Matthew 7:13-14 – The Father’s Narrow Road

After Moses died, the Lord told Joshua to be strong and courageous; Joshua was about to cross the Jordan River and conquer the land. The Lord told him a second time to be strong and courageous as an encouragement to Joshua that he, the Lord, would be with Joshua wherever he went. But there was a third time when Lord told Joshua to be strong and courageous, but in the third instance, God added one word; he told Joshua to be strong and very courageous. If you read Joshua 1 quickly, you may actually miss the word “very.” At first glance, it seems like God says the same thing three times—but he doesn’t, and it is important that we understand why. The Lord affirms that going to battle against the enemy requires courage and that the Lord’s presence will provide that courage, but an extra helping of courage is required when God’s children seek to follow God’s laws; that is, to live a moral life. By including this small word, “very,” the Lord told Joshua that more courage is required to live a moral life than is required to wield a sword in battle.

If you venture into the book of Joshua, you will quickly realize that it is a bloody book. There is the first battle at Jericho, then the two battles at Ai—one failed and one successful—then battles in the south, battles in the north, and a battle of five kings; most of these battles result in utter destruction; death to man, woman, child, and beast. Certainly, these battles were won by divine intervention, but they were still battles; men were still required to buckle on armor and wield a weapon. Men rushed at other men swinging iron swords in the air hoping to maim, decapitate, mutilate, and kill their enemy. Now, I’m not sure about you, but I cringe when thinking about that sort of encounter. I’d like to believe I’d approach it like Mel Gibson in Braveheart, but I’d more likely be that guy in Gladiator peeing down his leg. These sorts of things—battles of strength—are what we typically believe require the greatest amount of courage; but not for God. For God, such battles require just a normal amount of courage.

The times we need extra courage are those days when we wake up in the morning and go about our daily business. I don’t mean we need extra courage to face our spouses or our jobs (though some might need that), but I mean, when we find ourselves embroiled in subtle temptations that have quietly snuck up on us from multiple directions; those are the moments when our courage actually fails, not when we find ourselves swinging swords in a field. And those difficult moments happen every day for every one of us.

It is this sort of courage to which Jesus refers when he tells us in the Lord’s Prayer to pray, “Lead us not into temptation.” Jesus expands on this prayer in the Sermon on the Mount when he says, “For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matthew 7:13-14). We must be careful to not see the brevity of his words as a measure of their importance, or their difficulty. This may be the shortest section in the Sermon on the Mount, but it is also the most difficult, and I might add, possibly the most pertinent to us on a daily basis.

Each of us knows how easy it is to walk along the wide road; we just wake up and do what comes naturally. We don’t battle desires or avoid inclinations. We don’t strive to be something we aren’t. And we never need help to live that way—it comes naturally to us. A life given over to temptation is one of the most natural and simplest lives to live. Giving in to temptation requires no courage whatsoever. But Jesus tells us of another path, a much more difficult path that his followers must take. This narrow path requires a great deal of courage to walk along because it is the path upon which we must battle our natural inclinations.

In a previous post (Lead us not into Temptation) I said that Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness so that he might battle temptation. I also indicated that there would be times when the Spirit would lead each of us along paths where temptation would lie; I wish to reiterate that. Even in the most Spirit-led life temptations abound. There is no path in this life that will not cross ground mined with temptation. Even should you choose to sit in a dark room and avoid people for months, temptation will find its way into your dark room of isolation. Temptations, in this life, are like a poisonous gas that has been released into the atmosphere—breathing them in is inevitable.

But there is, to carry that analogy a bit further, a way in which the air we breathe can be filtered; there is a way to avoid inhaling temptation’s poisonous gas, but this way is not easy, it requires great amounts of courage. This narrow path begins when we pray for the Father to not lead us into temptation, it continues as we courageously walk the narrow road that Jesus walked, and it is sustained by the daily guidance of the Holy Spirit. Notice that we can’t do this on our own; we require all three persons of the Trinity to fight this battle with us.

In Luke’s telling of the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus also says, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13) The Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness, certainly, but the Spirit also strengthened him while he battled temptations in the wilderness. We should expect nothing less. We may find, as we traverse this life’s wildernesses, that the Spirit will guide us down paths rife with temptations, but we will also find that the Spirit will protect us from those temptations when we choose to courageously seek the moral will of God.

For those paying close attention, you will notice that there are two forces at work here; the work of the Holy Spirit and the choices that each of us makes. Certainly, we rely upon the Holy Spirit to keep us from temptation’s hold, but we also must courageously choose the narrow path over the wide one; and we must not stray from that path. These two things—our choices and the Spirit’s leading—work hand-in-hand. But don’t ask me how, I’ve no clue how the infinite God actually works. This quandary is, I suppose, much like the classic election-freedom debate, and as you know that debate still rages on (Well, certainly not for the Calvinists, of course…but for the rest of us it is still a struggle!)

Until such time as we are able to unwind the Gordian knot of God’s deep secret ways, I believe we must continue to pray, as Jesus taught us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation.” And then, as the Father sends the Holy Spirit to feed us with our daily allotment of spiritual bread, we will have the strength to exhibit great courage.

This is a battle that has not changed since the first pages of Genesis. After presenting his offering to the Lord and before he killed his brother, God spoke to Cain. God said, “Sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it” (Genesis 4:7). Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if Cain had been very courageous at that moment. I wonder how different this earth would be if he had not killed his brother. Most likely, someone else would have become the first murderer, but not Cain. Instead of Cain’s life being used as a morality story to tell us how not to handle temptation (in Cain’s case, the temptation was to give in to jealousy), his life would have been a lesson for us in how to show great courage when tempted to give in to our own natural urges.

Jesus knew that the most difficult battle any of us would wage would be those battles we fight against our own longings and inclinations. I really don’t think it takes much courage to stand on one side of a field and release a war cry as we begin running at the armed men on the other side. But when the lights are low and we find ourselves alone at night—when we are tempted to take a few extra supplies from work for home use, when we think that no one will notice so we leave some income off of our tax returns, when we live our daily lives—those are the moments when great courage is needed to do the right thing. These, and many more, are the reasons why Jesus told us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation.”

Read the Next Post: The Father’s Deliverance