go to church, they’re the people who follow the Golden Rule. Ah, but the broad way, that’s for people who want the easy life. They don’t want to do that. They don’t want to care for the poor. They don’t want to pray and go to worship. They don’t want to live by the Ten Commandments. They don’t want to live by the Golden Rule. That’s the easy way."

But is that what’s going on here? Not a bit. First of all, look at verse 12. Verse 12 is sort of the end of the Sermon on the Mount before the final summary and conclusion that begins with the narrow and broad way. And that summarizes everything in the Sermon on the Mount: the Golden Rule. Love as you want to be loved. Is it really fair to say that the broad way are people who don’t go by the Golden Rule? Dear friends, everybody thinks they’re going by the Golden Rule, and most people are trying.

There are some bad people—there are some really bad people—there are people who get up in the morning and say, "I want to trample on somebody. I want to break the Golden Rule everywhere I can." But there’s not many of them. You could never fill up a broad way with them. And if you want to understand what the broad/narrow way is, you have to do some interpretation, and you have to understand the context. This comes at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. And at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, suddenly Jesus concludes by saying there are two ways: one narrow, one broad.

Then he goes on—he says there are two trees: one rotten, one good. And then he says there are two houses: one built on the rock, one built on the sand. Now, if Jesus Christ is summarizing and concluding his sermon by saying there are two ways, that can't mean that he was just introducing the idea. It means that those two ways must have been contrasted through the sermon. In other words, I don’t preach a sermon on "Fathers, love your children" and then in the end say, "And in conclusion, you better keep your car fixed because it could break down when you’re out in the middle of nowhere." You don’t, in a conclusion, start a new subject unless you're an idiot.

And therefore, assuming Jesus is not an idiot, then we have to say if Jesus at the very end says, "Now, in conclusion, there are two ways," that must mean all through the sermon there are two ways. And if you go back and look, you’ll suddenly realize something. The sermon does contrast two ways all the way through when you start to understand it like that. When you go back and look, it’s there. It’s so clear, but it is not bad people versus good people.

If you go through, you’ll see it right in the beginning in Chapter 5. It says, "I want to show you a different kind of righteousness than that of the scribes and the teachers of the law." And then he goes on and he says, "You’ve heard it said 'Don't murder,' but I say don't even have hatred in your heart." So all the way through he’s saying, "I want to show you two kinds of ways." Then he gets to Chapter 6 and he says, "Some people care for the poor and they pray all the time, but they do it so people will honor them and so they will be heard for their many words."

And then at the very end, Chapter 7, he begins to say, "One group of people are judgmental, but I don’t want you to be. This group of people, they try to take a speck out of other people's eyes, but they don’t see the plank in their own eye." And this is what Jesus is saying. Jesus is not contrasting bad people with good people. Both of these groups take care of the poor. Both of these groups pray all the time. Both of these groups obey the Ten Commandments, and both of these groups obey the Golden Rule. But they do it for utterly different reasons.

Now, this is frightening, isn't it? The people on the broad way are doing all the same things but for a completely different reason. They are doing it to get leverage over other people so they feel superior, and to get leverage over God so that he owes them—so they’ll be heard for their many words. In other words, there are two ways, and in one way you’re using God to get things, and the other way you’re using things to love God. In the one way, you’re trying to save yourself. Everything you’re doing, you’re doing in order to say, "See, now God will have to hear me. Now God will have to bless me."

Guest (Female): Jonah is one of the most widely known stories in the Bible, but it's so much more than a simple account of a prophet who runs from God and gets swallowed by a great fish. In his book, *Rediscovering Jonah*, Tim Keller uncovers the deeper message of this familiar story, revealing how Jonah's resistance to God exposes our own reluctance to trust and obey him and how Jonah's experience ultimately points us to Jesus and his saving work on the cross. During the month of May, we'll send you a copy of *Rediscovering Jonah* as our thanks for your gift to help Gospel in Life share the transforming love of Christ with more people. So request your copy today at gospelinlife.com/give. That's gospelinlife.com/give. Now, here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching.

Tim Keller: But in the other way, what do you have? Well, if you look at verse 14, you’ll see it’s very interesting. Jesus does not say, "Hard is the way and narrow is the gate into life." Oh no, he says, "Narrow is the gate," and then comes the way. And now we have Galatians all over again for those of you who were here last year. In the book of Galatians, Paul says other religions say, "Try hard and you'll be saved." But Christianity says, "Be saved, and then out of that live a good life."

