Referencing information provided by a devotional written by Pah Fang Chia in Our Daily Bread I got to know about a restaurant called The Narrow Door Café. It is located in the Taiwanese city of Tainan. On today’s Sunday Spice, we are going to take a look at this idea of narrow. Jesus indicated the word in two different passages. The one we will cover in today’s Sunday Spice was His own mention of a narrow door in Luke 13. The other one included his comment about a narrow gate in Matthew 7. For now, let’s see exactly what He had to say about the narrow door.
When someone opens a restaurant, it might be better for marketing purposes to call it The Open Door Café or The Red Door Café or The Front Door Café or how about The Stage Door Café, or maybe even The Screen Door Café—something inviting, positive, or colorful, or unique. But not The Narrow Door Café.
Okay, I’ll concede that it is unique. But what if the entrance door really is narrow? Extremely narrow. As you might imagine, the entrance door to The Narrow Door Café in Tainan is very narrow. How narrow? you ask. Using the metric system, it measures 40 centimeters. To convert that into inches try to imagine 15 and ¾ inches in width. That’s right; 1 foot and 3 ¾ inches wide.
The term “hole-in-the-wall” is defined by the dictionary as a small and often unpretentious out-of-the-way place. So this size door might add a new definition to the term “hole-in-the-wall.”
As challenging as it must be for customers to make their way into the restaurant the fact is that this restaurant attracts huge crowds. Something delightful just beyond the entrance door is motivating enough for customers to thread their bodies through the limited space to access what awaits them.
Someone asked Jesus one day, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” This is where Jesus brought up the narrow door idea and said “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.”
As was the case in many situations Jesus took a different route than his audience expected. Instead of a focus on how many will be saved, which was the objective of their question, He refocused on the way to be saved. He then introduced the narrow door.
It would not be unusual for this Jewish audience to think that they were the “few” who would be saved. Other Biblical references point to their pride in this regard. Religious Jews projected on themselves a special advantage by their very birthright, perhaps. Yes, Jesus did come through God’s covenant people, a people sanctified for His redemptive purposes, to reveal the Messiah. This brought salvation to everyone, Jews and Gentiles alike. This alone makes Jewish people special, but not at the expense of compromising God’s demands for salvation.
This is evidenced when Jesus spent a little time in this very passage jerking the slack out of the kind of thinking that a person is saved just because they belong to a special group. He drove it home with some strong and scary language. He said there would come a day, referencing the Judgment Day, when individuals (even if they were a part of His covenant people) who would be classified as “workers of evil.” And He goes on to say, “In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob (this was an obvious mention to their Jewish forefathers) and all the prophets in the kingdom of God but you yourselves cast out.” This was a reference to going into eternal damnation. This and other verses source the theological data we have about hell, 95% of which was taught by Jesus Himself in the four gospels.
If we are not careful, we construct in our minds a doorway of salvation that is wide and easily accessed, a doorway of our own concoction. It is fashioned with thoughts that
“I’m not so bad”
“Why, here’s a list of all my good deeds”
“After all, I belong to a special group or denomination or family.”
“I’ve jumped through all these religious hoops, you know.”
Others fabricate multiple doors of salvation and allow for a multiplicity of paths to God.
So, when left to us the doorway ends up falling short of Biblical design. It insults the only real thing that is the source of our salvation, and that is the singular and complete work of Jesus on the cross. This makes Him the Savior exclusively with no regard for anything or anybody outside of Him. He is the one and only way to salvation. Everything else is in the “workers of evil” category.
I know that some want to make it more diplomatic or convoluted. Less black and white and more shades of gray. We have learned to become comfortable with our own opinions and with the opinions of others; all in the name of religious tolerance, of course. A tolerance that is strangely adversarially intolerant of those who defend the exclusivity of Christ Jesus. An exclusivity that has to be defended more and more with each passing year because opinions are treated as more superior in general. We are more comfortable with a hodgepodge of opinions and not at all comfortable with reading the Bible and thinking it through.
How serious is this?
Do we really want to sacrifice the truth of the gospel on the altar of the right I have to my own opinion? Sounds dangerous to me.
In this very passage, Jesus paints a bleak picture of those who give no regard to the narrow door. He elaborated, “When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, open to us,’ then he will answer you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’ 26 Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.’ 27 But he will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!’”
If just beyond the narrow door is a joy unspeakable (1 Peter 1) and pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16) contained in and based on the person and work of the Lord Jesus, then that should be enough to motivate us to thread ourselves through the clear-cut Bible-based expectations that define entrance through that particular door and not try to devise another door by guesswork in an opinion-driven attempt to take its place.
Yes, there are other doors of all shapes, sizes, and colors, decorated with appeal and charming; intellectualism and emotion. They have facades of religion, spirituality, goodness, and positivity. In the end, however, they are only a product of make-believe, full of empty promises. These doors have nothing to deliver, and they open to no one.
This should make us run for refuge to the Lord Himself, repent of our sins, and place our entire trust and faith in Him to save us by the grace only He can provide.
I’m Tammy Reneé, and this is Sunday Spice. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed are the people who take refuge in Him! For they will enter the narrow door.
1 Comment
pip74@frontier.com · December 30, 2022 at 3:52 pm
Trying to catch up on your Sunday Spice comments. They are all very good
and thought-provoking….this one on the narrow door, however, is particularly
informative and well done. Thank you for taking the time each week to
post such challenging and pertinent messages. I appreciate them so
much…and I hope other readers will continue to encourage you in your
efforts to reach out in spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ.