01/19 - Life is Like a Journey

Matthew 7:13-23

Was Jesus angry at people who did not do what he thought they should? Was he threatening them?

Typically this passage is interpreted as if he was angry at those on the wrong road and was threatening them with hell.

Previously in the sermon, Jesus used “life” referring to the existence we now experience and its quality, not what we will experience after death. When he talked about “the road … to life” and “the road … to destruction,” it was likely in relationship to the quality of life he had been teaching about earlier in the sermon.

Jesus, a keen observer of human nature, had noticed that each person fits in one of two categories. Some people tend to make day-by-day choices that led to the quality of life he had been teaching about. Others make choices that bring destruction to their life, especially to the inward, spiritual part.

It was as if each person he met was on a road, some on a road leading to life and others on a road leading to destruction of all that is glorious about being a human. And, he had noticed it is easier for a person to get on the road to destruction than the road to life.

Jesus’ reference to “false prophets” probably meant the respectable religious people who had become spiritual leaders, a group he had already mentioned in 5:21. Several times earlier in the sermon when he said, “you have heard…,” he likely was referring to their teachings.

Jesus’ warning about spiritual leaders was very important to the common folks because, sensing intuitively the principle about the two roads, they naturally turned to established religious leaders for help.

He urged the common folks not to take the righteousness of these leaders at face value but to put them under the microscope to see what was true. This was a turnaround—religious leaders usually do the testing, mainly of the lives of their followers.

Jesus said these false prophets would come to believe they were the image they projected. When his kingdom, based on heavenly principles, would soon be revealed, they would assume they had the right to enter. He would personally block their entrance.

No, Jesus was not threatening people about wrong choices; he was describing, more with sadness than anger, the true human condition. He was willing to do anything to get a person on the right road for a journey to new life.