Matthew 7:13-23
The Narrow and Wide Gates
13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
True and False Prophets
15 “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. 16 By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.
True and False Disciples
21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’
Commentary:
Jesus examines our wholeheartedness (7:13–27)
The last section of this amazing sermon is perhaps the most amazing of all. It turns on the place of Jesus in the life of the disciple. The ultimate issue of the Sermon is the authority and identity of the preacher. This is widely discounted by those who think the Sermon on the Mount is a collection of ethical maxims such as might have been devised by any cultivated humanist. Not so. The Sermon on the Mount ends with the most emphatic assertion of the ultimacy of Jesus Christ. What he has said with such power and precision in the Sermon derives from who he is.
And who is he? He is the one who can confidently call God my Father (21). He is the one who can tell us what will stand in the day of judgment (22). He is the one who can declare the tree of an individual’s life bad or good, who can say of the road of life ‘Through road’ or ‘No access’ (13–14). Indeed, as the Fourth Gospel makes so abundantly plain, he is the gate, the door of the sheepfold. He is the way that leads to the Father. He is the true vine, and only by incorporation in him can the branches be really good.20
But we do not need to go to the Fourth Gospel to find Jesus’ explicit claims to be the Beyond. They are very plain here. People prophesy in his name (22), and that was something which in Israel was done only in God’s name. People call him ‘Lord’ and are not rebuked for it. Someone can be rejected from the kingdom of heaven if he or she does not know Jesus and is not known by him (23). Jesus inherits that character of God Almighty referred to in the Old Testament: he is the Rock.21 Any ‘house’ of someone’s life built on him will stand. Any house built on anything else will crash in ruins. What claims! Was there ever such a paradox between the sanity and profundity of the teaching in this Sermon and the lunacy of the preacher’s claims if he is not what he claimed to be? Jesus calls for humankind’s unalloyed adherence. He is the eschatological Judge. And he claims the place reserved for God in their lives. That is how the Sermon ends.
This devastating challenge is brought home in three main ways. First, the gate and the road. That image (7:13–14) poses the question, ‘Have you gone through the gate? Are you on the road?’ You cannot get on to the road until you have gone through the turnstiles. And they are not roomy. No room for baggage, for pride, for irresolution. Enter! Notice how here, as so often in the teaching of Jesus, we are challenged to decide. There is no comfortable middle ground embracing most of us, and leaving on either side the very good and the very bad. How comfortable it would have been were that the case! But Christianity is not about being very good, or very bad, or very comfortable. It is about being in God’s kingdom or staying out. It is about allegiance to God, or rebellion. It is about being on the road that starts narrow but opens out into the life of heaven, or staying on the broad road of our self-centredness until it contracts to a dead halt in final destruction. An awesome choice. And we find that at the end of the Sermon we are not permitted merely to admire the teaching; we are challenged to bow to the preacher. Have you entered in? Are you on the road?
Secondly, the tree and its fruit (7:15–23). How can you know if you are dealing with a disciple of the kingdom or not? You can tell from the fruit of his or her life. The question is not only ‘Have you entered in?’ but ‘Is there real change?’
A profession of faith that makes no difference to the way we behave is barren and will never save anybody. There must be fruit, consistent, attractive fruit on the tree of our lives. Fruit that will show there is a Gardener at work. Fruit that will satisfy the hunger of the passer-by. How evil are the fruits to be found in many professing Christians!—an arrogance that alienates; an externalism that does not touch the heart; a separation between religion and life; a faith that makes no demands, or that consists in legalism; a religion that takes refuge in charismatic jargon about prophecy, or miraculous healings, or the driving out of demons, but may not even really know Jesus, and does not really do the will of the heavenly Father (22–23). Matthew may well have had in mind wild, charismatic ‘prophets’ current in his day, as he recorded these words of his Master. I fear that so much that passes as Christianity will shrivel up in the day of judgment and be found to be bogus and worthless. People judge the tree by the fruit. The awesome truth Jesus teaches here is that so does God! If the fruit is not real, we may take leave to doubt the nature of the roots.
Thirdly, the wise and foolish builders (7:24–27). The final way Jesus presses his claim brings us to the end of the Sermon. In this age of permissiveness and pluralism (which we forget was much the same in Jesus’ own day), his claims stand out sheer and stark. He does not agree that it does not matter what you believe in so long as you are sincere. He does not allow that we are all climbing up to God by the route of our choice. He does not fit in with our shallow pluralism. Instead he says there are only two ways we can build. Not many ways, just two. We can either build on him and his teaching, which we will find is as solid as rock; or else we can build on any other religion or philosophy in the world, and we will find that it is sand, and in the last day it will spell ruin.
This last image is meant to follow up the previous two. The question is not only ‘Have you entered in?’ and ‘Is there real change?’ but ‘How do you build?’ He wants the hearers to ask themselves whether or not they are building on the only foundation that will bear their weight.
In our postmodern, relativistic and plural culture, how do Christians justify this exclusivism, which seems to be so arrogant? It is not that we are defending Christianity and saying it is better than anything else. Often it is not. Often it is shoddy and does not stand comparison with the ethos of what is best in other faiths or in liberal humanism. No, it is not the religion of Christianity that disciples are concerned to vindicate. With Dietrich Bonhoeffer, we believe that Jesus Christ came to destroy religion. Religion, if conceived as a human attempt to become acceptable to God by whatever system of beliefs and practice, is a beggar’s refuge. It will not keep out the wind and the hail. What Jesus offers is totally different. It begins not from our reaching up, but from God’s reaching down. It is not a religion at all, but a revelation and a rescue. Jesus is the revelation of what God is like; never has there been such a true likeness. The King has come to bring in the kingdom. He is no less than God’s rescue for men and women lost in self-centredness and sin.
I could never claim ultimacy for Christianity as a system. I do claim it for Jesus Christ. In him God has broken with blinding light into our darkness. In him God has provided for sinners a way back to himself. The question is, how shall we respond? ‘But’, you say, ‘what about those who have never heard the gospel?’ Let us leave those who have never heard to the God who came to rescue those who had never heard. They can safely be entrusted to his justice and his love. The Judge of all the earth will do right.22 And the one who loved them enough to come for them and die for them will not wrong them. Of that we can be sure. The end of Matthew’s Gospel tells us one thing we can do if we care about them. We can go and tell them the good news of Jesus and the kingdom (28:19). And the end of the Sermon here informs us of the other thing we can do if we really care. We can make sure that we personally are wholeheartedly committed to Christ. Until we are sure where we stand ourselves, we shall be no use at helping others.
So, we must build on the Rock. How? Jesus’ reply to that question is the heart of Old Testament religion. We must hear and obey. Not just hear, but obey. The theological and religious world is full of hearing; it is overloaded with God-talk. What will thrill the heart of God and make the pagans realize that the gospel is true is practical, generous obedience—obedience that transforms our characters (5:11–12), affects our influence (5:13–16), shows itself in practical righteousness (5:17–48), touches our devotional life (6:1–18), radically alters our ambitions (6:19–34), transforms our relationships (7:1–12) and marks us out as totally wholehearted servants of the King (7:13–27). That is what Jesus is looking for. That is the mark of the disciples he calls. That is the kingdom manifesto detailed with immense authority at the outset of his public ministry.
Michael Green, The Message of Matthew: The Kingdom of Heaven, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 109–110.
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