The Narrow Gate

This sermon was preached by Pastor Ted Carnahan for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost on Saturday, August 23, 2025.

Grace, mercy, and peace be with all of you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

As some of you already know, I'm something of a computer geek. I studied computer science in college because I thought that I would use it to make a living for three years, because God has a sense of humor and called me to be a pastor. But I enjoyed it, and it taught me a lot about the world.

For example, it taught me that there are some things which are binary questions. One or zero. Yes or no. True or false.

Binary Questions in Life

For example, ladies, when you take a pregnancy test, you want a straight answer. Yes or no. There's no such thing as being a little bit pregnant.

When your bank checks your account, they don't shrug and say, maybe you've got enough money. You either do, or you don't.

You are either a man or a woman. There are not, contrary to our culture's strange new ideas, any real in-between states.

However, some questions are fuzzier than that. Hungry. A little bit, maybe, or a lot. Or ravenously hungry. These things have answers that are on a shades of gray.

Are you happy? Well, maybe you're not at all happy. Maybe you're very much so. Or maybe you're just kind of in the middle, cruising along.

So I offer you this question tonight: Which is our relationship with Jesus Christ? Is it binary? Or is it fuzzy?

To be sure, the question of salvation is a binary question. You either will or won't be given eternal life in heaven, in Christ, on the last day.

But in many other ways, things are fuzzier. And I think that this is what confuses us as Christians living in the world.

We ask questions like, am I a good enough Christian? Do I do the things that my Lord and Savior has called me to do? Am I enough? Have I done enough?

The Puritan Obsession

It's actually kind of interesting. If you look back in the history of American religion, the Puritans were obsessed with that question. They understood that it felt entirely too vague and fuzzy to them about whether they were actually saved.

Yes, they would tell you very clearly that, yes, they believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. The Puritans were well-educated in the Christian faith, but they were obsessed with the question of whether their own lives bore enough good fruit, good works, that they had any evidence that they would actually be saved.

It was actually quite tragic. And many of them went through terrible emotional backflips and bending over backwards trying to examine their lives and determine whether they were actually good enough that God actually would save them.

Or, like one of their preachers would describe them, Jonathan Edwards, merely sinners in the hands of an angry God. There was no assurance in the gospel for them at all.

Jesus' Word Picture

Here today, though, Jesus gives us a word picture that helps us answer this question. Will only a few people be saved, or will there be many people saved? In other words, is it easy for people to be saved, or is it difficult?

Jesus does not answer that question directly, but he gives us a word picture that tells us everything we need to know. His reply is this. Strive to enter the narrow door.

He's given us something important to know. The door to life is narrow. The path to salvation is not broad and wide and easy, or paths to God, but rather there is a choke point. There is a gate, and it is narrow. A single door, a single gate, a narrow path to life with God forever.

And then there will come a time when many will try to enter and not be able to. Not because they are not welcome to enter through that gate. In his parable, he does not tell us they are unwelcome.

In fact, he is quick to tell us that no one is unwelcome, that many will come from north and south and east and west to enter into the gate, who will be gathered to feast in the Lamb's feast at the last day.

But there will be many who try to enter by that narrow gate in this life, and they won't be able to because the door will be shut. It will be too late. There will come a time when the master will close the gate. The owner of the house will shut and lock the door.

The Shut Door and Its Consequences

And from that point forward, it does not matter how nice a person you are, how good a Christian you thought you were, if you have not entered by the gate, if you have not come into the presence of the living God, if you have not made yourself a disciple of Jesus Christ, then you will be standing on the wrong side of that door.

And then there will be nice people and good folks, even among them many who have been baptized, who will not be admitted, no matter how nice they were.

And they will be upset. You heard Jesus say that there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. We all know what wailing is. It's crying. But gnashing of teeth, that's a figurative speech. We only really find it in our Bible and in very old literature. Gnashing teeth is grinding teeth. If you're gnashing your teeth, you're doing this. You're not happy. You're angry.

Because there are many among us who, rather than trying to enter through the gate of life, Jesus Christ himself will try to be good or good enough by some human standard that they will be acceptable to God.

And when they come to that gate, they'll say, "But wait, we've done all this and you did nice things for me. How am I not welcome?"

And Jesus will say, one of the most chilling things that anybody could ever hear from the Lord, "I don't know where you come from. Away from me, evildoer."

