Luke 13:22 He went on his way through towns and villages, teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem. 23 And someone said to him, "Lord, will those who are saved be few?" And he said to them, 24 "Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. 25 When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, 'Lord, open to us,' then he will answer you, 'I do not know where you come from.' 26 Then you will begin to say, 'We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.' 27 But he will say, 'I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!' 28 In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God but you yourselves cast out. 29 And people will come from east and west, and from north and south, and recline at table in the kingdom of God. 30 And behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last."

As sometimes happened when Jesus preached, an anonymous “someone” asked him a question. “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” In other words, “Will only few people be saved from hell so that they enter the kingdom of God in heaven?” What an interesting question, one that has been asked by many since that time?

Our Lord, as he so often did, refused to answer the question directly; instead he threw it back at the questioner and turned it into a word of warning: "Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.” “What should concern you all,” Jesus was saying, “is not ‘how many’ will be saved, but whether you will be saved. To make sure you are saved, strive to enter through the narrow door, for many people, just like you, will seek to enter but will fail in their attempt.”

In these words Jesus is issuing a serious warning to everyone, but especially to particular kinds of people. He is warning the person who assumes that he and most everyone else is going to a better place when they die. He is warning the person who takes their salvation for granted, and therefore, gives it little or no attention; the kind of person who considers their entrance into heaven an easy thing and a foregone conclusion. The kind of person who has rightly heard that salvation and entrance into heaven is by grace, not be good works, yet who wrongly concludes that entrance into heaven is an easy matter that requires no effort or attention. As a result such a person becomes spiritually lazy and sluggish and lethargic because they believe that nothing can cause them to lose their salvation.

To this kind of person, Jesus says, “Strive to enter the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.” Let’s look more closely at these words.

Jesus speaks of a door that leads into heaven. But what is that door? Thankfully, we are not to guess or wonder. For in John 10:9, the Lord says, “I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.” Jesus himself is the door to heaven. Anyone who enters through him will be saved.

But in our text, our Lord tells us that the door that leads to heaven is narrow. It is not wide and easy to get through, but narrow and difficult. But if Jesus is the door to heaven, in what sense is he a “narrow” or difficult door to go through?

Jesus is a narrow door in at least two ways. First, Jesus is a narrow door to heaven because he is the only door. In another place, using slightly different imagery, he says “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). It is the exclusiveness of Jesus’ claim, that he is the only door or way that leads to heaven and the Father, that makes him a narrow door.

He is a narrow door because this is the exact opposite of the what the world teaches. The world tells people that the “door” to the life to come is wide and accommodating. It boldly asserts that as long as a person is good and/or follows his religion sincerely, he will enter the door of eternal life. This teaching, that the door to heaven is wide and accommodates all viewpoints and religions is called syncretism or universalism.

Now it shouldn’t surprise us when the unbelieving world teaches such a thing. It is considerably more disturbing, however, when Christians do.

Unfortunately, over the last several decades a growing number of Christian theologians have rejected the narrowness of Christ the door. In order to accommodate postmodernism and pluralism, in order to appear “tolerant,” these theologians hold that Jesus Christ is a door into heaven, or even their door into heaven, but they refuse to acknowledge him as the only door into heaven. To teach that Jesus is the only door would be terribly intolerant and judgmental, these Christian theologians assert. Yet, by teaching this, these Christian teachers have become false teachers who are steering people away from Christ the narrow door to a wide and accommodating door that leads to destruction.

The second and related sense in which Jesus is a “narrow” door is that he is a door of “grace.” A comparison of Christianity with all other religions of the world show that only Christianity teaches that one’s entrance into heaven is by grace, that God offers heaven as a gift to those who believe. Christianity says, “For by grace are you saved through faith, and that, not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, that no one may boast.” By his atoning death on the cross, Jesus paid for our salvation. God offers it freely as a gift. All other religions, in one form or another, teach works-righteousness: that entrance into the life to come depends on the good works or morals or obedience or holiness or love of the one trying to get there.

Why is this works-righteous approach so common and popular? Because, according to the Word of God (Romans 2:14-15), the Law of God is written on the heart of every human being. Therefore, the notion that we can earn the life to come by our obedience to commandments makes sense. Human beings are, in a sense, hard-wired for works-righteousness. The problem is, trying to be saved by keeping God’s commandments is doomed to failure, because no one can do it, for all are sinful. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). For God demands that we keep His Law perfectly. “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it” (James 2:10). But in our present fallen condition, no human being (other than Jesus) can do this. As the Bible says, “For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law” (Gal 3:21).

It is this universal teaching, this wide door, that salvation and entrance into the life to come, depends on our righteous good works, that the book of Proverbs is talking about when it says, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death” (Proverbs 14:12).

As long was we live, the devil, world, and our own sinful flesh will never stop trying to get us to forsake the narrow door of salvation by grace through faith for the wide door of works righteousness. Yet the two are polar opposites. Paul’s warning to the Galatians applies to all Christians, “I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” (Gal 2:21).