In other words, other religions say, "First the road, then the gate." Other religions say the way is hard, but you can take the gate and you can get into salvation. You have to be fast, you have to be hard, you have to fight your way in. But Christianity says no, you enter the gate now. Why? Because there was one who fought our fight. There’s one who won the gate. There’s one who died outside the gate so we could come in. There’s one who’s done all the fighting for us.

And you see, the broad way and the narrow way are two very different kinds of people. One are very judgmental—the broad way. The broad way are the judgmental people. The broad way are the people who always think that their sins are not as bad as the other person's sin. The broad way are the people who feel superior to the people who oppose them. That's the reason why liberals and conservatives are on the broad way. Because the liberals say the real problem are the conservatives, and the conservatives say the real problem are the liberals. But the people on the narrow way say, "The real problem is me. I'm a sinner."

Now, do you see why one leads—so first of all we've seen where the two ways lead, and secondly we've seen what the two ways are. They're two kinds of good people. On the surface, they look completely the same, but underneath there's a pride, there's an anger, there's a grumpiness, there's a superiority. There's a feeling like people owe me, God owes me. But on the surface, they seem to have the same behavior, but underneath, the goodness is for two different reasons.

Now thirdly, can I show you why this narrowness, this gospel narrowness actually leads to spaciousness? And why this spaciousness seems to lead to narrowness? First of all, here's how the narrowness leads to spaciousness. If you believe that the only way I can be saved is through Jesus—that's narrow, right—but it's the only way to believe in grace. If you believe you’re saved by grace, you have to believe somebody else fought and won the gate for me. That's why I can just enter. Jesus doesn't say, "Hard is the way, but you can enter the gate." He says you enter the gate first, and then you live your life.

Whereas broad-minded people say, "Oh, I'm broad-minded. I would never believe you have to believe in Jesus. All good people can go. All good people can find God." And that is very broad sounding, but what it means is you’re saved by your works. Whenever somebody says—and I hate this—"Doctrine doesn't matter, I don't believe in doctrine. All I believe is good people can find God. It doesn't matter what you believe; doctrine doesn't matter. What matters is that you live a good life." But that's the doctrine of justification by works. When you say doctrine doesn't matter, that's a doctrine.

When you say "I'm broad-minded," that's a certain kind of narrowness. But it's a different kind of narrowness. Christians know that there's a narrowness about the gospel. We know, we struggle with it, we hate it. We get upset about it. But you see, the opposite side is also narrow, but they don't know they're narrow. And listen, a proud person who knows he or she is proud is not all that proud. But a proud person who doesn't know he or she is proud is incredibly proud. A narrow person who struggles with narrowness can't be that narrow. But a person who says, "I'm very open-minded. I would never believe in doctrine," which is a doctrine—that's the narrowness that dares not speak its name. It doesn't know it's narrow.

And let me go a little further—not too much further, because we have to kind of pull this together here quickly tonight. When you believe you're winning the gate by your life, that when you're out there—you know, here's two people: a Christian, a person on the narrow way, and a person on the broad way. And they're both out there, and they're both trying to be good, and they're trying to live their life, and they're trying to do the right thing. But if you're on the broad way, every event, every incident in your life—every incident in your day—is fighting for your very life.

If somebody robs you of your reputation, that's the only reputation you've got. You're not sure that God loves you. You're not sure he's your Father. You're not sure that he loves and accepts you. You can't, if you believe you’re winning the gate with your good deeds. And here's what that means. Jesus continually inside the sermon says, when he's contrasting the two ways and he talks about the people who are winning the gate by their good deeds, "They already have their reward." Over and over he says, "They have their reward."

You know what that means? Your spaciousness, your broadness, that says, "I don't believe you have to believe just in Jesus; I don't know that I believe in all that. I just believe you try to live the best you can." If somebody comes along and takes away your reputation, or if somebody who says they're going to marry you jilts you, or if somebody hurts your career, that is the only worth you've got. That is the only honor you've got. That is the only love you've got. God is remote; you don't have anything else. And you're going to hate that person, and you have to hate that person. And you're going to hate yourself, and you have to hate yourself. Why? It's narrowness. The broadness has led to narrowness, you see? You're chained; you can't stop it.

But when a Christian, who has been willing to be narrow enough to say "I'm saved by grace, someone else has won the gate for me," when someone comes along and takes something from you—you know he loves you in heaven. You know what he means, what you mean to him. You know what he's done for you. You know what you look like to him. You know what's in store for you. Then it’s like somebody can only sort of pick their pocket of 25 cents when all of your wealth—a billion dollars—is in a trust fund somewhere. You see, the narrowness leads to spaciousness, and the spaciousness leads to narrowness.

