Is Following Jesus Difficult?
At a key moment in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus assures people that following him will not be difficult. “My yoke is easy,” he says, “and my burden is light,” and I will bring “rest for your souls.” (1) That’s certainly encouraging.

But then, during his famous Sermon on the Mount, he paints this word picture about wide and narrow gates that seems to suggest the opposite.

So which is it? Does following Jesus bring peaceful rest to our souls? Or is the path to life in Christianity so difficult and “narrow” that, despite how hard we try, only a few will actually figure it out?

Popular readings of this passage often trend toward the notion that Jesus is contrasting the life of perfect religious observance and piety against the life of total immorality and debauchery: “Doing good is hard, and doing evil is easy.” Or more simply, “Hardly anyone is good enough for God, and mostly everyone is headed for destruction.”

But if Jesus’ yoke is easy, and if following him brings genuine rest to weary people, then there must be additional meaning in Jesus’ famous statements that “narrow is the path to life” and “wide is the path to destruction.”

Jonathan Pennington points out a long Christian tradition (born from the pietist movement) that sees the “narrow gate” versus “broad way” as the difference between moral and immoral behavior, or pious versus unholy practices. But that’s not what Jesus is contrasting here. Instead, Pennington says, Jesus is contrasting the way of outward religious observance against the way of genuine heart transformation.

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