Room for One

Most of us met the phrase before we ever met the verse. The straight and narrow — we picture a thin, upright line, the path of the careful and the well-behaved, and we more or less know we are supposed to be on it.

Here is what the verse actually says:

Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. (Matthew 7:13-14)

Read it quickly and the eye slides right past the trouble. Straight and narrow, we hear — a rule about walking uprightly. But the word is not straight. It is strait — a different word altogether. Not straight, as in a line without a bend, but strait, as in a strait of water, dire straitsThe older English word in Matthew 7:14: narrow, tight, constricted (a strait of water; “dire straits”) — not straight, a line without a bend. The Greek behind it, tethlimmenē, means pressed or compressed. See Room For One More, a strait-jacket: tight, pressed, constricted. Somewhere between the page and our ears the word got bent, and the bend was not harmless: straight turns the verse into a rule about behavior, while strait says the thing we tend not to hear — that the way is a squeeze. And the Greek underneath does not even leave it ambiguous. The word rendered “narrow” is tethlimmenē — pressed, compressed — the same root as thlipsis, the New Testament’s word for tribulation and affliction. This is not a description of an upright path. It is a description of a place that presses.

And he says it twice. Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way. Two words for one thing — the way we underline a sentence we are afraid will be skimmed. He is not telling us how good the road is, or how hard. He is telling us how wide it is. And it is barely wide at all.

A narrow place is not, first of all, a hard place. It is a single place. Narrow is a question of width, and width is a question of how many can pass at once. A crowd moves down a broad road shoulder to shoulder, carried along without anyone having to take thought of their own steps — often even in lock step. A strait gate will not take a crowd. It compresses whatever comes to it — presses the many back into their singular selves — and lets us through the only way any of us has ever come into anything that mattered: in our own person, on our own feet. The way we were born. The way we will die.

So where is this gate? We keep looking for it out ahead of us, on the road — a decision, a line, a door at the front of some building. But Jesus keepsFrom the Hebrew shamar — to watch over, guard, protect, give attentive care to. A shepherd shamar the flock. The keeping the feasts and sabbath requires is the attentive, protective engagement that creates the conditions for seeing what they reveal — not external compliance with a schedule. Synonyms: shamar, observe, guard, watch over. More pointing the other way. Pray, he says, by going into the inner room and shutting the door (Matthew 6:6) — not out to the street corner where prayer can be watched, but in, to the one place, apparently, no one else can follow. The kingdom of GodNot a future political territory but a present reality. Jesus said it plainly: entos hymōn — within you (Luke 17:21). Entos means inside — it's the "inside of the cup" in Matthew 23:26; "among you" is the softer rendering, leaning more on theology than on the Greek. The kingdom is not something to watch for out there, pointed to "here" or "there" — it is already within. Synonyms: kingdom of heaven, kingdom of Christ, basileia. More, he tells the Pharisees, is within you (Luke 17:21) — a rendering some modern translations soften to “in your midst,” though the word he chooses is the very one he uses for the inside of a cup (Matthew 23:26). He means in, not merely among. Even the turning he asks — metanoiameta (change) + nous (mind): deeper than the English 'repentance.' A renovation of perception — stepping outside the old framework to see clearly — from which a real change of direction follows. See also: The Mask and the Metamorphosis. More, the word we render “repent,” a mind changed, turned around — he aims inward; everything around it in the sermon points the same way: give in secret, pray in secret, lay up treasure where no one can see it.

So this way is a road after all — only not the kind we were scanning the horizon for. It does not run outward, across the country of our lives from one place to the next. It runs inward. The gate is the door of the inner room, and the way is the going-in. That is why it takes us individually: no one can go in there for us, and the door is only ever wide enough for the self.

And here is the first surprise of the narrow way. We go in alone — and the very first word Jesus gives us to say is not my but Our. Our Father. In the most private room there is, behind the shut door, in the place we went by ourselves, the prayer opens with a word that has other people in it. We went in individually and found we were never single. The gate that opens for only one opens onto everyone.

Nor did we go in untended. The way is narrow, but it is not unwalked. One went ahead of us through this very gate — the forerunnerGreek prodromos — one who runs ahead, a scout who enters first so others can follow. Hebrews 6:20 calls Jesus our forerunner, entered behind the veil "on our behalf" — the first through, opening the way we now follow. Synonyms: prodromos, pioneer, trailblazer. See Review of Some APPARENT Inconsistencies of The Cross More, Hebrews calls him, entered in on our behalf (Hebrews 6:20). So the single file of the strait gate is not a file of the abandoned. It is a procession behind a pioneer: each of us on our own feet, in the same steps, following the One who has already gone in.

This is why so few find it — and find is no accident of a word. He had already made the promise, earlier in this same sermon: seek, and ye shall find (Matthew 7:7). Seek where? He never says outright — because by then he has been saying it all along. Finding is a matter of looking where a thing actually is. We look outward, along the broad and public road, for something to join; but this gate is inward. Few find it for the same reason few go in: the one direction we are least practiced at seeking is in.

And those who find it are not the whole story — they are the first of it. The other road is wide and the finders are few; he says so plainly, and it is not to be explained away. But “every man in his own order,” Paul writes — a firstfruitsFirstfruits (Greek aparchē; Hebrew bikkurim) — the first and best of a harvest, brought to God ahead of the rest and set apart as His. Scripture layers it: Christ is the wave sheaf, "the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep" (1 Cor 15:20-23); the ekklesia are in turn called firstfruits (James 1:18) — an early portion themselves, ahead of a far larger harvest still to come. See also: Wave sheaf See Why Pentecost Has No Fixed Date More, and then a harvest (1 Corinthians 15:23). The narrow gate is not a wall; it is a door, and a door is made for going through. A few pass now; behind them, each in their own season, comes a great multitude no one could number (Revelation 7:9). And it is open still.

And the verse names what waits at the end of the narrow way: life — “narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life.” The same life John names at the beginning: “in him was life; and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4) — the one life lit in every one of us. So the way is not narrow because life is scarce. It is narrow because life is within, and within is entered only one self at a time.

Which leaves the question the whole verse was quietly asking. Not how many will go in — only whether we will turn from the wide and public road, find the door of our own inner room, and go through: into the life that was ours from the beginning, and into the Our that was waiting there all along.

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