How Narrow is Narrow?

“Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.

Matthew 7:13-14

Tonight's passage comes right after "Ask, Seek, Knock" during the Sermon on the Mount.  It comes right before Jesus talks about "True and False Witnesses."  The passage is the transition from teaching to warning.  Let's examine the original Greek to uncover deeper meaning to this Scripture.

In English, "narrow" and "wide" are consider antonyms of each other.  An antonym is a word opposite in meaning to another (e.g., bad and good).  "Narrow" is diametrically, contradictory different to "Wide."  The Greek word is stenos which means narrow or figuratively the closely-defined path God ordains to travel on to gain His approval.  Wide is platus in the Greek or broad.  To emphasize how wide and broad, the author restates with the Greek word, euruchóros, or spacious, wide.  The next time narrow is used in the text, the word is thlibó, I make narrow, persecute.

 The Greek word for destruction here is apóleia which means destruction, loss, perishing, eternal ruin.  It has as its root word of apollumi which we have discussed means the "lost," unbeliever.  This leads us to another pair of antonyms, destruction and life.  As a contrast to apoleia, the Greek word here is zóé which means life, both of physical (present) and of spiritual (particularly future) existence.

The Scripture has one last pair of antonyms, many and few.  In English, a few has been numerated as three to five.  In the Greek, oligos means small, brief, few, slight, little.  Many is polus which means many (high in number), multitudinous, plenteous, "great" in amount (extent), numerous.  Multitudinous gives us even further insight.  Many is populous, crowded, containing many people or inhabitants, having a large population, containing many inhabitants, abundantly populated.

In this warning, Jesus tells us that an abundant amount of people walk the copiously large road to unbelief and death.  Rarely can a person be found that walks the closely defined, persecuted road to belief in Christ and eternal life.  So, how rare is a true redeemed person in Christ?  How many of us are truly saved?

Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; but on the day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed.
Luke 17:28-30

Perhaps examining Lot's story we may discover the rarity of Christians.  Sodom and Gomorrah population has been estimated anywhere from 600 to 1200 to almost 5000 people.  According to the Bible, only three people were spared.  Let's be generous and define "few" as 3 out of 600.  The population of the plant Earth today is roughly seven billion.  Using a Lot definition of "few," 35 million true redeemed believing Christians are alive today. 

Millions of people doesn't seem rare or few, but let's consider a few more statistics.  The United States of America (USA) has a population of almost 300 million people which three quarters profess to be Christian.  129 million people in the USA identify themselves as Evangelical, born again Christians.  Using the Lot definition of "few," all the Christian alive today would have to be living in the USA.  Even with that, the 35 million doesn't even come close to the 129 million Evangelicals.  35 million doesn't even compare to the 60 to 80 million people estimated to be killed in World War II.

After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

Revelation 7:9-10

This great multitude of believers uses the same Greek word as our previous text, polus.  Therefore, at the end, there will be plenty of believers, right?  But exactly what is a number "no one could number?"  The life expectancy during the time John wrote this was 40 years.  If someone counted from one the second they were born and increased the number a second until they died at 40, that person would count to over 1.2 billion.  To count to 35 million would take a little over a year.  We need to also consider that only over 110 million people were estimated living at this time.  I conclude counting a million would seem to be a lot to them.

This study arrives to this question: How do we know if someone is truly saved?  Yes, we will know them by their fruit, but we don't know their heart.  Only you know your own heart.  Only you know whether you have a relationship with Christ.  Only you know if your fruit is from the Holy Spirit.  We will only know who truly believes in Christ when we get to heaven.  In the grand scheme of things, by tonight's Scripture, there's not going to be a lot of us.  Nearly 107 billion people have walked the planet Earth. Using the Lot definition of "few," only 535 million will believe.  That's only 0.5%, five people out of every 1000.  Even if the Lot definition is wrong, it can't be far off.  Few and many are antonyms, direct opposites.  If many is the world's population, than few would be in the millions not billions.

Five people out of every 1000.  Are you one of the five?

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. “John3:16