The Narrow Gate Revealed: What the Bible Really Says

By Michael J. Roberts

Jesus questioned whether he would find faith on Earth when he returned. He also warned that the gate to life is narrow and few are those who find it. In fact many of Jesus’ disciples left him because they found his teachings difficult to accept. Most of the New Testament writings were written to counter heresy and the Apostles warned against false teachers, against those teaching the doctrines of men. Anyone reading the gospels or the book of Acts today could be forgiven for asking what the cause of the disconnect between the early church and the church today is. Could it be that what we consider to be faith today is actually not true biblical faith but rather faith in teachings which have the appearance of truth because they are based on some scripture, but because they are irreconcilable to the entire body of scripture, are incapable of producing the kind of faith Jesus spoke of? Athanasius noted that “the pressure of apparent contradictions forces a closer examination of scriptural texts, and perhaps more importantly also forces a re-examination of the larger framework of assumptions that govern our reading of the Bible.” The Narrow Gate Revealed uncovers the internal coherence of scripture by developing doctrines of atonement and salvation that are not contradicted by any scripture within the entire canon, with the principal objective of restoring truth and bringing reform to a church which fails to grasp that the Holy Spirit has been given to humanity to enable us to become holy, and in consequence be made fit for the kingdom of heaven.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781471747465

Book preview

THE

NARROW GATE REVEALED

What The Bible Really

Says

See: www.thenarrowgaterevealed.com

Michael J. Roberts

Copyright © 2022 Michael J. Roberts.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews.

Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations are all from the NIV excepting where indicated to the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

ISBN: 978-1-4717-4747-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4717-4746-5 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to God, who called me and enabled me to write it.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To my wife Marilyn without whose longsuffering, patience and support while I invested countless weekends away from home in libraries and the office researching and writing, this book may never have been completed despite the Lord’s gracious calling.

To the staff at St John’s Theological College Library, Auckland, who so ably demonstrated how to serve Christ in our workplace by their willingness to assist a student of the word (one never enrolled at their college) in locating various resources, and thereby enabled this student to complete his God-given task.

PREFACE

This book began as a search to discover how to reconcile apparent contradictions within the Bible, especially those passages pertaining to salvation. If the reader believes—along with the Reformers and many Protestants today— that we are saved by faith alone, then it certainly doesn’t take long before we run into many such contradictions. For example, what are we to do with a text like Romans 2:17, which says To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honour and immortality, he will give eternal life, or Revelation 20:12 The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.

This work is founded on the belief that all scripture is God breathed (1 Tim. 3:16), and must of necessity be free of contradictions, particularly as it pertains to matters of theology. In consequence, no doctrine that is contradicted by any scripture within the canon can be valid. The implication of this is that the Reformers’ understanding of the atonement and their doctrine of salvation are invalid, for the simple reason that they are contradicted by numerous scriptures. Unfortunately, those doctrines are leading many along the broad path, a path which in essence doesn’t necessitate the surrender of the human will to the divine. As a result the transformation and renewal that the Holy Spirit came to provide so that we might become heirs, is never realised. But Jesus warned us Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it (Mtt. 7:13f). Jesus knowing the future and the heart of humanity, knew that true biblical faith would in due course be watered down and in consequence is recorded by Mark as saying when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? (Lk 18:8). This is what lies at the heart of the disconnect between the church today and what we read in the book of Acts i.e a lack of true biblical faith due to a lack of knowledge, and as a consequence the acceptance of doctrines which are not totally consistent with scripture.  And so the writer embarked on what proved to be a lengthy but fascinating journey, methodically searching the scriptures, and discovering that key passages concerning the atonement have been misinterpreted for centuries, resulting in a serious and widespread misunderstanding of the salvation found in Jesus Christ. Whilst this may sound incredulous, let us not forget that for many years up until the time of the Reformation, the Catholic Church had incorrectly been teaching justification by works, rather than faith.

In summary, this book examines existing doctrines of atonement and salvation, analyzes in detail the central relevant passages of scripture, and demonstrates why the existing theories are deficient. The end result is a new understanding of both the atonement and salvation and the development of doctrines on these subjects which enable us to read canonically without seeing contradictions. This is how we know that we have come to understand the message of the Bible, as scripture claims to be truth, and truth knows no contradictions. Origen himself said that this was the task of the exegete, namely to discover the internal coherence of scripture. However as long as we read scripture through the lens of the Reformers, through a lens that says that we are saved solely by faith and that the crucifixion was necessary so as to enable God to be justified in forgiving our sins, we will forever find the Bible confusing because we will forever be seeing contradictions. The Bible however only admits to one interpretation when it comes to matters of theology, and that is that interpretation which is not contradicted by any scripture.