They had their opportunity to enter through the narrow gate. The door was open. In fact, the door stands open today. The path is available. It has not yet been shut. But they chose otherwise.

And we see this in the lazy non-discipleship of many people in our community. There are many who do not want to enter into the sheepfold, or at least if you ask them, "Do you want to be part of Jesus' kingdom?" They would say, "Well, yes, I do. But I'm not yet ready to actually do the things that Christians do."

I'm reminded of St. Augustine, who in his confessions, 1700 years ago, very prescient, said this very famous quote, "Lord, make me chaste. But not yet." Make me sexually pure after I've had my fun. I'll be a good Christian someday, but not yet. I'll take the gospel seriously. I'll stake my life on that. Tomorrow.

To this, God's word says, "pay your vows in the sight of the Lord." And so many stand apart from the truth on that basis.

The terrible reality is that these people will be left standing outside the gate someday. And I do not dance with joy for that. I mean, God's will will be done, but I hate the idea that there will be people who think that they have security and they've never heard the word of God preached in its purity to admonish them to turn from their sin and take the gospel seriously, to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved.

But there will be some who will be left standing outside that gate someday. And they will be mad. They will gnash their teeth and they will cry.

And they'll shout things like, "Jesus, I came to church occasionally. I came to the gospel and I heard it, but I didn't really live it because I didn't think you actually meant it. I didn't really believe it. I didn't think it actually applied to my life."

And Jesus will say something to them chilling and awful: "I do not know where you come from." They will not be saved. They will be condemned.

They will be like Esau, who, being hungry one day, sold his birthright to his brother in exchange for his life. For one meal. And he wanted it back, but it was too late.

Invitation Through the Narrow Gate

But today, friends, there is still time. And God extends for us an olive branch. He says people will come. People are welcome from all corners of the world, from north and south and east and west. All people will be gathered in, not because they are good, but because they have walked the narrow path.

And that path is Christ. That path is not their good works, but rather it is, the narrow gate is Jesus Christ himself. It will not be their wealth, their status, or even their good works in this world, apart from Christ, that will justify them before God.

But it will only be that they heard the word of God, that God extends his grace and welcome to all who would enter by his son, Jesus. And they can come in. He will be perfectly fair. He will give each one of us what we have chosen and welcome all who come.

Our God is not a smoldering God in the background, a dying campfire that we stir through the ashes once in a while to remember what fire looked like. Our God is a consuming fire who desires to consume all of what we are and make all of what we are into the image of his son, Jesus Christ.

He doesn't want some of you. He wants all of you. He does not desire merely some people to be saved. He desires all people to be saved.

And the gate stands open for you. Yes, Jesus has not come back yet. And we should be grateful. It's a sign of God's forbearance and generosity. It's a sign of humanity that we do not deserve.

Because when he does come back, something which seems to us today to be fuzzy and something about a middle question will become starkly binary.

• Some will be in.
• Some will be out.

But today, people of God, God calls you and desires you to come to him, gives you this opportunity to repent of your sin, turn away from those choices which have separated you from God, and love God and neighbor, to be filled with heavenly blessing and grace that comes out of the goodness of God.

He wants you to come and believe, to enter through the narrow gate, to use the door, to bear fruit that proves that God is at work in your life. Not because the fruit saves you, but because the fruit is naturally what Christians do.

Just like soybeans come up in the fields and produce little bean pods, Christians grow up in Christ and produce good works for the sake of God and neighbor.

So we come and we worship. We remember our baptisms, that God's grace was poured upon us when we could do nothing to deserve it. We receive the word of God in law and gospel.

We live as Christians do, bearing the fruit that only Christians can, living in the pattern of repentance and forgiveness, of turning from our sin and living in the love and grace of God.

The narrow gate is Christ. And he calls you. He says to you, enter through me, no matter where you have been before, and live. Enter into me and be transformed. Be consumed, be burned up as a consuming fire. Be transformed by the word of God, for he offers it to you today.

He offers it to you as a gesture of his love and grace. He calls you and bids you enter.

May you know the peace that comes from following Christ in this world, so that you are not consumed with the question of, I'm saved, but rather you may look outward and show the love of God to others.

And may that peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds strong in Christ Jesus, our Lord, to life everlasting. Amen.