What Jesus Demands of the World – Lesson 12

Demand #22 – Strive to enter Through the Narrow Door, for all of Life is War

And someone said to him, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” And he said to them, “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.”
—Luke 13:23-24

Jesus taught us that life is war in the sense that we are called to strive. He said, “Strive to enter through the narrow door” (Luke 13:24) and the Greek word has the root of our word agonize. Jesus uses the word again in John 18:36 when He says “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been FIGHTING, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews.” Obviously the word indicates an involvement in an active struggle.

Strive to Enter What?
We are told to strive to enter the Kingdom of God (Luke 13:25-29) and it must be through The Door and it must be while The Door is open. The alternative to entering by the narrow gate or door is destruction. “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction” (Matt. 7:13). This is an ultimate issue of heaven and hell.

The Greatest Threat Is Our Own Sin Every Day
So if we are to fight or strive then who or what is the enemy? It must be an odd striving or fighting if during our fight we must love our enemies and do good to those who hate us (Luke 6:27). Just like Pogo “We have met the enemy and he is us”. So our war is not on people but on sin and especially our own sin. This makes since because only our sin can keep us out of the kingdom. Someone else’s sin might hurt me or kill me but only my sin can stand between me and God.

Jesus is demanding personal vigilance and a personal fight. Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane commanded, “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mark 14:38). This command is relevant to all aspects of our life including secular, religious, and family. Temptations abound and you should “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.” (Pr 4:23). We need to be vigilant even when, or especially when, things seem to be going well and appear normal (Matt. 24:38-39, 42). Temptation to depart from serving God is present when things are going well and we seem even more inclined to ignore God when things are going well.

Pain and Pleasure Can Keep Us from Entering Through the Narrow Door
In the parable of the sower, Jesus warns us about both the rocky ground (Matt. 13:21) and the weedy but otherwise productive ground (Luke 8:14). In one case tribulation and persecution is the problem and in the other case riches and pleasures are the problem. Vigilance is required either way. Good times rarely make a person think about their need for God.

The Perils of Praise and Physical Indulgence
Jesus said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love greetings in the marketplaces and the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts” (Luke 20:46). “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them” (Matt. 6:1). “Woe to you,” Jesus says, “when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets” (Luke 6:26). “But watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap” (Luke 21:34). What do you need to fast to keep your heart sensitive toward God? Having a sluggish heart is the opposite of being vigilant.

Money Is a Mortal Threat to Entering Through the Narrow Door
Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:25). “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth” (Matt. 6:19). “You cannot serve God and money” (Matt. 6:24). “Do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’” (Matt. 6:31). “The deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word” (Mark 4:19). “Sell your possessions, and give to the needy” (Luke 12:33). “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt. 6:21). “Any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33). “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation” (Luke 6:24). “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20). “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15).

You aren’t righteous because your poor or sinful because you have some money but you must answer the questions, “who or what is your lord?” Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell all that he had (Mark 10:21) but commended Zacchaeus for giving half of his money away (Luke 19:8-9). The rich young ruler had to be separated from his money which was his lord and yet Zacchaeus quickly placed all of his belongings under the Lord Jesus. However, wealth so dangerous that Jesus simply says woe to the rich and blessed be the poor.

The “Healthy Eye” Will Help Us Strive to Enter the Narrow Door
Jesus seems preoccupied at times with our eyes. In Matthew 6:22-23 He says, “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” This statement uses “eye” in the singular and is found between the command to lay up treasures in heaven (6:19-21) and the warning that you can’t serve God and money (6:24). How do you value things? Does your “eye” give you a “world view” that treasures rewards in heaven or rewards on earth? Do you desire God or money? You can’t serve both but how we “spend” our lives speaks louder than what we say about this.

What Is the Good Eye?
In Matthew 20:15 Jesus has just said that men who worked one hour will be paid the same as those who worked all day, because the master is merciful and generous and they all agreed to their wage before they worked. Those who worked all day grumbled because everyone was paid equally. Jesus responded literally, “Is your eye bad because I am good?” What is bad about their eye is that they object to the master’s mercy. They don’t value the Master’s mercy above a day’s wages. They judge mercy as wrong because their eye is dark rather than light. If you consider Master-money and see that Master-God is infinitely more valuable then you can sit down with Zacchaeus. Our eye should not lead us to a purely materialistic judgment but our eye should also see the beauty and worthiness of God.