This book is written in the hope of restoring truth and bringing reform to the Church which, for the most part, at least in the West, has been corrupted by false teaching, teaching which at its heart fails to recognise that it is sin that separates us from God.  God’s solution to this is not the punishment of his Son in our place, nor for that matter does he require some kind of recompense or payment for our sin, but rather desires us to turn from our sin and so provides a means by which we might be delivered from the control of sin and thereby transformed from children under the control of the evil one to children of God. This he does by bringing the instigator of sin, Satan, under judgement and giving to all who turn to him in faith the promised Holy Spirit, thereby giving us the power to overcome sin, and as a consequence, become holy. The result is that humanity can obtain eternal life, having been made fit for the kingdom of heaven. Indeed, the very meaning of life itself is to find God and to be made fit for his presence.

1.0 The Reformers’ Theology

1.1 The Era in which the Reformers Lived

Five hundred years have elapsed since Martin Luther, the main instigator of the Protestant Reformation, nailed his famous Ninety-Five Theses to the Wittenburg Castle Church door, thereby precipitating the train of events that resulted in the Reformation in Germany and the birth of the Protestant Church. Martin Luther was born in an age in which the church was appallingly corrupt, especially in the matter of indulgences. Such corruption was possible because the masses were uneducated and ignorant of scripture. Even within the monastery, the Bible was not the staple of theological education.¹

During the decade in which Luther was born, Pope Sixtus IV had declared that the efficacy of indulgences (by which the church alleviated a person’s temporal punishment) extended to purgatory for the living and dead alike. It was thought that when penitents confessed their sins to a priest they were forgiven, but that they still had to make some temporal satisfaction for these sins either in this life or in purgatory. Satisfaction could be made through the payment of a sum of money to the church. In the case of the living, there was no assurance of avoiding purgatory entirely, because God alone knew the extent of the unexpiated guilt and the consequent length of the sentence. Yet the church could tell to the year and the day by how much the term could be reduced! In the case of those already dead and in purgatory, the sum of whose wickedness was complete, an immediate release was offered.² The extent of the corruption in the church of the day is strikingly illustrated in the following short paraphrased extract of some of the errors in papal doctrine highlighted by Luther:

I      The pope and his clergy are not bound to obey God’s commandments.

The pope has, in the secret of his own heart, all laws, and plenary power over all laws.

The pope has power to disannul, change, and determine all councils, constitutions, and ordinances.

The salvation of all the faithful next to God depends upon the pope.

No one on the earth can judge the pope, but the pope is judge of all.

The Roman See gives to all laws and rights due force, but it is itself subject to none of them.

The pope has power to make laws and ordinances for the church.

A previous pope had decreed that Christ, by giving the keys, gave him power over both the heavenly and earthly kingdoms.

The pope can overturn and dissolve all oaths, covenants, and obligations.

The pope’s injunctions are of equal force and weight with scripture.

The pope has the power to explain scripture, at his own will and pleasure, and no one dare explain it in a contrary sense.

The pope does not receive his authority from scripture, but scripture receives its authority from the pope.

The predominant thinking of the church at that time was that individuals could merit the remission of their sins by their own works. Luther wrote, I was not able to see Christ because the scholastics had taught me that there was no hope for forgiveness of sins, and salvation except in our own works. So I lost the crucified and was seized with horror at seeing his face.³ Both he and Erasmus insisted that the church of their day had relapsed into the Judaistic legalism castigated by the apostle Paul. Christianity, said Erasmus, has been made to consist not in loving one’s neighbour, but in abstaining from butter and cheese during Lent.⁴

In following the teaching of the church, a person simply could not know with certainty whether he or she was worthy of hate or love by God. The church presented God as a judge without mercy.⁵ Then Luther began to teach on the Psalms at Wittenberg, and commenting on Psalm 22, he said, What a new picture this is of Christ! Where then is the judge sitting upon the rainbow to condemn sinners? A new view also of God is here. The All Terrible is the All Merciful too⁶

