I must read this over and over. It’s so beautiful. Before you even wrote the words, I thought, This is why You became the word made flesh! To cut the covenant! I am in awe of Him.
I do have one question: In Matthew 7, which mentions the wide gate and the narrow gate, you mentioned that we have had a narrow focus, whereas He wants us in a spacious place with Him. Am i misunderstanding this comparison?
Good question. You did not misread the longing. You kind of crossed two wires that happen to wear the same English word. 😉
The narrow gate and the spacious place are not opposites. They are sequence.
Matthew 7 is about the way in. The road is tethlimmenē, pressed, constricted. That Greek sits right on top of the Hebrew tsar: narrow, distress, the root behind tsarah, trouble. Few find it. Not because He wants us cramped, but because the entry costs something and most will not pay it. This is Torah language exactly. Two ways set before you, life and death, choose (Deut 30). The gate is narrow. Not the destination. The gate.
The spacious place is a different motif entirely. Merchav. Open ground. And here is the thing: it is always what He brings you into after the constriction. "He brought me out into a spacious place. He rescued me because He delighted in me" (Ps 18:19). The movement is from tsar to merchav. Distress, then deliverance. Same shape in Ps 31:8 and Ps 118:5.
You feel where this is going.
It is Exodus in miniature. Mitzrayim, the narrow place. Carried out into a land broad and good (Exod 3:8). Egypt is the strait. The Land is the wide. And the gate between them was a sea that did not look survivable.
So the two are not in tension. You go through the narrow gate to reach the spacious ground. Through the strait, into the wide.
Here is the trap, and it is worth naming. The crowd also takes a wide road. Matthew 7 calls it broad, and it runs to destruction. So Scripture gives us two wide things wearing one English word. One is the ease that ends in ruin. The other is the room HaShem gives on the far side of obedience. The broad road is wide because it asks nothing. The merchav is wide because He delivered you into it.
He is not correcting Himself in Matthew 7. He sets the narrow gate and the open ground in the order Israel always knew them. The press first. The room after.
The narrow gate is real, and it is narrow. The spacious place is real, and it is exactly where the narrow gate lets out.
Oh my goodness! First of all,Thank you for responding. It makes so much sense to have it presented this way. When you mentioned Exodus, I get that picture of the waters parting and also another picture of the veil being torn from top to bottom, to allow passage into a spacious place, entering into His delight!
Have you ever had the quiet, persistent sense that something is just beyond your fingertips? You know it’s there, yet no matter how hard you look, you can’t quite see it. Sergio, this comment/question needs no response.
I was asked to make it a pdf.
https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5dac800f06d0772677e2d5cf/6a4465c1d8b1db2e1c4b8728_He-Did-It-Himself.pdf
I must read this over and over. It’s so beautiful. Before you even wrote the words, I thought, This is why You became the word made flesh! To cut the covenant! I am in awe of Him.
I do have one question: In Matthew 7, which mentions the wide gate and the narrow gate, you mentioned that we have had a narrow focus, whereas He wants us in a spacious place with Him. Am i misunderstanding this comparison?
Good morning Cecilia,
Good question. You did not misread the longing. You kind of crossed two wires that happen to wear the same English word. 😉
The narrow gate and the spacious place are not opposites. They are sequence.
Matthew 7 is about the way in. The road is tethlimmenē, pressed, constricted. That Greek sits right on top of the Hebrew tsar: narrow, distress, the root behind tsarah, trouble. Few find it. Not because He wants us cramped, but because the entry costs something and most will not pay it. This is Torah language exactly. Two ways set before you, life and death, choose (Deut 30). The gate is narrow. Not the destination. The gate.
The spacious place is a different motif entirely. Merchav. Open ground. And here is the thing: it is always what He brings you into after the constriction. "He brought me out into a spacious place. He rescued me because He delighted in me" (Ps 18:19). The movement is from tsar to merchav. Distress, then deliverance. Same shape in Ps 31:8 and Ps 118:5.
You feel where this is going.
It is Exodus in miniature. Mitzrayim, the narrow place. Carried out into a land broad and good (Exod 3:8). Egypt is the strait. The Land is the wide. And the gate between them was a sea that did not look survivable.
So the two are not in tension. You go through the narrow gate to reach the spacious ground. Through the strait, into the wide.
Here is the trap, and it is worth naming. The crowd also takes a wide road. Matthew 7 calls it broad, and it runs to destruction. So Scripture gives us two wide things wearing one English word. One is the ease that ends in ruin. The other is the room HaShem gives on the far side of obedience. The broad road is wide because it asks nothing. The merchav is wide because He delivered you into it.
He is not correcting Himself in Matthew 7. He sets the narrow gate and the open ground in the order Israel always knew them. The press first. The room after.
The narrow gate is real, and it is narrow. The spacious place is real, and it is exactly where the narrow gate lets out.
Shalom
Oh my goodness! First of all,Thank you for responding. It makes so much sense to have it presented this way. When you mentioned Exodus, I get that picture of the waters parting and also another picture of the veil being torn from top to bottom, to allow passage into a spacious place, entering into His delight!
I am in awe of Him!!!
Have you ever had the quiet, persistent sense that something is just beyond your fingertips? You know it’s there, yet no matter how hard you look, you can’t quite see it. Sergio, this comment/question needs no response.
Amen
CS Lewis often spoke of that. “The inconsolable longing.”❤️
Though I own little I have now been made wealthy with the richness of this post.
Amen