Demand #23 – Strive to Enter Through the Narrow Door, For Jesus Fulfills the New Covenant

Enter by the narrow gate. 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.
—Matt. 7:13-14

This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.
—Luke 22:20

How is all this vigilance and attention to the words of Jesus consistent with the invitation of Jesus to come to him and find rest?

The Perils of False Prophets and False Christs
In the first warning Jesus gives us after saying, “The gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life” he says, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits” (Matt. 7:15-16). He also says, “False christs and false prophets will arise and perform signs and wonders, to lead astray, if possible, the elect. But be on guard; I have told you all things beforehand” (Mark 13:22-23).

In the 2000 years we’ve certainly had a variety of false christs and prophets. We would include in that group all the false christs created by false prophets. Some of heresies simply get reinvented each generation. The person and work of Christ is often the subject of attack. Some attack Christ’s divinity, some attack His humanity, and some seek to redefine His work of atonement into the life of a great teacher. Jesus told us what we need to avoid those types of errors but he told us to expect them and to be on guard. It is one reason why repetition is not such a bad thing for us. The gate is narrow. It is the width of Jesus and many turn aside rather than bending their knee to Him.

You Do Not Know When Your Lord Is Coming
Jesus demand for vigilance includes the knowledge of His second coming. He said “Stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. . . . Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour” (Matt. 24:42; 25:13). The point of the parable of the wise and foolish virgins is not the sleeping when it was time to sleep it was rather that the foolish ones were not ready for the coming of the bridegroom. The absence of oil was an absence of the Holy Spirit and the absence of a salvation. We who are saved are to have the sense to be ready and watchful over our lives so that we can be found doing what He has for us when He comes.

Perseverance and the Peril of Nostalgia
Jesus said, “Because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved” (Matt. 24:12-13). We have a real problem in looking at the sins in the world and then thinking that in the good old days that was a good old way to live. Generally more than just a little bit of selective memory is involved in that appraisal. So we can fail to run with patience. We find the door to the Kingdom will knock off our baggage that has become so dear to us. The stress of this age will tempt us to look back and Jesus simply says, “Remember Lot’s wife” (Luke 17:32). That isn’t how we become the salt of the earth (Gen. 19:26). Jesus said, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62). You need to glorify God in forgetting those things that are behind you and pressing forward as He calls you.

How Does Striving to Enter by the Narrow Door Relate to Resting in Jesus?
We forget constantly that if Jesus tells us to do something and makes this a condition for entering the kingdom of God and having eternal life that he will enable us to do it.

Jesus Came to Fulfill the New Covenant in His Blood
But Jesus said, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20) in fulfillment of what Jeremiah prophesied, “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. . . . But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts” (Jer. 31:31-33). God said through Ezekiel, “I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes. . . . A new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them” (Ezek. 36:27; 11:19-20).

Without Christ Our Striving Would Be Losing
Our dependency is completely upon the completed work of Christ. As Martin Luther wrote in his famous hymn, “A Might Fortress is our God”:

Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing;
Were not the right Man on our side, the Man of God’s own choosing:
Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He;
Lord Sabaoth, His Name, from age to age the same,
And He must win the battle.

As Piper says, “The command to strive is the command to experience the powerful striving of God on our behalf in fulfillment of his new-covenant promise to cause us to walk in his statutes.”

Demand #24 – Strive to Enter Through the Narrow Door, For You are Already in the Kingdom’s Power


Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.
—Mark 10:15

God hasn’t called us to strive without knowing or understanding the basis of our hope and confidence of success. It is a paradox but not a contradiction that we are, “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13-14) while we affirm that “God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Eph 2:4-6). We understand salvation to be three-fold. We are saved, we are being saved, and we will be saved and know them to be true in specific ways as Scripture tells us.

So we are told to strive to Glorify God and His strength has begun our salvation and will perfect us and lift us up into heaven at the end.

The Secret of the Kingdom of God: It Is Here
The kingdom and eternal life are both present and future promises. Jesus said, “If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you . . . behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you” (Luke 11:20; 17:21). We head for the narrow door in the power of the Holy Spirit we have as a free gift. But in the present we don’t fully see the Kingdom around us. We still see rebellion to God’s rule.

Eternal Life Is Ours Now
Jesus speaks of eternal life as a future inheritance: “Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life” (Matt. 19:29; cf. 25:46). But on the other hand, he teaches that believing on him means having eternal life now. “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (John 5:24; cf. 3:36). Like the Kingdom, we have eternal life now but we will come into the full experience in the future.

