Published: May 4, 2026 | thefinalconvergence.com
There is a word the post-truth world reserves for the person who believes that truth is objective, that Jesus Christ is the only way to God, and that not all religious paths lead to the same destination.
That word is narrow-minded.
It carries with it a cluster of associated accusations, intolerant, bigoted, exclusive, arrogant, fundamentalist, and in the most heated cultural moments, dangerous. The person who maintains that there is one way, one truth, and one life, and that no man comes to the Father except through it, is not presented as someone who has found something precious and is trying to share it. They are presented as someone who is imposing their limitations on others, who is too intellectually unsophisticated to appreciate the diversity of human spiritual experience, who is, in the language of the age, on the wrong side of history.
The social pressure this creates is enormous, and it is felt not just outside the church but within it. The believer who maintains the exclusivity of Christ in a pluralistic social environment is constantly being asked to soften the edges, to acknowledge that other traditions have their own validity, to make room for the possibility that sincere seekers of every religion are ultimately finding the same God through different paths.
And yesterday we established that every believer is called to give an answer, with meekness and fear, but without apology. Today we examine the specific charge they are most likely to face: the charge of narrow-mindedness.
Because Jesus addressed that charge directly. And His response was not what the world expected, or what the church has been willing to repeat.
Jesus Was the Original Narrow-Minded
Before we examine Matthew 7:13-14, it is worth establishing something that the modern church has largely forgotten: Jesus was the most exclusive truth-claimer in human history.
Not Paul. Not the medieval church. Not the fundamentalists. Jesus.
“I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6).
“I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved” (John 10:9).
“Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
By me. No man. None other. The language of absolute exclusivity, not a cultural artifact of a less tolerant age, not a formulation that can be softened into something more palatably inclusive without destroying its meaning. The exclusive claims of Christ are the claims of Christ Himself, and those who find those claims narrow are, in the most direct possible sense, finding Jesus narrow.
Which means the charge of narrow-mindedness leveled at the Christian who maintains the exclusivity of the gospel is ultimately a charge leveled at Jesus. The church that softens the exclusive claims to avoid that charge has not demonstrated cultural sensitivity. It has distanced itself from its Lord.
What Jesus Actually Said About the Narrow Way
“Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Matthew 7:13-14).
Every word in this passage repays careful attention.
Strait — not straight in the sense of direct, but strait in the sense of narrow, tight, constricted. The gate that leads to life is not just the right gate, it is a small gate. It admits one person at a time. It does not accommodate the crowd that wants to enter in formation, carrying all their assumptions and alternative allegiances with them.
Wide is the gate and broad is the way. The broad road is not presented as obviously dangerous. It is presented as spacious, comfortable, and well-travelled. There is nothing about the broad road that immediately signals destruction. It is wide, room for everyone, accommodation for every preference, no uncomfortable constrictions, no demands that you set anything down before you enter. The broad road feels like freedom.
Many there be which go in thereat. This is perhaps the most counterintuitive element of the passage for the modern Christian who has been taught to evaluate truth by consensus. The broad road is not a fringe path traveled by the obviously mistaken. It is the majority road. Many, not few, travel it. The fact that something is widely traveled is not evidence that it leads somewhere good. It is, in Jesus’ framing, mild evidence in the opposite direction.
Few there be that find it. The narrow way is found by few, not because God is arbitrarily restricting access but because finding it requires the kind of genuine seeking, honest examination, and willingness to surrender that few people are ultimately willing to undertake. The narrow way demands something. The broad way does not. And in a world that has made the minimization of demand a cultural value, the demanding way will always attract fewer travelers than the spacious one.
Why Narrow Is Not the Same as Arrogant
The charge of arrogance leveled at the exclusive truth claim deserves a direct response, because it is the charge most likely to silence the believer who is not sure how to answer it.
Arrogance is the assumption of superiority, the belief that you are better than others, that you deserve more, that your standing is higher. It is a posture that elevates the self above others.
