MATTHEW 7:12-14 - Straight And Narrow

Introduction

A couple weeks ago, we had a bit of a contest at our Wednesday CSF meeting. I had volunteers come up to the white board and each try to draw the straightest freehand line that they could. There were three guys who came up to try their hand, as it were, and they all actually did pretty good. After they were done, the group gave their consensus on whose line was straightest, after which I went up to the board—with a ruler. After drawing lines next to the students’ with a straight edge, all of a sudden their results looked a lot different (as you could imagine.)

Our text this morning includes another well-known verse (or, at least the verse that has given rise to the well-known saying) that we call “The Golden Rule”:

Matthew 7:12 (LSB)

“Therefore, in all things, whatever you want people to do for you, so do for them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

And the following verses are almost just as well-known:

Matthew 7:13–14 (LSB)

“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. “For the gate is narrow and the way is constricted that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

These verses together are the origin of the phrase “the straight and narrow” as a way of describing behavior that is good and upright, usually contrasted with other behavior that is considered wrong or reckless: “Well, I hope that DUI will get him to start walking the straight and narrow...”

I think there is good reason to consider that Matthew 7:12 signifies the end of Jesus’ formal delivery of the Sermon on the Mount—you’ll notice that Verse 12 begins with “Therefore… in all things, whatever you want people to do for you, so do for them...” That therefore can go back to the beginning of Chapter 7, referring to the way that you judge others with right judgment, but when you consider everything Jesus has said in these chapters, you can see how this verse summarizes the entire Sermon: “Everything I have said to you; the blessedness of the New Birth, the call to be salt and light, the righteousness greater than the scribes and Pharisees, the genuineness of your giving and your prayer, your desire for treasures greater than this world can offer, your grace and generosity—in all these things, do for others whatever you want them to do for you.”

The verse that we call “The Golden Rule” is Jesus’ encapsulation of the entire Sermon He has just preached; the rest of Chapter 7 is His application of that Sermon to the way that we are to live. Starting with Verse 12 all the way through the end of Chapter 7, Jesus takes what He has preached and calls His listeners to make a choice. In the rest of this chapter, He is saying, “Here is what I have proclaimed to you about the New Birth—this “new way of being human”. Now, what will you do with what I have declared?”

And so that is the question before us this morning—what are we going to do with what Jesus has taught us in these three chapters? How will these verses impact the way you live your life—the way you treat others, the way you walk through your days in this world? What does His Sermon reveal about the state of your heart? About the character of your walk? What does it mean to “walk the straight and narrow” according to Jesus Christ?

We need to consider this—we need to have Christ confront us with these verses—because every one of us is prone to draw our own “freehand” version of righteousness, aren’t we? We don’t tend to think about our salvation in the same terms that Jesus does here—we like to say “Christians aren’t perfect; just forgiven”, as if Jesus didn’t say in this Sermon,

Matthew 5:48 (LSB)

“Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

We like to tell ourselves that walking in righteousness and holiness in our lives is a good thing, but since Jesus died for our sins we kind of have a pass on the practical outworking of that holiness; that it’s not really that big a deal if our walk doesn’t always match up with His demands. As if Jesus did not say to us in this sermon:

Matthew 5:20 (LSB)

“For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

And so my prayer for you this morning—what I want to urge you to do as we linger over these verses:

Measure your HEART and your WALK by the RULE of God’s WORD

Let’s turn our attention again to verse 12:

Matthew 7:12 (LSB)

“Therefore, in all things, whatever you want people to do for you, so do for them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

This is the verse that is known as the “Golden Rule”. But let me suggest to you that this “Golden Rule” represents

I. The STRAIGHT EDGE of God’s LAW (Matthew 7:12)

Just as you can use a ruler as a straight edge in order to draw a truly straight line, so this statement by Christ is the measure by which we measure our conformity to the Law of God.

