If God is so loving, why is the Christian path to heaven so narrow?

The word “narrow” did not come from Christians defending their faith. It came from Jesus.

Matthew 7:13–14 (NKJV)

Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.

So the honest answer is not that Christianity has been misunderstood and is really quite broad. It is narrow. Jesus said so, and He said it in the same breath as the invitation to enter.

Narrow tells you how many gates there are. It does not tell you who may go through. People hear the first and assume the second. But a narrow gate is not a locked gate, and no one who comes to Christ is turned away.

Most religions ask a person to earn his own way. They differ in what they ask for. Some ask for prayers said a set number of times. Some ask for fasting, or pilgrimage, or giving to the poor. Some ask for steady improvement across many lifetimes. A man can usually choose which of these to pursue, so at the start there seems to be plenty of room.

The difficulty comes later. Whatever the religion asks for, it is asking its followers to supply it. His prayers. His discipline. His record. And nobody tells him how much is enough. There is no way to check. He does his best and hopes it counted, and he learns whether it counted only after he dies, when nothing more can be added.

That is where the real narrowness sits, and it is worse than a narrow gate. A religion of that kind lets almost anyone begin, and lets almost nobody finish.

Christianity works the other way round. There is one way in, and a man is not asked to earn it.

Matthew 11:28 (NKJV)

Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Notice who is being called. Not the accomplished, not the religiously successful, but the worn out and the loaded down — the people every other system quietly leaves behind. The gate is narrow. The welcome is not.

So why only one way in? Because there is only one thing wrong, and only one Person who can put it right.

Here is what is wrong. God is good, entirely and without exception, and He made us to live the way He is. We have not. Every one of us has lied and wanted what belonged to someone else. These are not slips of manners. They are done in God's world, by people He made, against the life He set out for us — which makes Him the one they are finally against.

And they do not fade with time. A man who has wronged someone cannot undo it by behaving well afterwards; the good he does later sits beside the wrong without removing it. Our standing with God works the same way. What we have done is real, it still stands, and nothing we do next reaches back and changes it. So someone else has to deal with it, and it cannot be one of us, because each of us has his own wrongs to answer for. It would have to be a man, standing where we stand, with nothing of his own to answer for. Paul names the only Person who has ever fitted that description:

1 Timothy 2:5 (NKJV)

For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus,

A mediator is someone who stands between two people who are at odds and speaks for both of them. That is a difficult position to hold, because he has to genuinely belong to each side. He cannot represent someone he is not one of.

Think about what that requires here. To speak for God, He would have to be God. To speak for us, He would have to be one of us — a real man, born, tired, hungry, able to die. And He would have to be clean Himself. A man with wrongs of his own to answer for is not standing between the two sides; he is on our side of it, needing someone to speak for him.

That is not a list of things Christ happens to be. It is a description of the only Person who could do the job, and He is the only one who has ever matched it.

Which brings the question back to where it started, because now it can be answered properly. If God is loving, why not open more roads? The answer is that He was asked, by His own Son, on the night before He died.

Matthew 26:39 (NKJV)

He went a little farther and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.”

So could God not simply have allowed more ways in? Paul answers that, and his answer is blunt:

Galatians 2:21 (NKJV)

I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain.

Paul is arguing about the law of Moses, but the principle reaches every alternative anyone has ever proposed. If a man could be put right with God by any other route, then Christ died for nothing. Not for something small. For nothing at all. God watched His Son go to the cross to obtain what was already available cheaper somewhere else. No father does that. And the reader who asks why God did not widen the way is asking for a God who would.

A God who kept the way narrow at His Son's expense is not a God who is holding back from us. Paul draws that conclusion himself:

Romans 8:32 (NKJV)

He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?

Paul reasons from the greater to the lesser. A God who has already handed over His own Son is not a God who will be stingy with anything smaller. The way is narrow because it runs through the Son He did not spare.