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Mat_7:13. There now follow some additional concluding exhortations and warnings, which in Luke are partly omitted, partly scattered and displaced (in answer to Calvin, Keim) and abridged. With Mat_7:13 comp. Luk_13:24. The thought is one of the fundamental thoughts of the Sermon on the Mount.
εἰσέλθετε ] where the entering leads to is not stated till Mat_7:14.
ὅτι ] assigning the reason e contrario.
εἰς τὴν ἀπώλειαν ] i.e. to eternal death, as being the punishment of such as are condemned in the Messianic judgment. Php_1:28; Heb_10:39; 2Pe_3:7; 2Pe_3:16. The opposite is ζωή , the eternal life of felicity in the kingdom of the Messiah. Wide gate and broad way; figures representing the pleasures and excesses of sin and wickedness. Strait gate and narrow way; representing, on the other hand, the effort and self-denial which Christian duty imposes. It is only when regenerated that a man comes first to experience the lightness of the yoke (Mat_11:29), and of the commandments (1Jn_5:3), and all the more the further progress he makes in the love of Christ (Joh_14:15 ff.).
ἡ ἀγάπ . εἰς τ . ἀπώλ .] refers equally to ἡ πύλη (Kühner, II. 1, p. 70 f.), to which again the διʼ αὐτῆς belongs. There is a similar construction in Mat_5:14, where αὐτήν in like manner refers to πύλη .