Now, it’s been well-documented that alternate versions of this statement by our Lord existed many decades (or even centuries) before He walked the earth. And various atheist and agnostic opponents of Christ have made a great deal of hay out of the fact that, for instance, the Chinese philosopher Confucius (who lived about four hundred years before Christ) is credited with having said, “Do not to others what you would not wish done to yourself”. And the story goes that the great intertestamental Rabbi Hillel was once asked by a student to summarize the entire Torah while standing on one leg. He is said to have answered, ‘What is hateful to you, do not do to anyone else. This is the whole law; all the rest is only commentary.’ (Stott, J. R. W., & Stott, J. R. W. (1985). The message of the Sermon on the mount (Matthew 5-7): Christian counter-culture (p. 190). InterVarsity Press.)

Now, scoffers and doubters may claim that Jesus merely copied other great teachers—but what He really did was to take an easily-followed principle and make it

A STANDARD you cannot KEEP (cp. James 2:10-13)

This becomes obvious when you think about it: Which is easier? To never do something, or to always do something? The negative form of this command, “Do not to others what you would not wish done to yourself” is far easier to observe than the positive “IN ALL THINGS, whatever you want people to do for you, SO DO FOR THEM.

The negative is easy to keep… It’s easier to never murder than always show compassion. It’s easier to never steal than to always be generous; easier to never slander than to always speak graciously. Ask yourself: In this past week, have you always been as gracious to others as you would want them to be to you? Have you always been as careful to tell the truth as you would want others to be in telling you the truth? Have you always and in all things done for everyone you met this past week exactly what you would wish they had done for you?

In this verse, Jesus took a good rule of thumb to live by and transformed it into an impossible standard. And this fact is not lost on the atheists and mockers who hate Jesus’ teachings. In his book God Is Not Great, former atheist Christopher Hitchens writes about the Golden Rule:

…To love your neighbour as yourself is too extreme and too strenuous to be obeyed. Humans are not so constituted as to care for others as much as themselves: the thing simply cannot be done. (Quoted in https://www.bethinking.org/morality/testing-the-golden-rule, Retrieved 10/17/2024)

Hitch was onto something there—He is precisely correct. It is humanly impossible to “care for others as much as yourself”, just as it is impossible to keep the entire Law of Moses (which Jesus says is summarized in this command). The Apostle James writes as much in his epistle, when he says

James 2:10 (LSB)

For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.

If you keep 612 of the 613 commands of the Law of Moses, you have broken all 613. If you show the same compassion, honesty, love and truthfulness that you want to be shown to 49 out of the 50 people you met this week, you have failed to keep the Golden Rule of Christ.

And so here again we are driven to the necessity of the New Birth that Christ is teaching here in the Sermon on the Mount. If it is humanly impossible to keep this rule, then the only solution is… a new way of being human. The only solution is to take on a new humanity in Christ. The recognition that we cannot love as we are commanded to in this verse, that we cannot achieve the righteousness required by this Sermon, that we cannot be as perfect as almighty God must drive us to one place—the foot of the Cross of Jesus Christ, where His blood is applied to our guilt to cleanse us, and the faith by which we are counted with His own righteousness.

The Golden Rule is a straight edge of God’s Law that demonstrates how crooked our own attempts at righteousness are. Christ’s command to love others as you love yourself is a standard you cannot keep apart from the transforming work of God’s Spirit in the New Birth that comes by repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. And make no mistake:

It is a TRANSFORMATION God will COMPLETE (cp. Phil. 1:6)

In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis writes about having a toothache as a child. He knew that he could go to his mother and get an aspirin to make the pain go away, but he didn’t want to do that because he knew that she would take him to the dentist. He writes:

And I knew those dentists; I knew they started fiddling about with all sorts of other teeth which had not yet begun to ache. They would not let sleeping dogs lie; if you gave them an inch they took [a mile]. (Quoted in Boice, J. M. (2002). The Sermon on the Mount: an expositional commentary (pp. 245–246). Baker Books.)

Then he goes on to say,

“…If I may put it that way, Our Lord is like the dentists. If you give Him an inch, He will take [a mile].… that is why He warned people to ‘count the cost’ before becoming Christians. ‘Make no mistake,’ He says, ‘if you let Me, I will make you perfect. The moment you put yourself in My hands, that is what you are in for. Nothing less, or other, than that.… I will never rest, nor let you rest, until you are literally perfect—until My Father can say without reservation that He is well pleased with you, as He said He was well pleased with Me.’ " (ibid.)

