Only Two Ways

D. A. Carson makes the point Jesus is making in his Sermon on the Mount: that there are only two ways available to travel in this life.

1. The broad road that leads to death
2. The narrow road that leads to life

There is not an infinite number of choices: only one choice involving two paths.

The tragedy is that otherwise reasonable men become so enamoured with the spaciousness and popularity of their path that they take little thought as to it's destination. Should they hear that it leads to destruction, they will deny it, arguing that they are no worse than others on the same road, and that in any case God would not permit the destruction of so many. Let me state emphatically that the Scriptures do not encourage such optimism. Jesus himself insists that only the narrow way leads to life.

Sermon On The Mount

Jesus tells it like it really is in the Sermon on the Mount. "You have heard it said" but "I say to you."

Enough of what men have said about the Law of Moses, this is what it was really meant to say and how our hearts should react to it.

I highly recommend Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and His Confrontation with the World by D. A. Carson. It was one of the text books for my class I am taking (not for credit) from ITS. The class lectures are also great, by John Stott. The Sermon on the Mount has a definite purpose and it is often misunderstood. The Law was put in place to show sin and most of all to show that we have no righteousness of our own. Any Pharisee who thought he might be righteous in God's eyes by keeping the Law perfectly would be shocked to learn what God's real expectations are as presented by the One who would know, the Son of God. There is no one who is righteous.

The behavior expected by God, perfection as depicted in the Sermon, is only attainable with the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives after we completely admit we are broken and unable to meet this standard on our own. We become poor in spirit and meek due to the knowledge of our own unworthiness in God's sight. It is only then that we can obey God in His power, not our own.