Wide to Narrow and Back Again

I know that for many of us today, the biggest problem with Jesus teaching is the narrowness of it.  We really do live in a “small world after all.”  There are so many different paths, so many different ways, it really can’t be about following the words of one, just one man, one teacher, one carpenter from Galilee that has been dead for 2000 years.  That is so…narrow.  I know it may seem really hard to believe this, but it’s really, really true: Only the narrow gate leads to the wide grace of the Kingdom.

Listen again to Jesus’ teaching here.  What echo do you hear in this story?  What theme is being played out here?  What is the music that is reverberating in this passage?  “Hear my words and act on them…” The God of the universe is coming to us like he did the first humans in the Garden of Eden and asking us to trust him. 

Remember, life with God didn’t start out so narrow.  God made humans and told them that they could have everything, everything.  All of creation was theirs to enjoy and take care of.  Be fruitful and multiply! Enjoy the world and each other.  It’s all sex and gardening.  Intimacy and enjoyment, freedom and responsibility. 

We were to live together in perfect love and peace, perfect enjoyment.  God the Creator would be the King of a good, delightful and lovely world.  The grace of God was so wide, so vast, so immeasurable.  There was only one thing, one command, one prohibition.  They had to trust God by not eating from the fruit of one tree.  That was his word to us.  Enjoy all the wide, wide world that I have given you except this one tree.

But we didn’t listen to God’s words.  We didn’t act on God’s words.  Humans listened to Satan’s words and acted upon his words not God’s words and everything in Creation was turned inside out. 

Now in Jesus, God himself comes to show us the way, to be the way, to take us from the tree in the garden that brought our condemnation to the tree on Calvary where he would atone for our sins. 

In Jesus we are offered a chance to regain the Kingdom, to begin now to live under God’s reign and rule, to be assured of the day when peace and beauty, enjoyment and loveliness will be the experience of every person, but there is but one door, one gate, one road and it is simply the way that Adam rejected.  To do God’s will.  To hear the words of Jesus, the son of God and act on them.  To follow Jesus and live out the Kingdom.

Eden was the widest life with one narrow way to death.  And we took it.
Jesus offers us the narrow way out of death that leads to the widest way of life
  …if we will take it. 

My friends, in the same way that my Father’s voice had to break through fog of my fear and grab my attention when I was rock climbing as a teenager, Jesus is doing the same thing at the end of the Sermon on the Mount.  Maybe he saw their furtive glances, maybe he knew their hearts, maybe he just knew his own heart well enough to know the temptations that awaited all who would seek the Kingdom that is only possible through the cross. But before he leaves that mountainside and takes his disciples in into a new season of ministry, he speaks to them directly.

Enter the narrow gate. (Jesus)
Do the will of (Jesus’) Father in heaven.
Hear these words of (Jesus) and act on them. 

When it all comes down to it:  Do we trust Jesus?  Will we build your lives on Jesus? 

Comments

[Roy]

Todd, this is so right on! Why does the church not preach this? There is so much deception out there, and so many churches preaching a false doctrine, or none at all! Thank You for preaching the reality of it all!
Roy

[Against Christianity]

"Remember, life with God didn’t start out so narrow. God made humans and told them that they could have everything, everything. All of creation was theirs to enjoy and take care of. Be fruitful and multiply! Enjoy the world and each other."

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Life with God did not start out so narrow, but the recovery of God's original purpose in Christ now necessarily involves a "narrow" way. That is your point.

But let's work this out to some degree. Consider what precipitated the unspeakable loss of uninterrupted joy in the world and in each other. It was sin, yes, but not just sin in general. What really happened?

Eve was given to Adam to be his helper. There was a Divine order established. Man was given a calling and then he was given a woman, bone of his bone, to be his helpmeet. Man was the head, woman was the subordinate. Like it or not, that was how the Creator established things in the beginning.

But the woman, the subordinate, acted independently of the man and entertained the devil. She bought his lies and then led her head into sin. The point here is not to exculpate the man, but to emphasize that the world fell apart and entered into misery because the relational order established by God among His creatures, male and female, was jettisoned, overthrown, and assaulted. That is what led to the unspeakable loss of the exceedingly wide and generous blessing of God upon His world in the beginning.

The recovery of the Divine blessing now necessitates the narrow way. Yes, it does. And what is the narrow way as it relates to men and women, and how they relate to one another in that sphere of redemption which is the recovery of Paradise lost (I speak of the Kingdom of Christ). The original order at Creation was fractured and repudiated. What of that order now, in the church, which is supposed to be the visible manifestation of the recovered Glory, the Kingdom regained.

1TI 2:11 A woman should learn in quietness and full submission.

1TI 2:12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.

1TI 2:13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve.

1TI 2:14 And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.

1TI 2:15 But women will be saved through childbearing--if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.

This is the order of the Holy Spirit for His new creation, for the church of the Living God, for the Kingdom regained. This is God's will for the most fundamental of all relationships in the context of His great redemptive plan to recover the world in righteousness. The precise point at which the original creation was lost and misery was unleashed into the world was the overthrow of God's order for men and women by the first man and the first woman. How do things in that regard look now within the context of the new creation, the church of Jesus Christ, the place where God's will is supposed to be done on earth as it is in heaven? Well, the order of the Spirit is continuously assaulted, it is blatantly attacked and undermined, and it is baldly repudiated with the most devious and shameful arguments imaginable.