This is what the Apostle Paul writes in Philippians 1:6:

Philippians 1:6 (LSB)

For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.

Christian, the New Birth that God has brought forth in you does not only set you free from the penalty of your sin, but also its power. His Spirit is continually working in the lives of His children to create in them the image of Christ’s perfection. To grant to you by faith that righteousness that surpasses the scribes and Pharisees, to set in you a heart that is capable of loving others as you love yourself, to make you perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect!

The “Straight and Narrow” as God defines it is found here in His Word—measure your heart and your life by its rule. Measure your heart by the straight edge of God’s Law, and measure your life by

II. The NARROW WAY of God’s CALL (Matthew 7:13-14)

Look with me at verses 13-14:

Matthew 7:13–14 (LSB)

“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. “For the gate is narrow and the way is constricted that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

Jesus has set His teaching about the New Birth before His disciples—He has delivered His sermon on the new way of being human that comes by repentance and faith in Him. And now He begins a series of contrasts in order to set before them (and us) as clearly as possible that there is a choice to be made. You cannot be confronted by Christ’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount and escape the necessity of making a decision. Here in these verses there are four contrasts that Jesus sets out. First, notice that

There are two GATES (cp. Luke 13:24; Gal. 2:20)

There is a narrow gate, and a wide gate:

Matthew 7:13 (LSB)

“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it.

If you’ve ever been to a big sporting arena or concert venue, you can easily picture the two gates that Jesus is describing. There are the big wide concourse ramps, designed to accommodate hundreds of people at a time. You can walk through that gate with all your friends, you can bring your cooler with you (or your stadium chair or whatever); all you have to do is “go with the flow”.

But then Jesus says that there is a narrow gate as well:

Matthew 7:14 (LSB)

“For the gate is narrow and the way is constricted that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

But picture that “narrow” gate as a turnstile entrance that you might see at a stadium. That is a gate that you have to go through one at a time. You have to leave everyone else behind; you can’t bring all your stuff with you. Or even more strictly—if you’ve ever gone through TSA security at an airport, you know that you really do have to drop everything. You don’t carry anything with you through that checkpoint. And you very well may wind up having to leave some of your possessions behind for good in order to get through that gate.

He describes the two gates—one broad, one narrow. And you’ll notice that along with those two gates Jesus says

There are two WAYS (cp. Prov. 16:25; Matt. 16:24-27)

The concourse ramp is an easy walk, isn’t it? The signs are clearly marked out, but you really don’t have to even read them; all you have to do is go with the flow, walk the way everyone else is walking, and pretty soon you’ll find yourself at your destination. But the narrow gate doesn’t open up into a comfortable passage; it remains constricted from the start. You don’t just wander along however you please; you are bounded by its limits; there are demands placed upon you as you go. Steep climbs, dark passageways, tight spaces, like a spelunker navigating the twists and turns of a cave system. A well-lit, spacious, gentle slope of a stadium concourse versus a tight fit through a turnstile into a narrow passage. The choice between those two ways seems like a no-brainter,. doesn’t it? Except for one thing—Jesus makes it clear that

There are two DESTINATIONS (cp. Psalm 1:6)

That broad, well-lit, easy way, that big stadium concourse ramp with all the concession stands and decorations along the way, with the piped-in music and TV screens spaced along the route leads to destruction. And that tight, narrow passageway behind that constricting turnstile, with all of its demanding and difficult paths—that way leads to life. A few weeks ago, we watched the movie Thirteen Lives, based on the rescue of the boy’s soccer team in Thailand that were rescued from a flooded cave back in 2018. One of the flooded passageways that stood between the children and their rescuers was only fifteen by twenty-eight inches wide—but it was the only way to be saved from death in that cave.

Jesus makes it clear here in these verses that the choice between the broad gate and the narrow gate is a matter of life and death. Jesus is even more forceful in the parallel passage to the Sermon on the Mount in Luke 13, where He says

Luke 13:24 (LSB)

“Strive to enter through the narrow door, for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.

