assumptions:
God is good.
God is all knowing.
God knew,before creation, that the vast majority of humans (per the above scripture), having free will, would choose not to follow His Son. The logical follow up question: Why would a loving God create a system that dooms, to an eternity in Hell, the majority of all the people he ever created?
First of all, let me begin by thanking you for beginning our NTanswers off with such an easy question. Really people, if you’re going to keep throwing out softballs like this one, it’s going to make the whole process too easy. (In case it wasn’t overly clear, that was sarcasm. I know it’s hard to accomplish that in type.)
Really, there are no easy answers to this question. Whenever a question begins with, “Why would God…” get ready for a lot of theological and philosophical arguments, assumptions, and sometimes outright guesses. The fact that God is good and all knowing as has already been stated, but it is also true that God is infinite. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9) Now I refer to that verse not as an escape as to simply say, “Well, God works in mysterious ways, you know.” and avoid the issue altogether. Rather, I hope to inject some humility in the following and simply say that what I offer are my best thoughts on the subject, which are at all times and in all ways inferior to the thoughts of God.
As this is also a very complicated subject, I have also tried to take a little more time to discuss it.
First, let’s talk briefly about the actual text of Matt 7:13-14 and see what insights we can find. It is rather short, so let me quote it here in full:
“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”
First let me point out that Jesus couples the narrow gate with a “narrow” road, but the two words have slightly different meanings. The first narrow is a simple adjective, while the second narrow is related to the word for “trouble” or “affliction.” The road is not just narrow, it is narrow because it is pressed in upon by difficulty. It is a hard road, trouble to walk, and Jesus says that many do not bother. It is not narrow because few choose it, but few choose it because of its difficulty. The narrow gate is the harder gate, and the wide gate is the easier path.
How does one choose the narrow gate? I believe the answer is found in the context of our verse. Why are these verses found here in the middle of Chapter 7 of Matthew? I think if we look at the verse before, and the sections of scripture after, we see that there is a recurring theme:
Previous verse:
verse 12 – you sum up the Old Testament by doing to others as you’d like them to do to you
Following verses:
verses 15-20 – you recognize good or bad trees (and people) by what they do
verses 21-23 – the only ones who can claim to know the Lord are the ones who do God’s will
verses 24-27 – the wise builder is the one who does the things Jesus teaches
We see that there is a recurring theme of action. It is not enough to just listen to Jesus’ teaching, He expects us to actually do something about it. I believe that all these things are illustrations of what it means to choose the narrow gate. It is the person who does what he knows is right, not just listens to it or agrees with it who can be considered going through the narrow gate and finding the road that leads to life.
So does this text mean that relatively few people will be saved? Somebody asked Jesus this question directly once. It is recorded for us in Luke 13 and Jesus answers with language very similar to what we find here in Matthew 7. He doesn’t answer the question directly, but says we should make every effort to enter through the narrow door. I think there is a sense here that Jesus is talking about the implications for salvation and emphasizing the narrowness of it, but there is also something very interesting that happens in the Gospels when Jesus talks about the “few.” Those to whom He is talking are usually very surprised at who the “few” really are! In Matthew 21:31, for example, he tells the religious leaders that the “tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.” Let us not suppose that those who have the right religious answers (and possibly take the time to answer Bible questions on the internet) are automatically assured a place in the narrow gate. It is not having the right answers this text is emphasizing, it is doing them. This is a very real challenge to religious people in particular to not simply consider themselves, “The few, the proud, the righteous,” but to make sure that they are actually doing what Jesus taught, not simply hearing it.
Ultimately here Jesus is describing human nature. If the narrow way is difficult, then most people are not going to bother with it. People are going to choose, if left to themselves, a path which leads them to destruction. We make choices that injure us, hinder us, destroy us. That’s human nature and human history in a nutshell. When it gets tough, we quit. When the good and the bad are before us, we choose the bad. That’s the story of sin.
Now I think the question we are asking here is, Why did God make people this way?
The simple answer is, He didn’t exactly. God created people with the capacity for choosing the good or the bad, and Genesis tells us how the first man chose disobedience and his own way over God’s way. God created us with freewill to do and choose as we please. The ultimate idea, of course, is that we would choose God and choose to live the way He wants us to. But many don’t and choose their own way instead. If God wanted a universe full of robots who he could interact with and would say all the correct things they were programmed to say, He could have made us that way. He could have made us incapable of sinning, incapable of choosing any other way other than His. But that’s not freewill, is it? A choice isn’t free if you have no other option. God gave us freedom as a part of who we are, and that freedom involves the ability to choose the good or choose the bad.
But the follow up question being asked is this, Does that really get God off the hook? After all, He knew that man would choose the bad and yet He created us anyway. So the real question is, since knowing that mankind would fall and ultimately the majority would live apart from Him, is gaining the “few” faithful really worth losing the many? Does the concept of a number of people being lost in Hell strike God simply as an acceptable loss?
Now we’re getting out into more speculative territory. At this point I am going to relinquish my “answerer” title and put on the title of “fellow questioner.” There are some things I know, and then there are some things I may ask or infer.
For example, I know that it is not God’s plan to let people perish. I know that because the Scripture says it. 2 Peter 3:9, “He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” It is not in God’s plan to let go of any of us and just say, “Oh well, I’ve got a bunch more where that one came from.” I don’t believe for a second that that would be a fair representation of God’s heart. Jesus showed God to be the kind of shepherd who would leave the 99 who were already safe to go after the 1 who was still lost. God would turn a house upside down looking for a single lost coin, one lost person. God would run, not walk, but run to meet a son who returns from living apart from him, foolishly throwing away everything that was ever valuable to him. That’s the kind of God He is.
On the other hand, Jesus talks about these narrow gates and roads, and talks about people being left out in the cold and missing out on God’s promises, all the while encouraging us not to be the ones who miss out.
It makes me wonder about the value of freewill. I mean, if God could do it all again (and He could if he wanted to, by the way) would freewill really be worth all the trouble it has caused? Think about how perfect the world would be if we weren’t free to reject God’s ways of doing things. No wars. No violence. No hatred or prejudice. It makes me wonder if that means that having freewill is really worth going through all the pain and violence and hatred that we go through on a daily basis.
Allow me to wax philosophical for just a moment. Something which is capable of great good is also, if it is twisted and used wrongly, capable of just as great an evil. Take for example the topic of sex. Sex is something which was created by God to be very good when used properly. However, to whatever degree it is a positive force in the world, when it is twisted and used wrongly it is capable of creating equally great pain. Crimes which are of a sexual nature are consider especially terrible and cause incredible amounts of pain and destruction. This is because sex is such a powerful force in the world, powerfully positive if used correctly, and just as powerfully destructive if used wrongly. By extension then, if something is capable of only a lesser good, then it would also be capable of lesser evil if used badly.
If that makes sense, then think about the amount of pain our having freewill has caused. Think about all the times people choose themselves above their neighbors, their own luxury over someone else’s necessity. If freewill used badly is capable of causing that much pain, then could it’s value when used rightly and is ultimately redeemed by God be even that much greater?
At the end of the day, I trust God’s plan even if I don’t understand every piece of it. I trust the heart of God that He doesn’t want to lose anyone, that he made us in the greatest way possible, for the greatest possible good, even if we sometimes have to walk through darkness to get there.
Tags: goodness of God, matthew 7