1.2 Luther’s Theology in General

Luther denied the authority of the Roman Catholic Church and insisted that the ultimate authority rested with scripture, which could be interpreted by the individual with the help of the Holy Spirit. Not only was the church’s authority as interpreter of the scriptures undermined by such insistence, but it was also undermined by Luther’s emphasis on faith, as the Catholic Church maintained that the Spirit could only be received by the administration of the sacraments, and that only the Pope and his clergy had the authority to do this. The principle that individuals could interpret the scriptures themselves with the aid of the Spirit is of course somewhat limited unless linked to the question of how scripture should be interpreted once its authority is conceded. By the thirteenth century, three quite distinct spiritual senses of scripture had been established (in addition to its literal meaning): the allegorical, the tropological or moral and the anagogical. Allegory is where one fact points to another, and reveals truth through extended metaphor. Tropology, or the moral sense, is when facts make us understand rules of conduct, and anagogy is the spiritual understanding by which we are led to things above. Luther subordinated the three spiritual senses of scripture to the literal (or historical) sense, expressly stating, as Thomas Aquinas had done before him, that nothing can be held on the basis of the spiritual senses unless it was first explicitly stated in the literal sense. It is the literal sense of scripture which is the most fundamental, and to which the other three are subordinate.⁷ Luther came to regard the allegorical method in particular as a way of distorting scripture.⁸

In spite of the fact that Luther saw scripture as the sole authority, he didn’t consider all scripture of equal authority, not even those scriptures that could only be given a literal interpretation. This, as we will discover, was a major flaw in his hermeneutic. He even subordinated Jesus’ teaching to that of the apostle Paul. In so doing, he was in fact denying the authority of scripture, for 2 Timothy 3:16 states, All scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. Luther read the New Testament in the light of the Pauline message that the just shall live by faith and not by works of the law. Because this doctrine seemed to be denied in the book of James, he stigmatised that book as an epistle of straw in his preface to the New Testament of 1522. However, he did not reject James from the canon of scripture. For Luther, James and Paul were reconcilable in that faith cannot be inoperative, so that while humanity is not saved by works, nevertheless if there are no works, there must be something amiss with faith. This was simply putting a Pauline construction on James, for in James 2:24 it is written, You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone. Luther’s solution was to create a hierarchy of values within the New Testament. First, Luther placed the gospel of John, then the Pauline epistles and 1 Peter, and after those the three other gospels. In a subordinate place came Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation. Luther mistrusted Revelation because of its obscurity: A revelation, said he, ‘should be revealing.’⁹

Luther’s fundamental break with the Catholic Church was over the nature and destiny of humanity, and in particular over the freedom of the will. Luther considered the human will incapable of doing anything good from God’s perspective without God’s enabling grace, especially anything that would merit the gift of the Spirit. Compared to this, Luther considered the question of indulgences, purgatory, and the papacy trifling.¹⁰  While Erasmus was interested primarily in morals, Luther’s question was whether doing right, even if it were possible, can affect our fate.¹¹ While he recognised that humankind’s will had become enslaved to sin as a result of the fall, he didn’t consider that the giving of the Spirit could enable humanity to lead a life free of sin.  Erasmus, however, maintained that God’s dealing with humankind had to be just, and to create humans who were incapable of fulfilling the conditions for salvation, and then on a whim save or damn them for what they could not help would be unjust. In response Luther wrote, Of course, this is a stumbling block. Common sense and natural reason are highly offended that God by his mere will deserts, hardens, and damns, as if he delighted in sins.  Natural reason, however much it is offended, must admit the consequences of the omniscience and omnipotence of God.¹²

According to Harry McSorley, it was the emergence of Neo-Semipelagianism within late Scholasticism that prompted Luther to utter his most powerful Reformation protest.¹³ This was the doctrine of the Ockham-Biel school- that fallen man by his natural powers of reason and free will, without the aid of divine help can prepare or dispose himself for justification. However, it was Luther’s basic conviction that from God’s perspective, we as humans are by nature incapable of doing anything good which might be regarded as effecting our justification.¹⁴  This Neo-Semipelagianism and Luther’s conviction is evident from his comments on Galatians 2:16 (yet we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ-NRSV) where he writes:

For they say, that a good work before grace is able to obtain grace of congruence because it is meet that God should reward such a work. But when grace is obtained, the work following deserveth everlasting life. For if I, being in deadly sin, can do any little work which is not only acceptable in God’s sight of itself, and according to the substance, but also is able to deserve grace of congruence, and when I have received grace, I may do works according to grace, that is to say, according to charity, and get of right and duty eternal life; what need have I now of the grace of God ….? Christ is now to me unprofitable, and his benefit of none effect; for I have free will and power to do good works, whereby I deserve grace of congruence, and afterwards, by the worthiness of my works, eternal life. Through faith in Christ therefore all things are given unto us, grace, peace, forgiveness of sins, salvation, and everlasting life, and not for the merit of congruence and worthiness.¹⁵