The Presence of Life and Kingdom Does Not Produce Presumption but Joy
When we grasp the truth of the present and future aspects of the Kingdom and our eternal life then we do not respond with presumption and carelessness. Saving faith does not produce a heart that says, “I’m already saved; it does not matter how I live. I do not need to be vigilant. I do not need to strive to enter through the narrow door.” Instead we respond with what Piper calls “joyful striving” and a life lived vigilantly. There is joy in serving Christ. Some aspects may require effort and focus and even be trying but never oppressive.

“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:27-28).
Help for the Fainthearted

1) The Fight Is to Cherish What We Have, Not Earn What We Don’t
The call and striving is primarily a call to cherish what is yours by Grace. You are not being called to earn your salvation only to treasure it appropriately. You commit your body a living sacrifice as a result of salvation and not to achieve it. Jesus is in calling us to strive is calling us to a rational and reasonable response to what is ours when we respond positively to His command to “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28-30). It is never oppressive but rather is an expression of joy.

2) Jesus Promises to Help Us Do the Impossible
Jesus said, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). But with Him we can do what He calls us to do and He will provide those resources. You don’t strive to gain Christ’s favor. You have His favor now in joy do what He leads you to do.

3) Forgiveness and Justification Are at the Bottom of Our Striving
The forgiveness of sins and our justification by faith form the foundation for our striving. We are not striving for forgiveness or justification before God. They propel us into the works God has for us to do. As we strive with joy we show the mark of the one who belongs to Christ. It takes a secure relationship with Christ to produce joyful striving.

4) Perfection Awaits the Age to Come
We may wish the Kingdom and our salvation was fully manifested right now on this planet but that isn’t God’s plan. We can wish we were perfect and without a sin nature to struggle with right now but wishing is all it is going to be. The perfection that we need to enter in through the narrow door is provided by the atoning work of Christ. The mark of a disciple is not perfection but a continuing battle against sin.

5) Jesus Prays for Us That We Not Fail
Jesus prayed for you. You can stand on that truth. Just as He prayed for Peter (Luke 22:32) that he would not fall away, Jesus has prayed for you. The reason we do not all fall away is that Jesus is not only helping us by his presence and Spirit, but is also praying for us. God will ignore his Son when he prays, “Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one” (John 17:11).

6) We Are Striving to Enter Our Father’s House
You are striving to go home and enter into your Father’s house. The mark of our new nature is a love for Jesus. After salvation, God is our Father now. He is not watching to see if we clear a hurdle or score well enough in our life to qualify. God will see us through this life, Jesus said that not a single sparrow falls to the ground apart from “your Father, fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows” (Matt. 10:29, 31).

7) Your Name Is Written in Heaven
As we work joyfully before God we can remember that our names are written in heaven. Jesus said, “Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:20). Daniel prophesied (12:1) “There shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation till that time. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book.” Not everyone’s name is written there but those who are saved are written in heaven and God has no eraser. He doesn’t need one.

8) You Were Chosen by God and Given to Jesus
Jesus is not acting independently from God and collecting souls for presentation some day to God. God knew us and wrote us in his book long ago. Now God is drawing us to his Son for salvation. “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out” (John 6:37). If someone comes to Jesus, it is because the Father knew him and gave him to the Son. That’s why Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father” (John 6:65). When they come, Jesus reveals the Father to them, and the Father keeps them from falling away: “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me” (John 17:6). “My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand” (John 10:29). If you remember that you are a love gift of the Father to the Son then it should give you tremendous peace in your salvation and joy in service.

9) Jesus Sustains Our Striving by His Joy
As God enables us and we have joy in Him we find striving and service to be an out working of that joy (John 15:5). Jesus says, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11) and “No one will take your joy from you” (John 16:22). This joy is to be a vital part of our service for Him.

10) Our Striving Will Not Be in Vain
Vigilance one of our marks as a follower of Jesus and it is not a useless or unprofitable effort. Piper says we are “seriously joyful” because we know that heaven and hell are at issue but we know that we’ve been rescued by the power of God. We have all the promises of Jesus as well as Him at the right hand of the Father interceding for us. No one can take me from His hand. Nothing I give in Him can be lost. Striving to enter in and serving Him is life, joy, and peace.