The only way to enter through that narrow gate, Jesus says, is to leave everything; to die:

Matthew 16:24–27 (LSB)

Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?

The easy gate, on the other hand, makes no demands on you. It is the “come as you are and stay that way” gate. It is the anything goes, “Love Is Love” gate. John Stott writes in his commentary

There is plenty of room on it for diversity of opinions and laxity of morals. It is the road of tolerance and permissiveness. It has no curbs, no boundaries of either thought or conduct. Travellers on this road follow their own inclinations, that is, the desires of the human heart in its fallenness. (Stott, J. R. W., & Stott, J. R. W. (1985). The message of the Sermon on the mount (Matthew 5-7): Christian counter-culture (p. 194). InterVarsity Press.)

No demands, no expectations, no need to go against the flow or disagree. The big sign at the head of the concourse said “This way to heaven”, after all. If I just do my best, follow the Golden Rule, avoid stepping on anyone’s toes as we go along the ramp, it will all turn out OK. God will meet me at the end of it and see that I did pretty good, all things considered. And He will be happy to let me into Heaven.”

And then, when the ghastly truth is revealed to you, and you come to the horrifying realization that the gentle slope of that great concourse—so gentle that you never noticed—that ramp was indeed going down your whole life, and you come to the Last Day and realize that you chose the wrong gate—at that moment, when you see the destruction you have brought on yourself and you want to go back and choose that narrow gate, it will be too late: “For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able...”

But make no mistake, beloved, you are not saved because of your effort to choose the right gate. You do not find life because you did the hard work of choosing the narrow way. John MacArthur makes it clear that

Salvation is solely by grace, not by works (Eph 2:8, 9). But entering the narrow gate is nonetheless difficult because of its cost in terms of human pride, because of the sinner’s natural love for sin, and because of the world’s and Satan’s opposition to the truth. MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (2006). The MacArthur study Bible: New American Standard Bible. (Lk 13:24). Thomas Nelson Publishers.

To walk through that gate means to swallow your pride that tells you you don’t need anyone telling you how to live your life; it means walking away from all of the pleasure and satisfaction and stimulation and appetites that your sin gives you. And it means walking against the flow of that great multitude on the broad path. Because Jesus makes it clear that on those two ways

There are two CROWDS (cp. Rev. 7:9-10)

There are many who walk along that broad, gentle slope to destruction, and few that find the narrow, constricted way to life. Surely at least part of what Jesus is telling us in this verse is that you are always going to feel outnumbered in this world. You will spend your life “going against the flow”, you will never really belong with this crowd, there will never really be a place where you will feel “at home” in this world that despises you as “narrow” and “bigoted” and “hateful” because you confess

Acts 4:12 (LSB)

“And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved”

but the Name of Jesus Christ.

You will be despised and ridiculed for your “narrow” views; you will be told that you are foolish, that you are wasting your time with religion, that you are “on the wrong side of history”. And sometimes, beloved, it will really feel like it.

But let the perfect rule of God’s Word be the standard for your walk, Christian, and you will not walk in despair that you are a lonely outsider, one of a few ragged spiritual survivors lost in a sea of unbelief. Do not let the crowds of unbelievers and scoffers and arrogant boasters around you fool you—because the Scriptures assure you that you are part of an even greater crowd:

Revelation 7:9–10 (LSB)

After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands; and they cry out with a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.”

That is the crowd that you belong to, Christian! Whether or not it feels like it here, even though you will never belong here, no matter how often you are scolded for being “on the wrong side of history”, you have the assurance from God’s Word that you are on the right side of eternity!

