Matthew 7:13-14, a crowd is not proof of safety and loneliness is not proof of error, the destination is what tells the truth about the road and that is why the language matters. A modern Bible reader sits at a kitchen table with a notebook, a highlighter and maybe a sermon clip open on a phone, they want depth, they want the original meaning. People hear someone say, in Hebrew, the narrow gate means and it sounds serious, because ancient language sounds serious, but Matthew’s gospel gives this passage to the church in Greek.
That does not mean Jesus never used Hebrew or Aramaic, Jesus lived in 1st century Jewish Galilee and Judea where Aramaic was widely spoken, Hebrew was known in religious and scriptural settings and Greek existed in the wider Eastern Roman world. Scripture does not give you an audio recording from the hillside, it gives you Matthew’s inspired text and Matthew gives the wording in Greek. So, if someone builds the whole explanation on a claimed Hebrew meaning of the narrow gate, the first step is not to mock them.
The first step is to return to the passage, the word Matthew uses for “narrow” in Greek is “stenes,” tight, narrow, restricted, straight, not spacious, the contrast in Matthew makes the word even sharper, Jesus says the other gate is wide and the other road is broad. The Greek behind “broad” carries the sense of spaciousness, roominess, a road with plenty of room, one entrance accommodates the crowd, the other does not. Suddenly the gate itself asks a question before the road even begins, what are you trying to bring with you? That is the force of stenes.
Jesus is not describing a gate shaped around human convenience, a man can stand in front of it with arms full of things he never planned to surrender, pride he calls confidence, bitterness he calls discernment, lust he calls weakness, greed he calls responsibility, religious performance he calls devotion, a private kingdom in the heart where Jesus is welcomed as guest, but not as King. The wide gate lets all of that through without a scrape, the narrow gate does not. That sentence needs guarding, because the human heart can turn even a warning from Jesus into a ladder of self-salvation.
That does not mean Jesus never used Hebrew or Aramaic, Jesus lived in 1st century Jewish Galilee and Judea where Aramaic was widely spoken, Hebrew was known in religious and scriptural settings and Greek existed in the wider Eastern Roman world. Scripture does not give you an audio recording from the hillside, it gives you Matthew’s inspired text and Matthew gives the wording in Greek. So, if someone builds the whole explanation on a claimed Hebrew meaning of the narrow gate, the first step is not to mock them.
The first step is to return to the passage, the word Matthew uses for “narrow” in Greek is “stenes,” tight, narrow, restricted, straight, not spacious, the contrast in Matthew makes the word even sharper, Jesus says the other gate is wide and the other road is broad. The Greek behind “broad” carries the sense of spaciousness, roominess, a road with plenty of room, one entrance accommodates the crowd, the other does not. Suddenly the gate itself asks a question before the road even begins, what are you trying to bring with you? That is the force of stenes.
Jesus is not describing a gate shaped around human convenience, a man can stand in front of it with arms full of things he never planned to surrender, pride he calls confidence, bitterness he calls discernment, lust he calls weakness, greed he calls responsibility, religious performance he calls devotion, a private kingdom in the heart where Jesus is welcomed as guest, but not as King. The wide gate lets all of that through without a scrape, the narrow gate does not. That sentence needs guarding, because the human heart can turn even a warning from Jesus into a ladder of self-salvation.