Every Pastor has visited members of their parishes who have not been in church for years. When the Pastor has expressed concern over their spiritual welfare, he has heard such members say, “Oh Pastor, don’t worry about me! I still believe. Nothing has changed.” Yet when the Pastor begins to quiz such a member on the basics of the faith, he too often discovers that the member, without even realizing it, has reverted back to works righteousness. In so doing, such members, have forsaken the narrow door and are entering through the wide door. Those who think they are immune to such a danger are foolish indeed, and need to hear that Word of God which says, “You who think you stand, take heed lest you fall” (1 Co 10:12).

Let us return to the words of our text and note that Jesus doesn’t only say “Enter through the narrow door,” but “strive” to enter through the narrow door. Most of us watched at least part of the summer Olympics in Athens last month. Again and again we saw athletes striving and straining every ounce of energy to win their competition. How interesting then, that the Greek word here translated “strive” is a word that originally meant to compete in an athletic contest. What Jesus is saying is that just as athletes struggle and strive and strain every muscles and nerve to win the race or game or competition, so Christians should struggle and strive and strain every muscle to enter through the narrow door and gain eternal life in heave.

St. Paul picked up on this teaching of Jesus when he wrote in 1 Corinthians 9:

“Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. 25 Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. 26 So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. 27 But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.”

The great Apostle himself realized that even for him it was possible to fall away from the faith, to be disqualified. Therefore he understood the importance striving and struggling and exercising self-discipline so that he entered the narrow door to heaven. That is why he wrote in another place, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12).

Unlike many Christians today who believe that once they are saved they are always saved, Paul, following the teaching of Jesus didn’t underestimate the power of his spiritual enemies to cause him to fall away.

What does it mean to strive or struggle or strain every muscle to enter the narrow door. What does it mean to work out one’s salvation? How is this actually done in practice?

This is done by ever remaining in the Gospel. It means always and only depending for your salvation on nothing but Jesus and him crucified. It means always and only depending on God’s grace in Christ to enter heaven. It means never depending on anyone else’s merits or works to be saved, whether yours or someone else’s, other than Christ's.

Paul alluded to striving to enter the narrow door when he wrote to the Corinthians,

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you- unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he rose from the dead” (1 Co 15:1-4a; see also Colossians 1:22-23, God has reconciled you through Christ’s body in death, “if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard.”).

When Paul writes that we are saved by the Gospel of Christ crucified, “if you hold fast to the word I preached to you,” he is saying “strive to enter the narrow door” merely in different words. The meaning remains the same. Striving to enter the narrow door means, “Make sure you remain in the Gospel of salvation by grace through faith for Christ’s sake.”

But if we are to remain in the Gospel of grace, we would be foolish indeed if we do not make use of the means of grace: the preaching of the Gospel and the Sacraments.” For it is through these means that God creates and sustains saving faith. When Paul was saying farewell to the Ephesian elders, he said to them, “And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified” (Acts 20:32). The Word of God is not only information, it is a living and mighty word through which the Holy Spirit powerfully works (Rom 1:16-17; Hebrews 4:12; 2 Tim 3:16-17; 1 Thess 2:13; 1 Peter 1:23-25; James 1:18). It is through the word of grace, the Gospel, that the Holy Spirit builds us up and preserves us in the true faith. If we voluntarily absent ourselves from the Gospel, we are “increasing the odds” that we will cease striving to enter the narrow door.

And we are increasing the odds of falling away before we die or Christ returns. This would be disastrous. Our text continues:

25 When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, 'Lord, open to us,' then he will answer you, 'I do not know where you come from.' 26 Then you will begin to say, 'We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.' 27 But he will say, 'I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!'

The narrow door now stands open. All those who believe the Gospel until death will enter in and have eternal death. But the day is coming when the door will be closed tight. Either when Christ returns or when a person dies, the door is closed forever. That is why the Scriptures warn us again and again, “Now is the day of salvation.” Do not put it off. Enter now before it is too late.

For we are told that two completely different fates await people. For those who enter through the narrow door of Jesus, they will sit down at table at the marriage feast of the Lamb. Those who fail to enter the narrow door there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

28 In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God but you yourselves cast out. 29 And people will come from east and west, and from north and south, and recline at table in the kingdom of God. 30 And behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last."

This was meant to be a stern warning to the Jews that the danger of their missing out on the messianic banquet was real. For they were rejecting Messiah, whose banquet it would be. It is also meant to be a stern warning for all who consider it impossible that they can ever fall away.

These words are the greatest comfort to us who rely on God's grace only. For by God’s limitless grace, we are those who have come from east and west, and from north and south. And we, having entered the narrow door, will recline at table in the kingdom of God, together with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the prophets. For they, and all believers who strove to enter the narrow door of Jesus until the end will be there.

For those of us who know that it is impossible to fall away, will we make it? Yes, for God has promised, God “will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Co 1:8-9). And with Paul I say to you with troubled consciences, “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” Praise be to God. Amen.

Pastor Richard P. Bucher, Th.D