Critical to the shaping of Luther’s conviction that salvation is by faith alone were his beliefs that:

Luther declared that according to the Bible and experience, the law cannot be fulfilled, because on account of sin we are unable to love God unless grace enables us to do so: Our whole present life is a time wherein we want righteousness but never accomplish it; this can happen only in the life to come.¹⁹

Consequently, Luther viewed Christ’s death as substitutionary, as the Latin theologian Tertullian had done some thirteen hundred years earlier. According to Luther, the law with all the works and righteousness thereof, is but a farthing if compared unto Christ; who by his death and resurrection hath vanquished my death and hath purchased unto me righteousness and everlasting life.²⁰ To deny this, according to Luther, was to make the Cross meaningless. Writing to one time monastic companion, George Spenlien, in 1516, Luther exhorted:

Therefore, my dear brother, learn Christ and him crucified, learn to pray to him, despairing of yourself saying: Thou Lord Jesus art my righteousness, but I am thy sin; thou has taken on thyself what thou was not, and has given to me what I was not. Beware of ever aspiring to such purity that you do not want to seem to yourself, or to be, a sinner, for Christ dwells only in sinners.²¹ It was for this that he came down from heaven, where he dwelt in the righteous that he might dwell also in sinners. Think about this love of his and you will see how beautifully it will comfort and sustain you. For if it is only by our own efforts and strivings that we can achieve a quiet conscience, what did he die for? You will therefore find peace only in him, in faith despairing in yourself and your own works; and thus you will learn that as he took you up and made your sins his own, he made his righteousness yours.²²

Referring to Luther’s notes on Psalm 50:6, Alister McGrath notes, Luther’s basic intention is perfectly clear: God intends to judge the world in Christ, and the criterion upon which this judgment will be based is the righteousness of faith.²³ It is not surprising therefore to discover that Luther consistently defined sin as defiance and self-righteousness.²⁴

The principle of covenantal causality lies at the centre of Luther’s doctrine of justification.²⁵ In judging humankind in Christ, i.e., based upon faith in the work of Christ, Luther did not see God as unjust. Luther explains how God in his righteousness can accept such a trivial thing as faith as worthy of our justification as follows: Even grace and faith, through which we are justified today, would not justify us of themselves, without God’s covenant. It is precisely for this reason that we are saved: God has made a testament and covenant with us, so that whoever believes and is baptised shall be saved. In this covenant God is truthful and faithful and is bound by what he has promised.²⁶ Luther insisted that human beings are unable to discern the worth of the divine concept of righteousness.²⁷

Luther believed that God’s works are hidden under the form of their opposite. Those who completely humiliate themselves in the eyes of the world are exalted in the sight of God. The one who condemns him or herself is the one who is saved. The fact that God creates all things out of nothing, and the fact that he works under the form of the opposite, served to inform Luther’s doctrine of justification. Human concepts of wisdom and righteousness are overridden by the fact that a righteous God can justify sinners. In his lectures on Romans, he argues that the letter represents a programmatic assault upon human preconceptions of wisdom and righteousness: The sum and substance of this letter is: to pull down, to pluck  up, and to destroy all wisdom and righteousness of the flesh (i.e. of whatever importance they may be in the sight of men and even our own eyes), no matter how heartily and sincerely they may be practiced, and to implant, establish and make large the reality of sin (however unconscious we may be of its existence).²⁸

In his exposition of Psalm 72, he elaborates on the contrast between human and divine judgment. He considers divine judgment contrary to the judgment of humans, as demonstrated in the suffering of Christ upon the Cross, and his apparent abandonment by God. Luther maintains that in the weakness, the folly and the injustice of this appalling spectacle, the judgment of God against human understanding of strength, wisdom and justice, may be discerned. It is through suffering such as that of Christ upon the cross that man is brought to realise the seriousness of his predicament: through realising the force of the divine judgement passed against him, he is saved. It is only when man is totally humiliated that he learns to recognise the futility of his own powers of reason in matters of faith, and so turns to the cross of Christ.²⁹

