Articles
Few But Full
As Jesus headed towards Jerusalem, one person asked a distressing question. “Lord, are there just a few who are being saved?” (Lk. 13:23). Jesus’ answer confirms our worst fears. “Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able” (Lk. 13:24). The way to salvation is “narrow” and “many” people won’t enter through it. Worse, it seems like many of the people who won’t be saved will be trying to be saved (“will seek to enter”). Isn’t this a discouraging message? It feels like it is practically impossible to be saved.
The people Jesus was talking to needed to hear this message though. So many of the Jews assumed their salvation simply because they had been born Jews. John the Baptist had already warned them about this mindset. “Do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father’; for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham” (Mt. 3:9). Others of the Jews would assume they were saved because they had been born at about the same time and about the same place as Jesus. They had met Him personally, and heard Him with their own ears. Surely they would be saved, who were blessed with such opportunity. But no, that wouldn’t save them either. Jesus said about those who would find themselves on the outside of salvation looking in, “You will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets’; and He will say, “I tell you, I do not know where you are from; depart from Me, all you evildoers.” (Lk. 13:26-27). People who assumed they were automatically saved needed to hear the discouraging message that most people would be lost… including them. They needed to be shocked into action. They needed to “strive to enter through the narrow door.”
However, this discouraging message is offset with a particularly encouraging message to those who would not assume their salvation. Jesus spoke of such people when He said, “They will come from east and west and from north and south, and will recline at the table in the kingdom of God” (Lk. 13:29). Heaven isn’t impossible to reach. It won’t be empty.
Later, Jesus would tell the parable of the big dinner (Lk. 14:16-24). This one parable illustrates both the discouraging message to the self-assured and the encouraging message to those who felt hopeless. The self-assured Jews are represented as those who are invited to the big dinner but then they all made excuses as to why they could not come. Naturally, those who reject a divine invitation from God are not welcomed into heaven. “None of those men who were invited shall taste of my dinner” (Lk. 14:24).
Was the big dinner wasted then? No one showed up? Far from it. Once the initial group made their excuses and refused to come to the feast, the master made other plans to fill the banquet room. “The slave came back and reported this to his master. Then the head of the household became angry and said to his slave, ‘Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in here the poor and the crippled and blind and lame.’ And the slave said, ‘Master, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’ And the master said to the slave, ‘Go out into the highways and along the hedges, and compel them to come in, so that my house may be filled” (Lk. 14:21-23). Do you see the encouragement here? God has not created a path to heaven that is so complicated and so demanding that no human could ever follow it. That would defeat God’s purpose. Heaven will not be empty! God won’t allow it.
This does not mean that everyone is saved or even that it is easy to be saved. After all, the way is narrow, and we are urged to “strive to enter.” There aren’t a million ways to heaven. There is only one way, and Jesus is that way (John 14:6; Heb. 10:19-22). But following Jesus is not so complicated as to be even close to impossible.
God desires and has made plans to make certain His house is full. Let us not reject His invitation by making excuses. Rather, let us strive to enter in, and go our way rejoicing that God wants us in His kingdom and that God has paved a path of grace and hope that we are fully able to follow.