Now lastly, how can you make sure you're on the right way? Well, I have something to say to both non-Christians and Christians here. All right? If you say "I'm not a Christian," here's what I would say to you. What Jesus is trying to say here is you need to make a decision. If salvation was by works, it would be absolutely wrong to make a cutoff. You know, one of my children recently, if he had gotten a certain grade point—if he had gotten a something-point-zero, he could have had a free period or some kind of honor or something like that. But he got a something-point-nine-six-eight. He was just that far away. But he was just as out of that privilege as somebody who was getting Cs and Ds and Fs.

That's unfair. Well, you know, you have to have a cutoff someplace. But when it comes to hell and heaven and stuff like that, Judgment Day is impossible—the whole idea of Judgment Day is horrible—if it's really true that we're saved by our works and God has put a cutoff someplace. Where would it be? Who's the poor slob that would have—you know, if the cutoff is 3.0, and the poor slob gets a 2.9998, he goes to hell?

But if salvation is a matter of relationship, if salvation is who you're living for, who you're doing this for, whether I'm doing this for myself to get God to do good things for me, or whether I'm just simply doing this to love God because I know he saved me—who you doing it for? Then that is an absolute difference. And on Judgment Day, you're going to be judged as to whether you've made that choice or not.

And Elizabeth Elliot tells the story this way. It’s a fictional story; it’s not a true story. It’s a legend; I promise it’s not in the Bible. Don’t go looking for it, but it’s interesting. Jesus Christ comes along and says to his disciples, "Carry a stone for me." Peter looks around, he takes the smallest stone he can, and they walk along. And at lunchtime, Jesus says, "Okay, get out your stones." And he waves his hand and they all turn into bread. He says, "Now let’s eat." And Peter’s looking at his little munchkin hors d'oeuvre and he eats and he’s very hungry.

And then afterwards, Jesus says, "Now, carry a stone for me." And Peter says, "I've figured it out." So what he does is he finds this boulder, he puts it on his shoulder, and they’re going along and he’s crushed, but he can’t wait for supper. And when they get to supper time, they walk to the riverside, and Jesus says, "Now everybody throw your stone in." And they all throw their stones in. And then he says, "Now follow me." And they all look at him, and Jesus looks and says, "Who were you carrying the stones for?"

Well, you see, that's the question on Judgment Day. If you say "I am a Christian," let me just remind you of this. You can lose your spaciousness. You see, only Christians have this spaciousness of not feeling superior to the people who they're opposed to. There's a spaciousness about Christians. They don't look down; they're not condemning; they're not judgmental. Jesus says you're not a judgmental person if you're in my way. Isn't that weird?

The mark of the broad way is you feel superior and judgmental to other people on the other side, and the mark of the narrow way is that you're not judgmental at all. That's what the Sermon on the Mount says. And there's a spaciousness of freedom; it doesn't matter what people do to you because you're not chained to that. My life is hid with God in Christ. But you can lose your spaciousness not so much through sin, but forgetting the gospel. If I wake up on Sunday morning and I look at my sermon and I say, "I don't think this is very good. Nobody's going to like it," I'm losing my spaciousness. I'm losing my freedom. Why? Not through sin so much as because I'm forgetting to rejoice in Jesus.

Everybody in this room's got something like that. You're losing your spaciousness. Broad is the way that leadeth to deadly narrowness. Narrow is the way that leadeth to glorious spaciousness, and few there be that find it. Pray with me.

We now ask that you would help us to see these great truths, and we ask that you would help us as we come to your table and we see the broken body and we see the poured-out cup. We see that Jesus Christ won the gate for us. He was crushed. He experienced narrowness. He was squashed so that we could have spaciousness. He died at the gate so we could enter. Help us to rejoice in what he did so we can regain our spaciousness. Help us to rejoice in what he did so that we can enter. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.

Guest (Female): Thanks for listening to today's teaching. It's our prayer that you were encouraged by it and that it helps you apply the gospel to your life and share it with others. For more helpful resources from Tim Keller, visit gospelinlife.com. There you can subscribe to the Life in the Gospel quarterly journal. When you do, you will also receive free articles, sermons, devotionals, and other great gospel-centered resources. Again, it's all at gospelinlife.com. You can also stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and X. Today's sermon was recorded in 1998. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.