For Luther, the justification of sinful humanity was contrary to reason, in that God justifies sinners, and therefore the role of reason in matters of theology should be called into question. He saw Adam and Eve’s primal sin as consisting basically in unfaith towards God, and in relying on human reasoning instead of God’s word.³⁰ In The Bondage of the Will Luther wrote, But since he is the one true God, and is wholly incomprehensible and inaccessible to human reason, it is proper and indeed necessary that his righteousness also should be incomprehensible.³¹ Luther’s epithets for reason were severe—the Devil’s whore, beast, enemy of God, Frau Hulda—although he in no way denigrated reason in its ability to judge and discern matters of human society and government. It was only when reason moved beyond this mundane level and began to inquire and argue about divine matters that that smart woman, Madam Jezebel fell short, for all God’s works and words are against reason.³² Luther maintained that human reason cannot comprehend the manner in which God has affected the salvation of humankind. He saw in the Cross this tension between faith and reason reaching breaking point, with reason scandalized, and faith embracing the Cross with joy.

Whilst Luther railed against reason, it was reason itself coupled with human observation that caused him to conclude that it was impossible to be free of sin. In so doing he made the same mistake as Eve, for it was not only her senses but also her reason which resulted in her disobedience and the consequential fall of humanity. To elevate human reason above the word of God is sheer foolishness and blind folly, as in effect we are elevating the human mind above that of the creator.  However, if we are to fully grasp the message of the bible, we must not only come to it with faith, but use the intelligence the creator has given us to find a unified reading i.e. one which does not result in contradictions, for if we see contradictions when we read scripture, that is a sure sign that we haven’t fully grasped it’s message. 

1.3 Luther’s Doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone

While Luther was preparing his lectures on Romans, he found the peace which had eluded him as a monk, in spite of zealously keeping the Rule, confessing his sins again and again, and carrying out penances. He recalls, I was trying to cure the doubts and scruples of the conscience with human remedies, the traditions of men. The more I tried these remedies, the more troubled my conscience grew. As he struggled in the tower room of the Augustinian friary, he reached a new understanding of Romans 1:17: The just shall live by faith, and "sola fide," the watchword of the Reformation, was born. His memorable protestation on the article of justification reads:

I Martin Luther, an unworthy preacher of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, thus profess and thus believe; that this article, That Faith Alone Without Works, Can Justify Before God, shall never be overthrown neither by the emperor, not by the Turk, nor by the Tartar, nor by the Persian, nor by the Pope, with all his cardinals, bishops, sacrificers, monks, nuns, kings, princes, powers of the world, nor yet by all the devils in hell. This article shall stand fast, whether they will or not. This is the true gospel. Jesus Christ redeemed us from our sins, and he only. This most firm and certain truth is the voice of scripture, though the world and all the devils rage and roar. If Christ alone takes away our sins, we cannot do this with our works: and as it is impossible to embrace Christ but by faith, it is, therefore, equally impossible to apprehend him by works. If, then faith alone must apprehend Christ, before works can follow, the conclusion is irrefragable; that faith alone apprehends him, before and without the consideration of works; and this is our justification and deliverance from sin. Then, and not till then, good works follow faith, as its necessary and inseparable fruit. This is the doctrine I teach; and this the Holy Spirit and church of the faithful have delivered. In this I will abide. Amen."³³

The doctrine of justification by faith alone was his favourite. It excludes all trust in self in matters of salvation. According to Luther, a person is justified, i.e., innocent before God, only by faith, although he or she cannot be justified without works. Where these works are not found, there is assuredly no true faith.³⁴ Luther maintained that this extra word alone was necessary in German in order to bring out the force of the original. Throughout all the revisions of his lifetime, he would never relinquish that word alone.³⁵ Commenting on Galatians 2:16 ([We] know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ…), Luther writes, We are justified not by faith furnished with charity, but by faith only and alone...here the question is by what means are we justified and attain eternal life?  To this we answer, with Paul, that by faith only in Christ we are pronounced righteous, and not by the works of the law or charity.³⁶

That we are justified by faith alone is not disputed. What is contended is that unless this faith produces the righteousness required by God, we will not inherit the eternal life that he has called us to. As Paul laments in Romans 9:31f concerning the salvation of his people but Israel, who has pursued a law of righteousness has not attained it. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as it were by works. They stumbled over the ‘stumbling stone’.  We too stumble over this same stumbling stone if we fail to seek the righteousness that comes by faith, if we think that mere assent to a set of doctrines or the new birth given by God’s Holy Spirit is sufficient of itself to save. Whilst we enter the kingdom of God in this life by faith, if we are to enter the eternal kingdom of heaven, we must be truly righteous and this is made abundantly clear in passages such as Mtt.13:40f where Jesus is recorded as saying As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his angels and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. Consequently, those who are born again of the Spirit, but who do