Exclusive truth claims are not inherently arrogant. A person who has received a diagnosis, who has been told they have a serious illness that requires a specific treatment, is not arrogant for believing that the diagnosis is accurate and the treatment is necessary. They are responding to information they have received from a source they trust. They may be wrong about the source. They may be wrong about the diagnosis. But the mere act of believing that one thing is true and another is not does not make them arrogant.
The Christian who believes that Jesus Christ is the only way to God is not claiming personal superiority. They are not saying they deserve salvation more than others or that they have earned it by virtue of their own excellence. The gospel is the most anti-arrogant message in the world, it begins with the declaration that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, that the righteousness the sinner stands in before God is entirely Christ’s and not their own, and that the only appropriate response to grace is gratitude, not pride.
“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).
Not of works lest any man should boast. The narrow way explicitly excludes the ground on which arrogance could stand. The person who has passed through the strait gate has done so not because they were better than those on the broad road, but because the grace of God led them to find what the majority have not found.
Humility before the gift. Certainty about the truth of the gift. These two things coexist in the genuine believer on the narrow way, and neither one cancels the other.
The Tolerance Argument Revisited
We addressed the tolerance argument briefly in Day 26, but it deserves fuller treatment here because it is the specific argument most often deployed against the narrow way.
The charge is: by claiming that your way is the only way, you are being intolerant of other people’s sincere beliefs, and intolerance is wrong.
Examine the argument.
The claim that intolerance is wrong is itself an exclusive truth claim. It asserts that one way of relating to other people’s beliefs, the tolerant way, is right, and another way, the intolerant way, is wrong. It takes a position and insists that position is correct and the opposite is incorrect.
In other words, the person who insists on tolerance as the supreme value is being intolerant of intolerance. They are walking through a very narrow gate while insisting that no gate is narrow.
This is not wordplay. It is a genuine logical exposure of the self-contradictory nature of the tolerance argument. Tolerance as an absolute value cannot tolerate the claim that some things are absolutely true and others are absolutely false, but in trying to exclude that claim, it reveals that it is itself making exactly that kind of absolute claim.
The believer does not need to be embarrassed by the charge of intolerance. They need to expose the incoherence of the charge, gently, graciously, with the meekness and fear that 1 Peter 3:15 requires, and then offer the reason for the hope within them.
True tolerance, the biblical kind, is not the pretense that all roads lead to the same destination. It is the respectful treatment of every human being as an image-bearer of God who deserves to hear the truth, not a comfortable alternative to it.
“And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient” (2 Timothy 2:24).
Gentle. Patient. Apt to teach. The narrow way is held with firmness of conviction and gentleness of manner, because the person on the broad road is not the enemy. They are the neighbor the narrow-way traveler is called to love enough to tell the truth.
The Destination Is What Makes the Road Matter
The reason Jesus’ words about the wide and narrow ways are so urgent is not that He is being exclusive for its own sake, not that He is drawing arbitrary lines to distinguish the righteous from the unrighteous. The reason is the destination.
Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction.
Strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life.
Destruction. Life. These are not preferences to be weighed against each other. They are not outcomes that reasonable people can evaluate and choose between according to their personal truth. They are the two possible eternal destinations of every human soul, and which destination is reached depends entirely on which road is traveled.
The person who tells you the narrow road is too demanding, too exclusive, too intolerant to travel, while inviting you to remain on the broad road, is not offering you freedom. They are offering you comfortable passage toward destruction. However sincerely. However kindly.
And the person who calls you to the narrow road, who maintains that there is one way and one truth and one life, is not being arrogant or narrow-minded. They are doing the most loving thing one human being can do for another. They are pointing to the gate that leads to life.
“Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Matthew 7:14).
Few find it. But finding it is possible, for every person, of every background, of every history, because the grace that leads through the gate is not limited by human diversity. It is sufficient for all who will enter.
The gate is strait. The way is narrow. And on the other side is life.
That is not narrow-mindedness.
That is the best news that has ever been announced to the human race.
📖 What Is Truth? Unshakable Truth in a Post-Truth World — the biblical confidence to hold the narrow way in a world that calls it bigotry. Available now on Amazon in paperback and Kindle. Written by Menno Zweers | Get your copy on Amazon →
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