Lenten Perspective: The Narrow Door

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The Narrow Door

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.

Mark 1:15 (NRSV)

I try to be good enough

But I'm nothing without Your love

Savior, please keep saving me

From "Savior, Please" by Josh Wilson

Jesus has been traveling throughout the region, announcing the coming of the Kingdom of God and challenging people to change their hearts and their lives.  One day, someone approaches Jesus and asks, "Lord, will only a few be saved?"¹  Basically, this person wants to know whether or not only a select few people will be allowed to be a part of the Kingdom that Jesus is proclaiming.

So often, Christians approach matters of faith from an exclusivist mindset.  We tend to think about either the Kingdom of God or Heaven as if it was the most exclusive party in the cosmos.  We imagine ourselves standing in line at the pearly gates, hoping and praying that the bouncer, who may or may not be St. Peter, lets us in.  Many then understand salvation to be the VIP pass that ensures one's admission to the party.  Christians tend to think that they are the only people who have this special pass, which they obtained by praying a certain prayer or by assenting to certain theological beliefs or by doing good works, and that all other people will be turned away.

Jesus replies, "Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able."  He goes on to say that there will come a time when this "narrow door" will be shut and that the people on the outside will pound on the door, begging to be allowed to come inside.  He says that the people on the outside will watch with dismay as people from all around the world are invited to join the party.²

Jesus paints a picture of the Kingdom of God that seems exclusive but strangely pushes back against exclusivism at the same time.  A lot of people who are expecting to be welcomed to the party are being kept out, but a lot of people who are expected to be kept out of the party are being welcomed.  Jesus typically directs such warnings not toward average people on the street, but toward religious people with an exclusivist mindset.³  Such people, especially those who think they already have a foot in the door, so to speak, run the risk of ending up on the outside looking in, while the people they've excluded are invited to come inside.

In the novel The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis tells the story of a group of ghosts from Hell who take a flying bus ride to Heaven.  When they reach their destination and step off the bus, they find Heaven uninhabitable.  Though the residents of Heaven invite - or rather beg - the ghosts to stay and grow accustomed to the environment, most of them choose to get back on the bus for the return trip to Hell, which they find more comfortable.⁴

Religious or not, we all know that the world is not as it should be.  Christians hold on to the hope that Christ will someday return to set all things right in the world.  We can understand the Kingdom of God to be the place where God's will is "done on Earth as it is in Heaven."  I do not believe that a truly loving and gracious God would want to exclude anybody from the Kingdom, but, like Lewis, I do not necessarily think that all people would consider the Kingdom of God to be a habitable environment.  It would be utterly foolish and arrogant of us to assume that our own dreams for the world are the same as God's dreams.  This is why Jesus coupled His good news about the Kingdom of God with a call to repentance, a change of heart and mind that works its way outward.

Many believe that sin is what would keep a person out of the Kingdom of God.  Salvation is then understood to be something that accounts for our wrongdoings, thereby granting us admission to the Kingdom.  Salvation is more than justification.  Justification is what allows us to put our wrongdoings behind us so that we can move forward.  Salvation also includes sanctification, the process by which we are transformed into Kingdom people.  St. Paul writes that, in the Holy Spirit, we are being transformed "from one degree of glory to another" into the image of Christ.⁵

Jesus encourages us to "strive to enter through the narrow door," implying that entering the Kingdom of God involves struggle.  Dr. William Barclay writes, "The Christian way is like a climb up a mountain pathway towards a peak which will never be reached in this world...  For the Christian, life is ever an upward and onward way."⁶  Sanctification is a grueling, lifelong journey we cannot take by ourselves: we need the help of the Holy Spirit.

Please do not think that I am saying that we need to work our way into God's good graces.  I am saying that we need to be individually transformed by God if we want to be a part of a world transformed by God.  Paul writes that salvation is a gracious gift from God that we accept by faith and not something we earn, but he goes on to write that we were created to do good works.⁷  Good works are not the means to the end; good works are the end.  God does not want us to just do good works; God wants us to become people whose inclinations are to do good works.⁸  In other words, God wants us to love each other in the same self-sacrificial way that Christ loved us.⁹

I wonder if maybe one reason the door is narrow is to prevent people from entering the Kingdom of God with an inflated ego.  Jesus says that "some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last."¹⁰  We must never allow ourselves to think that we have one foot in the door because of our religious identity.  Sadly, we live in a world where the label Christian does not always connote Christlikeness.  Being conformed to the image of Christ means rethinking everything about ourselves.  We must never fool ourselves into thinking that we already have everything figured out, and we must always be humble enough to admit our need for growth.


Notes:

1. Luke 13:22-23 (NRSV)
2. Luke 13:24-29 (NRSV)
3. Adam Hamilton.  Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White: Thoughts on Religion, Morality, and Politics.  2008, Abingdon Press.  p. 116
4. For more thoughts on C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce, check out my Lenten series from 2015.
5. 2 Corinthians 3:17-18 (NRSV)
6. William Barclay.  The Gospel of Luke, Revised Edition.  1975, Westminster Press.  p. 183
7. Ephesians 2:8-10
8. C.S. Lewis.  Mere Christianity.  bk. 3, ch. 2
9. John 13:34-35
10. Luke 13:30 (NRSV)

The photograph of the narrow door was taken by Peter Facey and is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.  The photographer is in no way affiliated with this blog.