But this is Ground Zero of the Renewal, for it was Ground Zero of the Fall. You want to know why Christianity in the West is nothing but a scam, nothing but another compartment which folk add to their lives and then fold up like a tent when it's not useful to them? Do you want to know why Christianity in the West is nothing but a tool, a device, a principle of therapy employed for personal growth or family benefit?
This is it. There never was any intention among Western Christians in the first place to rebuild from Ground Zero according to the order of the Spirit. That order is nearly universally rejected by Christians in the West and therefore the demonstration of new creation in the West is without any tangible and visible testimony. That is, there is no new creation at all in the West. Sure, there is Gnosticism and a lot of talk about personal, spiritual faith, but its got all the substance of a check written on an empty bank account.

There is more to God's plan of renewal and re-creation than the proper ordering of man and woman in the church, but there certainly is not less. If the church never gets this right, nothing else can ever be reclaimed. You have to start where things blew up in the first place, where the unravelling of the world commenced in the beginning.

God _WILL_ renew His creation, but Western Christianity will not be part of it. American Christianity is going to be tossed upon a fire of judgment and the renewal will arise from its ashes or from another quarter altogether. And then many who say to Him "Lord, Lord" will find out that the "personal relationshp" they thought they had with Jesus was just their Gnostic imagination.

[MANDY]

Dear Against Christianity, You wrote. God will renew his creation but Western Christianity will not be part of it. American Christianity is going to be tossed upon a fire of judgement and the renewel will arise from its ashes or from another quarter all together. And then many who say to him "Lord,Lord" will find out that the "personal relationship" they thought they had with Jesus was just their Gnostic imagination. I would like to know what qualifies you to make such a judgement. I believe it says " DO NOT JUDGE LEST YE BE JUDGED." Maybe you should get the log out of your own eye.

[Against Christianity]

Mandy: I would like to know what qualifies you to make such a judgement.

1. The Word of God written.

2. My own sense of what God requires of me.

Your question is eminently fair. Believe me, I ask every day whether or not I should be making such statements about a Divine visitation in judgment upon the West and Western Christianity. Providence always seems to answer in the affirmative. In some ways the axe has already been laid to the root of the tree. Can't you see it?

I am much less ambivalent as to the authenticity of American Christianity. All you need is sacred Scripture to know that Evangelicalism is spurious, counterfeit, void of substance and must fall to the ground.

Mandy: Maybe you should get the log out of your own eye.

Always good advice!

[Mandy]

Dear Against Christianity, I do agree to a certain extent on what you wrote about Christianity. There are Christians who are not doing what they should. They are not being faithful witnesses to Christ. It is not what you said that bothered me but rather how you said it. You put us all together in one big pile. I know that I am not perfect and I have never claimed to be, but I try my hardest to please my Savior and I know my relationship is very real with him. I am a fairly knew Christ Follower and I have alot to learn and I want to learn more and more. I did not mean to offend you and I apologize if I did. I was reading something online several months ago and the pastor said that the American Church could be compared to the luke warm church Laodicea. When I read that it made me think and pray for the church. What do you think? Thankyou for your time Mandy.

[Against Christianity]

Mandy: I was reading something online several months ago and the pastor said that the American Church could be compared to the luke warm church Laodicea. When I read that it made me think and pray for the church. What do you think?

There is no church to pray for in America. It doesn't exist. What you have in this land is Churchianity or Americanity, not Christianity. The church is supposed to be a visible demonstration plot of the Kingdom of Christ. I’ve been around. I’ve sought for it intensely. It does not exist in the Western world (click on AC for the details).

American Christianity is a bastard faith. It does not belong to King Jesus. He did not grow it and He did not produce it; it has very little to do with the interests, objectives and desires the King has for His genuine church. The American "church" is yoked to an array of idols which place it on a field far opposite to that of authentic Christianity.

So no, I do not pray for this false church, this Constantinian/Gnostic/Cultural hybrid of New Testament Christianity. In fact, I expect God to utterly destroy it within the next generation. For it is a thorough counterfeit; it fundamentally misrepresents the Way of the King and misleads its adherents with a "gospel" of cheap grace.

I do pray, however, for the restitution of primitive, authentic, New Testament, Kingdom Christianity. I look for the day when there will arise a people in the West that will, in truth and sincerity, belong to Jesus and follow Him in the Way of the Cross.

May God be with you, Mandy.

[Mandy]

Against Christianity, I would like to ask. What are your personnal spiritual beliefs? In the New Testament it says to spread the good news in love. Do you believe in teaching it that way? I went on your website and it makes me wonder if you just don't like Americans. Mandy.

[Against Christianity]

What I don't like is false Christianity, which is pervasive in America.

Read the entire New Testament. You'll find that those who compromise, distort and amend the genuine Faith don't receive the love of God. It's not about feelings, Mandy; it's about faithfulness.

To wit, the apostle Paul:

GAL 1:6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel--

GAL 1:7 which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ.

GAL 1:8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!

GAL 1:9 As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!

GAL 1:10 Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.

GAL 1:11 I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up.

But granted, it's hard to make these distinctions from the Matrix.

[Mandy]

Dear Against Christianity, I have read the whole New Testament however I probably need to read it again. I know that we are saved by Faith in Jesus Christ. I personnally don't believe what people tell me if I can't back it up by Scripture. I always check the Bible. People can be led astray so easily especially if they are a new believer. I know that we cannot earn our way into Heaven. The only way to Heaven is through Jesus. Please disregard my comment earlier about wondering if you like Americans that was rude of me and I am sorry. Thankyou for your time. God Bless You Mandy.