And so what will you do with what God’s Word shows you this morning? Jesus confronts you here with the “straight and narrow”—what does His Word reveal about your heart? Are you trying to draw your own straight line freehand? Measuring your adherence to God’s Law by your own reckoning? Have you perfectly loved your neighbor as yourself, always and in every way treated others exactly how you would be treated? Are you judging your straight line by the way others draw theirs? The only standard, the only straight edge, is Christ. It is only in Him that you will have the ability to do for others in every way what you would have them do for you--to act with the compassion, honesty, integrity, friendship, grace and kindness that you long for from others. The Straight Edge of God’s law reveals that it is not humanly possible to live the way Christ commands here in these verses. It is only as you die to yourself and live to Him that you can love others the way His Law demands:

Galatians 2:20 (LSB)

“I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

Jesus calls you here in these verses to look at your life, beloved. Measure your life by the straight and narrow of His Word. Hear His call to strive to enter that narrow gate. Do you look at your life and realize that you are “going along to get along”? Are you drifting along with the crowd, are you content to divide your life between Sunday activities when you are careful to do “Christian” things with “Christian” language and “Christian” opinions, spending your time here this morning with your “heavenly” behavior and then spend the rest of the week however the hell you want? Are you comfortably within the majority opinion of this world’s attitudes and opinions and desires? Is there really nothing that would make you stand out as different in the crowd of unbelievers and scoffers flowing along the concourse ramp toward destruction? Won’t you spare a thought for Christ’s chilling warning in Luke 13:24, that the Day is coming when you will want to go back for a “do-over”, you will beg for the chance to go back to the narrow gate and enter there, but it will be too late.

It is a distinct possibility that if you begin taking Jesus’ words seriously here; if you strive to enter that narrow gate to life, you may very well lose friends. You may have to leave behind opportunities for your career, your popularity may wane, you may lose your hold on the pursuits and habits and pastimes that simply don’t “fit” in the narrow, hard, demanding path Christ calls you to. But that path is the only way to life.

It may be that Jesus’ words here reveal to you that you are drifting in your Christian walk. If so, repent; course-correct, jettison what you know doesn’t fit through that door, take the Word of God as your only rule and guide for the straight and narrow, empowered by the presence of the Holy Spirit in you through the regeneration Christ has wrought, secure in Him by faith so that in Him you are counted as perfectly righteous even as He works His righteousness into your life day by day. Strive ahead, don’t give up, cling to Him as your only hope in life and death. No matter what you leave behind; no matter what you may lose, no matter what you suffer, He is worth it:

Mark 10:29–30 (LSB)

Jesus said, “Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for My sake and for the gospel’s sake, except one who will receive one hundred times as much now in the present age—houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecutions—and in the age to come, eternal life.

But perhaps God’s straight and narrow rule shows you this morning that you do not belong to Christ by faith. That you have been on the wide road believing that you are on the path to life, but you see now by the light of the Scriptures that you have been fooling yourself, and that you are headed down the road to destruction. If that is you, friend, then then there is only one remedy--strive to enter the narrow gate of repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.

All of the justifications you have built up that tell you you’re just fine spiritually--all the reassurances you give yourself that everyone around you agrees with your nuanced, realistic attitude towards religion; all of the reasons you have collected against being “narrow” or “rigid” in your faith, all the validation you get from everyone around you for not being so “holier than thou”--you have to fight those things. You have to fight as though your life depended on it--because far more than your life depends on it--your eternity depends on it. The only way to come through that narrow door is to die. To leave everything behind; bring none of it with you. Lay all of it down—the guilt and shame of your sins, your love affair with your lusts and passions, your appetite for twistedness and ugliness, your malicious pride that hates to be told you are wrong, your oh-so-sophisticated justifications as to why you don’t need to be that religious, your quiet scorn of people who “take their Christianity too seriously”—you need to drop all of that.

Come honestly and simply; come with straightforward confession of all of that for what it is—sin—and plead for grace on the basis of the blood of the Son of God shed in your place. He says in John 10:9

John 10:9 (LSB)

“I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.

His suffering and death on that Cross means that He is that Door—that one and only way to find salvation. Will you strive to enter that narrow door? That Only Door to life? Won’t you come—and welcome!—to Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION:

Jude 24–25 (LSB)

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, might, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION:

Write down something you learned from this morning’s message that is new to you, or an insight that you had for the first time about the text? ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Write down a question that you have about the passage that you want to study further or ask for help with: ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Write down something that you need to do in your life this week in response to what God has shown you from His Word today: ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________

Additional Notes: ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________